markv Posted March 10, 2008 Share Posted March 10, 2008 (edited) 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 March 10, 2008 by markv Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael Posted March 11, 2008 Share Posted March 11, 2008 well well well.... I was just talking about you with JohnM today great to see you back in the fur! oh and that site of yours is late 80's at best Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3__ Posted March 11, 2008 Share Posted March 11, 2008 best software website ever! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MADjestic Posted March 11, 2008 Share Posted March 11, 2008 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! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markv Posted March 11, 2008 Author Share Posted March 11, 2008 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! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digitallysane Posted March 11, 2008 Share Posted March 11, 2008 Looks very promising, I'm keeping an eye on this. Congratultions. Dragos Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted March 11, 2008 Share Posted March 11, 2008 This is great to see, well done Mark.. I'd love to see some workflow vids or something when you get around to making them:) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sibarrick Posted March 11, 2008 Share Posted March 11, 2008 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... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cdrom Posted March 12, 2008 Share Posted March 12, 2008 Mark ! please compile to production build 9.1.179 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markv Posted March 12, 2008 Author Share Posted March 12, 2008 0.9.15 is now available for houdini 9.1.179 at www.orthonormalsoftware.com. cheers, -Mark Mark !please compile to production build 9.1.179 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
horizon1231 Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 yes we would love to see some video using this tool Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cdrom Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 0.9.15 is now available for houdini 9.1.179 at www.orthonormalsoftware.com.cheers, -Mark Thanks Mark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markv Posted March 13, 2008 Author Share Posted March 13, 2008 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sibarrick Posted March 13, 2008 Share Posted March 13, 2008 How does your installer actually work? It seems to have destroyed all my Houdini installs and I'm having to uninstall and re-install them all to get them working again. Is there an easier way to remove this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nasyrov Posted March 14, 2008 Share Posted March 14, 2008 (edited) Hey! The same! The problem is in env variables! Edited March 14, 2008 by Nasyrov Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markv Posted March 17, 2008 Author Share Posted March 17, 2008 (edited) 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 March 17, 2008 by markv Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markv Posted March 20, 2008 Author Share Posted March 20, 2008 Linux version coming soon. Versions for 64-bit and 32-bit linux are now up at www.orthonormalsoftware.com. cheers, -Mark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digitallysane Posted March 20, 2008 Share Posted March 20, 2008 There seems to be an error with the 64-bit linux archive, could you try to upload it again? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markv Posted March 21, 2008 Author Share Posted March 21, 2008 There seems to be an error with the 64-bit linux archive, could you try to upload it again? Sorry about that, there was a typo in the url. Fixed. cheers, -Mark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
altbighead Posted April 4, 2008 Share Posted April 4, 2008 (edited) 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 April 4, 2008 by altbighead Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.