Monday, October 10th, 2016 Posted by Jim Thacker

Neoglyphic Entertainment ships NeoFur 2.0 for UE4


Neoglyphic Entertainment has released NeoFur 2.0, the latest version of its real-time hair and fur system for Unreal Engine, adding support for motion blur and importing hair geometry as NURBS curves.

Real-time ‘fuzzy surfaces’ with self-shadowing and physics support
The recipient of one of Epic Games’ Unreal Dev Grants, NeoFur creates “fuzzy surfaces” in real time, using a geometry shell rendering technique to create a “beautiful illusion of millions of strands of fur”.

The technology is capable of dynamic self-shadowing, supports rim lighting and ambient occlusion, and comes with controls for strand colour, length and thickness.

Strands also have physics parameters like gravity and stiffness, and can be affected by a game engine’s native forces. There is also a custom level of detail system.

New in NeoFur 2.0: support for motion blur and NURBS curves generated by Maya’s nHair
To that feature list, NeoFur 2.0 adds support for motion blur, and for importing source geometry – including that generated by Maya’s nHair system – as NURBS curves, via the FBX file format.

The imported curves can then be used to drive shell growth within NeoFur.

There is also experimental support for controlling hair clumping via vector maps and for controlling hair curling via UV offsets across the surface of a model.

Pricing and availability
NeoFur 2.0 is available for Unreal Engine 4.13, deploying to Windows, OS X, Android, iOS, Linux, HTML5 and, in the case of the Pro edition, Xbox One. The update is free to all existing users.

A new Indie licence, intended for projects with a budget of under $150,000, costs $99; a Pro licence, intended for larger projects, and which also includes source code access, costs $349.

The plugin is also available in closed beta for Unity.


Read a full list of new features in NeoFur 2.0 on Neoglyphic Entertainment’s blog