AMD’s TressFX 4.1 is here and it is Unreal!

AMD has officially released TressFX 4.1, and with it comes a slew of improvements, the most important of which is Unreal Engine integration, closely followed by the feature’s performance enhancements.   

For the uninitiated, Radeon’s TressFX technology is AMDs hair/fur rendering/simulation technology, which allows the company to deliver realistic hair and fur within games and other software. The tool has been used within a number of modern games, the most famous of which is 2013’s Tomb Raider, though the tool has evolved since then. 

With this release, TressFX has been integrated into Unreal Engine 4.22, a factor that makes it easier for Unreal Engine users to bring TressFX components and features into their games. As part of AMD’s GPUOpen initiative, the source code for TressFX is available online. 

TressFX 4.1 is also designed to offer more performance than TressFX 4.0, optimising the software’s physics simulation shaders while enabling new rendering features. Thanks to AMD’s Radeon Cauldron framework, TressFX 4.1 has made TressFX easier to integrate into a developers existing codebase, while also making TressFX more compatible with DirectX 12 and Vulkan. 

TressFX features

– Hair and fur support, designed for high quality anti-aliasing
– Animation/skinning support
– Unreal Engine (4.22) integration
– TressFX/Cauldron implementation (source code)
– Maya plugin provided for hair/fur and collision authoring
– Source code provided

New in TressFX 4.1

– TressFX/Unreal engine integration (patch under Epic Games Unreal GitHub repository) with multiple components, rendering and simulation material support
– TressFX/Cauldron implementation with source code (DirectX® 12 and Vulkan®)
– Optimized physics simulation shaders can allow more hair to be simulated in real-time
– New rendering features (StrandUV and Hair Parameter Blending)
– New Level of Detail (LOD) system
– Documentation and tutorials
– Updated Maya Exporter with new UI and new features/error checking