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Fuzzy Toolkit: New Fur Software For Houdini Now In Open Beta!


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Hello fellow Houdini devotees!

Some of you may remember me from when I worked at C.O.R.E. on Disney's "The Wild". I was the principal architect of the custom software used to groom and render all of those wonderful furry and feathered critters. We ended up with an amazing fur pipeline that really pushed the limits and allowed artists detailed control over the look of the characters. Since that project, I've worked as a TD using That Other Software and realized that off-the-shelf fur software is not exactly as great as it could be.

Four months ago, I quit my job at Meteor Studios, started Orthonormal Software Inc., and began quietly developing a fur solution for Houdini 9 using many of the new goodies exposed by the HDK.

Today, I'm excited to announce that an open beta release of the Fuzzy Toolkit is now available for download for use with Houdini Apprentice (including HD). You can find it at my company's embarrassingly 90's web site, http://www.orthonormalsoftware.com.

For now, only 32-bit Windows XP is supported, and the latest daily build of houdini as of today (9.1.176) is required. I will be adding additional platforms and support for official and daily builds of houdini over the next few weeks.

So what exactly does our software offer over the regular Houdini Fur SOP and Fur Procedural? Fuzzy Toolkit is a framework for building fur solutions. At the moment, the functionality isn't much different from what you can get with stock Houdini Fur and some cvex code:

- attributes on skin control look of hair

- cvex shaders used to procedurally groom hairs at generation time

- generation of fur at cook time or at render time via a procedural primitive

Under the hood, things are a bit different:

- guides automatically generated from skin

- multiple cvex shaders are chained together, each performing a different part of the styling pipeline

- custom brush with guide geometry shows exact results of cvex shaders at each point

- stock cvex shaders included means you don't have to write code

Future releases will include:

- long hair grooming tools (based on a customized Edit SOP)

- character finaling tools for touching up post-simulation guides

- pose-based animation of guides

- hierarchical wire deformation tools

- clump generation from a blob map

- support for 3rd party renderers

A single demo hip file is included with the software in the demo subdirectory.

Again, that URL is http://www.orthonormalsoftware.com. Please check it out! Feedback is welcome!**

cheers,

Mark Visser

Orthonormal Software Inc.

**on Odforce.net, at least until I set up a forum on my website.

Edited by markv
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Hey Mark,

Very cool job! First of all - it's marvelous that you decided to do this venture. Fur and creatures have always been my secret fetish. I took a look at the demo, liked it a lot - there's much to learn and use already.

However this is what I would like to see in future releases:

1) Some walk around the Houdini Variables set up - obviously you add $HOUDINI_PATH variable, which, in my case, overrides the current $HOUDINI_PATH that is used as a part of houdini set up here, at Guerrilla, breaking some of it. Some way to control this would be welcome - for example a separate execution file that would temporary set up $HOUDINI_PATH var and unset it back after the session with Orthonormal Fur tools is finished.

2) Some comments for the nodes in the example files in the demo would be much appreciated.

3) A more or less complete lights\shadows\shaders set up for the example file - so that some 1 button click beauty renders could be done right after starting the example files.

On the whole - great start, really looking forward to it!

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Thanks for the feedback, especially the path bit. I'll beef up the installer package to make the environment changes optional and add a way to launch a shell so existing HOUDINI_PATHs don't get pooched. And of course the linux version will have a more linux-y setup process. Removing the package should restore your houdini path to it's previous state.

Niceties like integrated documentation and prettier/more helpful demos are also on the way.

cheers,

-Mark

Hey Mark,

Very cool job! First of all - it's marvelous that you decided to do this venture. Fur and creatures have always been my secret fetish. I took a look at the demo, liked it a lot - there's much to learn and use already.

However this is what I would like to see in future releases:

1) Some walk around the Houdini Variables set up - obviously you add $HOUDINI_PATH variable, which, in my case, overrides the current $HOUDINI_PATH that is used as a part of houdini set up here, at Guerrilla, breaking some of it. Some way to control this would be welcome - for example a separate execution file that would temporary set up $HOUDINI_PATH var and unset it back after the session with Orthonormal Fur tools is finished.

2) Some comments for the nodes in the example files in the demo would be much appreciated.

3) A more or less complete lights\shadows\shaders set up for the example file - so that some 1 button click beauty renders could be done right after starting the example files.

On the whole - great start, really looking forward to it!

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For now, only 32-bit Windows XP is supported, and the latest daily build of houdini as of today (9.1.176) is required. I will be adding additional platforms and support for official and daily builds of houdini over the next few weeks.

Looks like you need the VC8 version too...

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1) Some walk around the Houdini Variables set up - obviously you add $HOUDINI_PATH variable, which, in my case, overrides the current $HOUDINI_PATH that is used as a part of houdini set up here, at Guerrilla, breaking some of it. Some way to control this would be welcome - for example a separate execution file that would temporary set up $HOUDINI_PATH var and unset it back after the session with Orthonormal Fur tools is finished.

I just released 0.9.16. The only change from 0.9.15 is that the shortcut Orthonormal Software/Command Line Tools now starts hcmd.exe and sets up $HOUDINI_PATH and $HOUDINI_DSO_PATH. You can de-select the changes to the environment in the installer setup.

cheers,

-Mark

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Hey! The same! <_< The problem is in env variables!

The MSI is supposed to only append to the HOUDINI_PATH and HOUDINI_DSO_PATH variables. Uninstalling is supposed to revert them to their previous state. I haven't tested with those two env vars set to anything before installing. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the MSI uninstall just wipes them. There's not much I can do -- the MSI package doesn't give much control over environment vars.

In the meantime, you can do a custom install and deselect the "Environment" package. This will leave your env vars untouched. You can set them yourself (see fuzzy_toolkit_setup.bat in the installation dir) or run houdini from the "Command Tools" shortcut installed by the package.

As far as I know, there's no way uninstalling fuzzy toolkit will uninstall houdini. I've uninstalled and reinstalled ft countless times while testing the MSI and houdini has never been affected.

My apologies if your computer has asplode.

Linux version coming soon. And from the not-so-subtle rumours flying around the houdini forum, I'll have to support Mac soon, too. :-)

cheers,

-Mark

Edited by markv
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  • 2 weeks later...

i am getting a fatal error ever since I unintalled the fur tool.any idea what is going on?

Edited.. I installed your fur tool again and now im getting this error.I am running lastest houdini builds.

ERROR: Couldn't open resource file "resources" (No such file or directory)

Can't open dophints.cmd

ERROR: Couldn't open "Fuse9.1.202/FUSE_ColorOptions.ui" for reading: No such file or directory

Edited by altbighead
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