USER'S MANUAL

DOWNLOAD OUR PROGRAM Here (release.zip)

A Mini Release Version
(release_smaller_db.zip)

1. Environment Preparation

Our program is developed with GPU acceleration techniques. Thus some setup is needed to run our program.

1.1 Hardware requirement:

  1. CPU. There is no minimal requirement for the CPU but we recommend Intel Pentium4 2.0 at least; or AMD Sempron 2200+ at least.
  2. Memory. 1G main memory is the base line, since a 500M-size offline database will be loaded into memory at the initialization step of program.
  3. Video Card. To run the demos, your video card must support DirectX 9.0 and Pixel/Vertex Shader 2.0. In other words, a card better than GeForce FX5500 or Radeon 9600 is required. At the least 64M display memory is needed.

As a reference, all our experiments are done on a PC with a Pentium4 3.0, 1G main memory, and a GeForce 6600GT with 128M display memory.

1.2 Software:

  1. Operation System. Microsoft Windows XP or another similar Windows version is required, such as Windows 2000 or Windows 2003 Server Edition.
  2. DirectX 9.0b or DirectX 9.0c Runtime. If your operation system is Windows XP or later, it should be installed together with Windows. If DirectX 9 is not installed, you can download it from the web-site of Microsoft.

As a reference, our software environment is Windows XP/DirectX 9.0c runtime/DirectX 9.0b SDK.

 

2. Downloading and Extracting our Program and the Associated Files

Download the .zip file from here and extract it in any directory.

To simplify the tutorial here, we assume the extracted files are in the directory C:/release. Here is the file list in this directory, shown as below. Check and confirm the files are all complete.

offline.exe

               the executable program to generate the offline texture database

density_map

         the hair density map used in the hair style

hlsl.fx

         the shading language file written in HLSL format

Jessi.x

         the file containing the human head's mesh

Rendering.exe

         the executable program to render the hair

usage.txt

         keyboard and mouse usage during execution

NOTICE: Please don’t change the directory structure. Otherwise our program may not be able to locate the input files and thus crash.

 

3. Generating the Offline HRIR Database

Execute C:/release/offline/offline.exe to generate the offline HRIR database, which is described in the Section V of this manual. This stage consumes about 2 hours, depending on the CPU performance. During its execution, a text window will show the current step.

Once done, a new file C:/release/offline_db will be generated, about 500MB in size. Please don't remove, modify or rename it.

 

4. Running our program

In each C:/release/demoX directory, for example in C:/release/demo1, execute Rendering.exe. Since the size of offline database is quite large, several seconds are needed to load it into memory before the program actually starts its rendering.

 

4. Using Keyboard and Mouse in the Running Demo

Please pay attention to the usage.txt file in each C:/release/demoX directory.

 

5. Most Frequently Encountering Problems and the  Solutions

  1. Cannot generate offline HRIR database (C:/release/offline_db)
    Please check the capacity of your hard disk and make sure there are more than 500MB left.
     
  2. Cannot launch Rendering.exe
    Please check

 

  1. Rendering.exe can be launched but nothing in the window
    Please check whether hlsl.fx and offline_db are in the right directory and whether they are both fine.
     
  2. Rendering.exe can be launched but it seems the human head is missing
    Please check whether Jessi.x is in the right directory and whether it is fine.
     

6. A Mini Version

We provide another version which can be run much easier. Download it (release_smaller_db.zip).

This version uses a smaller texture database (but with little quality loss) and the database file is attached within the .zip file. So the user needn't generate the databse manually which costs lots of hours. Directly run Rendering.exe in the .zip file.