Cartoon Character modeled in Houdini

jrgauthier · Houdini Adept Joined: 27 Oct 2007 Posts: 243

Hi!
Here's a character I modeled in Houdini a few months ago. I wanted to test the procedural approach on organic modeling. I found some interesting things that could be done with the houdini pipeline in terms of box modeling. While working I always kept my character smoothed in one windows, ands my working, low res model, in another window. It came kind of handy. I used alot of the ray sop too to keep my shape clean while moving point around too(kind of like sliding point along the surface of the original shape). On the downside, it became a bit heavy and slow toward the end of the process. Still worth the experiment.

The model was textured in zbrush, and rigged and lighted in Maya. I would have liked to get the rigging done in Houdini but, lack of time and ressources made me go for maya...

Enjoy!

Gerlandox · Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2011 10:51 am GMT Post subject:

houdini as a modeling tool? *Hat off.* It got good polygonal modeling tools but still Its to much of a pain in comparision with other packages. Dont get me wrong houdini is one of a kind but modeling is not its field.

cyrus_nk · Talkative Joined: 31 Mar 2010 Posts: 29 Location: Romania

hahahahahhaa

Awesome character! And the poses are great! Very Happy

Animation please!

jrgauthier · Houdini Adept Joined: 27 Oct 2007 Posts: 243

Cyrus_nk: there is an aniamtion on vimeo actually.
http://vimeo.com/31121829

It was rigged, animated and rendered in Maya thought.

cheers!

JR

cyrus_nk · Talkative Joined: 31 Mar 2010 Posts: 29 Location: Romania

lol! love it!!!

i watched all your vimeo and your skills are great, and i want to ask you why don't you do your animations in Houdini?

groovemeteor · Lurker Joined: 16 Jan 2011 Posts: 9 Location: Helsinki

Great character! Where is his nose? Rolling Eyes

jrgauthier · Houdini Adept Joined: 27 Oct 2007 Posts: 243

TheBadger · Lurker Joined: 03 Mar 2012 Posts: 5

arctor · Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 12:47 pm GMT Post subject:

you can model anything in Houdini...anything
the difference is that there are some tools that other applications have that make modeling easier or faster or whatever...depending on what you're intending to model....
and having said that there are many tools that Houdini has that are not found in any other application...

AdamJ · Houdini Adept Joined: 21 Apr 2004 Posts: 202 Location: TO

My personal view is that houdins poly tools are just fine for modeling. They may not have the flash of some other packages but they pretty much have same functionality. One advice I'd give is setup hotkeys for the most common operations to speed interactions.

TheBadger · Lurker Joined: 03 Mar 2012 Posts: 5

@AdamJ & arctor

Thank you for your replies.

I suppose in time the things you guys are talking about will be added to Houdini.

@AdamJ
I really enjoyed your cat animation. The graphic design of the entire thing is very attractive. And the over all mood and feel is very fun. Keep sharing your work, I find it inspirational.

AdamJ · Houdini Adept Joined: 21 Apr 2004 Posts: 202 Location: TO

My apologies for polluting the thread with extra imges to jrgauthier.

@TheBadger the cat animation is jrgauthier creation.

TheBadger · Lurker Joined: 03 Mar 2012 Posts: 5

OOPS! Sorry for the confusion

I did mean jrgauthier.

Your image is good too, AdamJ. Thanks for the correction.

jrgauthier · Houdini Adept Joined: 27 Oct 2007 Posts: 243

Hey Guys,
thanks for your appreciation!

TheBadger:
It might be a little late to answer. Sorry, I just saw there were new posts on this "old" thread.

I have divided opinion about modeling characters in Houdini.
First, I'd like to say Houdini is an amazing sofware, no doubt about it.
However, depending of what you want to do, it's not necessarily the software you need.

If you want to do character/organic modeling, Houdini will be able to do the job and like other says, it as more or less the similar basic features than other packages. However, I don't think it's the easiest and most intuitive package for character modeling.

If you want to do mostly character modeling I would actually suggest to learn ZBrush(or similar sculpting programs). For character modeling, it's totally the way to go.

Actually, the latest character modeling pipeline test I did was using mostly Zbrush and Topogun. https://vimeo.com/39210017
In terms of precision and speed, it's definetly a winner for me, I will keep on using this technique from now on.

I also used a bit of Maya of uvs and model fine tuning, but it could have been Houdini for that matter, it would have made no difference.

On the other hand, if you want to do fxs, technical work or procedural modeling ...go for Houdini without hesitations.

cheers!

JR

Very Happy