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Long hair grooming


Marc

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So what is everyone using to groom long haired characters these days? Houdini's fur stuff is great, but that's pretty much where it ends and we may be needing a long hair tool soon. So short of rolling our own Houdini solution I'm hoping we can find a nice off the shelf tool that can work for us.

I know Modo's got some good stuff. XSI's sucks... ok it doesn't, but it's all proprietary and getting the curves out of it requires jumping through hoops that I have little patience for. Other than that though, I'm not sure what's out there.

Thanks

Marc

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So what is everyone using to groom long hair...

Too long, did not read. I used to just let it dry naturally after showering. It's best to use conditioner, and to brush when wet.

:P

But seriously, sorry to say that I've never done anything with long hair in Houdini.

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Too long, did not read.

hmm... let me see if I can help :

SowhatiseveryoneusingtogroomlonghairedcharactersthesedaysHoudinisfurstuffisgreatbutthatsprettymuchwhereitendsandwe

maybeneedingalonghairtoolsoonSoshortofrollingourownHoudinisolutionImhopingwecanfindaniceofftheshelftoolthatcanworkforus

;)

M

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Well we may as well use Houdini then and save ourselves some trouble :). I was speaking more about things like Modo and XSI's curve editing tools where they have specific toolsets to comb/groom long hair.

M

just watched some modo presentation, looks interesting...

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No specific hair grooming tools right now. Just fur.

There is the proto_install tool called Flowfield that you can give a try to do basic shaping of hair.

To install you have to run the shell command proto_install and follow the prompts to install to one of the specified directories. You should be able to do this from inside Houdini by opening up a shell from the Window menu. You will need to restart Houdini.

Left input is guide hairs, right input is vector field. See the attached example field to see what you can do. You have to have the proto_install tool flowfield installed. The vector field can be as crude as scattered points in space with a vector on them to shape the curves.

It can't stretch or shorten hair but it can take the existing guide curves and allows you to shape them.

I am sure you can mock up your own vex/vop/SOP solution to do this too. Volumes are intriguing as an intermediary step.

hair_grooming_flowfield_sop.hip

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wow, although not perfect, this level of control is pretty decent.

If only the edit sops'had a brush feature that could allow to to move/tweak elements. But i can settle for this.

Think its time to revisit some of my fur projects. Thanks oldschool.

How long has this sop sat unsettled in Houdini. I'm using 9.5, i wonder how far it goes back?

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Ooh, is this similar to the flowlines generated by vector-field visualization in DOPs? I have wanted those visualizations to be available in SOPs for some time. (Also, just as a RenderHook -- ie, a viewport feature)

afaik flowfield works similar to the attribtransfer-sop. it´s an interpolation of values.

for flowline generation i have had great sucess using vtk throuth python or cgal as standalone. vtk it´s a bit tricky to compile but if this is done it´s easy to use within houdini. you can also put something together with a foreach sop.

petz

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the editSop would need a spring or rope model where the "root" would be anchored and the solver would iterate over the "active" hair's length.. I was wondering if you could hook something like it up via VOPs now... haven't looked myself. Then you could grab a single point and drag the entire curve around easily. You will still end up moving points in the traditional editSOP manner..

the other SOP that we all would benefit from would be a maintain my length SOP. editing and resampling the curves will get you something not the right length which could be a problem ;) Being able to maintain that attribute after adjustment would be great.

The flowFieldSOP is handy for sure when you want to ensure there will be almost no hair to hair interpretations... not the easiest thing to do but handy nonetheless.

there are all kinds of ways to manipulate the points in the long hair so you have a surface to model as well, it is just a bit more abstract.... thinking about a hair net that was a surface that was compromised of individual hairs at the same "depth" along the length of the hair itself...a few pointSOPs and sorting and bingo...... you could devise a way to move up and down the hair's length in a wafer approach were the brush tools would work.

-k

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