Modo->ZBrush_Houdini Pipeline? Anybody have experience with this pipeline and can comment?

[Ari Danesh]

Hi,
Shortly I am about to start my MFA thesis short animation and really would like to avoid Maya for the modeling end of life. I would like to model the non procedural stuff in Modo and detail it in ZBrush. Then animate and render in Houdini using Mantra. My thesis emphasis is on dynamics, particle sims, and procedural animation so I would like to do as much as possible in Houdini.

Can anyone comment on this pipeline?


Thank you.

[jujoje]

Hi,

I don't think there should be any real problem with that pipeline, indeed was thinking of something similar myself a while back (modo, messiah, houdini). I haven't experienced any trouble getting geometry from Modo into Houdini, certainly not as obj files, and I *think* that last time I tried an fbx it worked.

Can't really comment on getting maps from zbrush (since I don't use zbrush), although I think all should be work. There are some shaders on the exchange which might help in getting normal and displacement maps in nicely.

Best thing to do give it a try with some of the example content from modo and see how it works.

[Ari Danesh]

jujoje, on 08 February 2010 - 04:06 PM, said:

Hi,

I don't think there should be any real problem with that pipeline, indeed was thinking of something similar myself a while back (modo, messiah, houdini). I haven't experienced any trouble getting geometry from Modo into Houdini, certainly not as obj files, and I *think* that last time I tried an fbx it worked.

Can't really comment on getting maps from zbrush (since I don't use zbrush), although I think all should be work. There are some shaders on the exchange which might help in getting normal and displacement maps in nicely.

Best thing to do give it a try with some of the example content from modo and see how it works.

Thanks for the reply. I started to play with getting Modo into Houdini and it seems to work just fine.

[mightcouldb1]

Make sure that you flip your displacement/normals vertically when you export them from zbrush. Since zbrush exports them upside down for reasons I can not comprehend.

This post has been edited by mightcouldb1: 13 February 2010 - 07:16 PM