Fur and Feathers: A Procedural Approach - #gdcrewind

A GDC talk covering a procedural strand-based approach to rendering fur and feathers in games. Key techniques include barycentric scattering to place strands on animated meshes, using triangle strips for strand geometry, and a performance tip: using a large shared index buffer instead of instanced rendering to avoid wasted GPU shader threads. Billboarding strands orthogonal to the camera forward vector creates an illusion of fullness in screen space.