# ControlHair: Synergizing Physics Simulator and Video Diffusion for Controllable Dynamic Hair Rendering

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21541 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.21541/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in 3D, point cloud and scene generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 38 of its 60 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Sep 2025.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [3D, point cloud and scene generation](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/3d-point-cloud-and-scene-generation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 38)

- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [Wan: Open and Advanced Large-Scale Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20314/) (2025)
- [CogVideoX: Text-to-Video Diffusion Models with An Expert Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.06072/) (2024)
- [HunyuanVideo: A Systematic Framework For Large Video Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03603/) (2024)
- [MVDream: Multi-view Diffusion for 3D Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16512/) (2023)
- [Animate Anyone: Consistent and Controllable Image-to-Video Synthesis for Character Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17117/) (2023)
- [Open-Sora: Democratizing Efficient Video Production for All](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.20404/) (2024)
- [Movie Gen: A Cast of Media Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13720/) (2024)
- [LTX-Video: Realtime Video Latent Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.00103/) (2024)
- [CameraCtrl: Enabling Camera Control for Text-to-Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.02101/) (2024)
- [Emergent Correspondence from Image Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03881/) (2023)
- [CAT3D: Create Anything in 3D with Multi-View Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.10314/) (2024)
- [Follow Your Pose: Pose-Guided Text-to-Video Generation using Pose-Free Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01186/) (2023)
- [Effective Whole-body Pose Estimation with Two-stages Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15880/) (2023)
- [Open-Sora Plan: Open-Source Large Video Generation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00131/) (2024)
- [Seedance 1.0: Exploring the Boundaries of Video Generation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09113/) (2025)
- [EchoMimic: Lifelike Audio-Driven Portrait Animations through Editable Landmark Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08136/) (2024)
- [UniAnimate: Taming Unified Video Diffusion Models for Consistent Human Image Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.01188/) (2024)
- [ToonCrafter: Generative Cartoon Interpolation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.17933/) (2024)
- [GaussianHair: Hair Modeling and Rendering with Light-aware Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.10483/) (2024)
- [StyleMaster: Stylize Your Video with Artistic Generation and Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.07744/) (2024)
- [PhysAnimator: Physics-Guided Generative Cartoon Animation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.16550/) (2025)
- [UniAnimate-DiT: Human Image Animation with Large-Scale Video Diffusion Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.11289/) (2025)
- [HairStep: Transfer Synthetic to Real Using Strand and Depth Maps for Single-View 3D Hair Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.02700/) (2023)
- [HHAvatar: Gaussian Head Avatar with Dynamic Hairs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03029/) (2023)
- [Stable-Hair: Real-World Hair Transfer via Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.14078/) (2024)
- [EMO2: End-Effector Guided Audio-Driven Avatar Video Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.10687/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [HairWeaver: Few-Shot Photorealistic Hair Motion Synthesis with Sim-to-Real Guided Video Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.11117/) (2026)
- [MoZoo:Unleashing Video Diffusion power in animal fur and muscle simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.13857/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Hair simulation and rendering are challenging due to complex strand dynamics, diverse material properties, and intricate light-hair interactions. Recent video diffusion models can generate high-quality videos, but they lack fine-grained control over hair dynamics. We present ControlHair, a hybrid framework that integrates a physics simulator with conditional video diffusion to enable precise and controllable dynamic hair rendering. ControlHair adopts a three-stage pipeline: it first encodes physics conditions into per-frame geometry using a simulator, then extracts per-frame control signals, and finally feeds control signals into a video diffusion model to generate videos with desired hair dynamics. This cascaded design decouples physics reasoning from video generation, supports diverse physics, and makes training the video diffusion model easy. Trained on a curated 10K video dataset, ControlHair outperforms text- and pose-conditioned baselines, delivering precisely controlled hair dynamics. We also demonstrate three use cases of ControlHair, including dynamic hairstyle try-on, bullet-time effects, and cinemagraphic. Project page: https://linwk20.github.io/controlhair-web.