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Zbrush/houdini Workflow


JohnnyBGoode

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completely agree Nate - some kind of tweakable OTL would be great...then the pipeline and tutorial would be nice and simple - 'download OTL, load in zbrush disp maps...render and tweak'

should prove Houdini as no.1

J

Hey Guys,

    I was thinking we need to write a ZPipeline Tutorial and submit to Pixelogic for Houdini.  I think it would be good if Houdini was represented up there with XSI, Maya, and Max.  I mean Houdini is the best program out of the 3 and it would not hurt for other users to know that they can use it with Houdini also. 

http://pixologic.com/zbrush/class/zpipeline.html

    We could roll it into a OTL too just to make it easier even though its pretty easy but I mean 1 more step to making life easier and getting people on Houdini the better I think. 

Cheers,

Nate Nesler

26554[/snapback]

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Hey Leo,

I probably can't hop on that until friday because that is the first time I will get free time to look at it. I was also thinking we could incorperate the Fast SSS shader in with the ZBrush OTL as an option and that way people can load in the textures for doing skin shading if they choose. Make it kind of optional. :);) This will be a really great and useful project to everyone I believe.

Cheers,

Nate Nesler

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Hey Leo,

Well I managed to sneak a look at it in the lab while I was working. I found a few things that need to be added. N-Gons don't work with ZBrush but triangles cause artifacts in ZBrush so they should also be avoided, and all Quad modeling is desired. Also another good thing to put in there is about the Peltmap utility in Houdini. We can Peltmap the character in Houdini and then save out the OBJ with the UV information. That way the model is unwrapped in ZBrush when it is imported as a tool and then unwraped in our Houdini node network too. True the unwrapping would be there when we brought back in the OBJ because Houdini would read in the UV info from the OBJ.

I think we should add the Peltmap tool to the OTL and that way people can unwrap easier and have a good road plan and workflow. We could lay down the Geo SOP and the Shader SOP with the SHOP already loaded in. :);) I tell you what at the end of the quarter I will load in a low level character male model and peltmap a good layout in Houdini and apply the ZBrush setup for the OTL as a good example file. Mind you I would not have the Displacement maps and color maps along with the file but I don't mind giving away the 7,000 poly dude.

Cheers,

Nate Nesler

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  • 2 weeks later...

just wanted to add here, that this thread and Leo-O has help so much. Ive found, as most with any package to unwrap the UV's yourself. Zbrush is good for unwraping background object but for Hero objects and character do it yourself and save the file as an obj.

PLus you can hand edit any map that comes in contact with that object be it Displacement, diffuse, Bump or normal. Which in the subject of normals i have yet to work out, but im sure it wont take long, but Displacement are rocking my work in Houdini so im gonna stick with that.

Here is a quick play about i had, hope you guys are getting as good as or better results. The displacement map still needs working on but damn houdini makes it so easy to render outt these suckers, much more than maya (and im native to maya)

houdinidisplacetest5zp.jpg

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Hey phrenzy, that's some great looking work. Depending on how detailed your displace map is you may get even better quality if you bump up the Shading Quality on your model (found in the Render tab of your Object), maybe you already know this. :)

Anyways, love to see more of this guy when you get further.

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Hey Phrenzy84,

The reason you are getting better results in Houdini over maya is because Houdini's Mantra or the use of Renderman is much better at handling displacements than Mental Ray or Maya's own native rendering tool several times over. So Defantly stick with Houdini. I think all you have to do to get the normals map working is pipe it into the N parameter for the Normals. Nice work by the way. Yeah and look at bumping up the value of Super Sample from like 3 3 to 4 4 and look at changing the Guassian value from 2 2 to 3 3. Should make a pretty big difference in your final image.

Cheers,

Nate Nesler

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