NVIDIA Demo: Nalu

Nalu [Hawaiian for wave], daughter of the deep sea, stops to admire a creature of the deep as it ascends towards the water's surface. The NVIDIA® GeForce™ 6800 GPUs deliver brute strength to render the soft shading of her long hair and the soft shadows on her skin.

Key Features:

1. Dense hair is simulated in real time and lit by a technique called "deep shadows" where the topmost hairs glow brightly from exposure to the light, while the lower hairs are darker.

2. Her skin is lit by the light refracted through the water's surface, her body and hair casting soft shadows on her as she swims.

3. Soft shafts of light filter down from the surface and are blocked by her silhouette using world-class, render-to-texture capabilities.

4. Her high-resolution skin transitions into a highly detailed scale shader that features the same soft shadowing as the skin, but adds a more noticeable bumpmap, iridescence, and bio-luminescence.

5. The final render pass (19 in all) provides a soft glow that allows the bright light on her hair and skin to bloom on the screen.