The core issue:
> There have been no papers on afro-textured hair at SIGGRAPH ever.
There are over 300 SIGGRAPH papers on other types of hair.
> There have been no papers on afro-textured hair at SIGGRAPH ever.
There are over 300 SIGGRAPH papers on other types of hair.
Slide 3, with this headline:
> Curly hair in graphics research is limited to “classical European locks”
Contains this phrase:
> which varies from an elongated ellipse for African hair
Which leads me to think the Eurocentricity of the other 300 papers is being rather oversold. The Beethoven-looking redhead on the previous slide has two hair styles which are unmistakably models of common African hair textures. Being generous I would guess that the hair was made lighter to show details better? Caucasians presenting with that level of frizz is also not unheard of.
Afro-textured hair is certainly a topic worth a few SIGGRAPH monographs all on its own, and a dedicated library is also great. But I suspect that a thorough review of the 300 papers in question would find that the insinuation that none of them treat on the subject of African hair is somewhere between "not supported" and "wildly false".
> As of 2021, we only found two technical papers that showed Afro-textured hair [Bertails et al. 2005; Patrick et al . 2004]. While some technical papers containing Black hair have started to appear since we published our findings [Hsu et al . 2023; Wang et al. 2023], these usually represent relatively unstyled hair. Some styles have started to appear in short talks [Ogunseitan 2022], but a wide range of intricate, sophisticated, and very common hair styles still lie outside the visual language of computer graphics research.
- https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3664475.3664535 (not open access, I can share it if you're interested though)
The four papers they mention here are not from SIGGRAPH. The "short talk" was from SIGGRAPH 2022, but as that phrase implies it was a talk and not a paper.
Might be worth pointing out there aren’t that many siggraph papers on procedural hair geometry generation, quite a few are on rendering hair and do cover dark/black hair with elliptical cross sections. IIRC there are some papers on blonde hair specifically because it exhibits more visible scattering.
Anyway… is there a historical/cultural bias toward Eurocentric hair and not a lot of representation of Black hair? Yes that would probably be totally fair to say. Splitting hairs on whether or not their words are unambiguously and perfectly accurate might be slightly beside the point. Let’s take it as a hint that we can improve, and enjoy a paper that brings new hair generation methods to bear.
I'm assuming you won't think this counts either, but here's another paper they reference that includes afros, again written by non black authors: https://graphics.cs.utah.edu/research/projects/sag-free-hair....
The answer, typically, is OF COURSE. Big time. It would be well appreciated by most.
That being said, I get where this perception comes from -- there can be, as you call them, outsider social-justice folk who might try to say something weird here:
But I just need to highlight the "outsider" part of that -- if only for non-black folks to understand and to try to pay attention to exactly who you're listening to and getting authority from? I hate to use a phrase like "real Black people" but I'll go with that for now; real Black people tend to be the MOST reasonable, but often under-heard.
I'm reminded of, e.g. police reform; I understand that it's incredibly important and necessary. Which is why phrases/ideas like "Abolish the police" and "ACAB" are deeply unhelpful.
(and as always, I am only one Black person, nothing I say here should be taken as gospel for everyone, I could be wrong)
Unfortunately, moderation within a biased status quo doesn't achieve the goal of eliminating the bias. Those seeking a radical change can't reasonably be faulted for using radical rhetoric, only for wanting to change something that's "working."