Hey Guys,

Well Body Paint Plugin has just been released for XSI about a month ago maybe. I was wondering if everyone was wanting to have Body Paint Plugin for vex. Where when you paint with the graphics pen it creates vex networks for you. I personally would love to see that and it would be easier to bring non-Houdini shaders over who already know Body Paint. Would several major studios be interested in asking maxon along with me if they could make a port to Houdini???

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

Hey Guys,

Awe I was mislead. It only creates the UVs to be exported back to their program and then back to the app again. Thats not so interesting after all.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

Have you tried Zbrush yet?

imports/exports .obj's nicely.

Hey Mookid20

Thats exactly what we are going to. lol Have you tried importing it into Houdini and if so what problems have you encountered. I have been looking for someone how knows something about ZBrush to Houdini to ask them that exact question. ZBrush is really awesome. It did more than I expected.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

One of the issue I had was that ZBrush creates *.OBJ files (not *.obj) - which is ok for Windows, but not for Linux. So I had to rename all extensions to suitable ones.

That happens in windows too! Had me scratching my head for ages

Could SESI fix the .OBJ! problem?

Hey Guys,

I know the displacements in ZBrush go from -0.5 black to 0.5 white. Could any post their custom Displacement shader for ZBrush in Houdini Mantra on Houdini Exchange. Thanks for the tip about the OBJs. Interesting. Yeah I use Linux alot so that will matter. Man I wish ZBrush was on Linux too. I am going to contact Pixelogic and beg them to put it on linux. Maybe if they get enough complaints they will do it.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

I just saved a torus sop to “foo.OBJ” and then managed to load it in fine with a File SOP using “foo.OBJ” just fine using Houdini 7.0.171.

Hey Guys,

Yeah actually I just tried it from ZBrush to Houdini 7.0.231 and it did not work with .OBJ but when I changed the .OBJ to .obj coming from ZBrush Houdini took it right away. Even handled a 2 million poly count without a problem. Although I would not actually use a 2 million poly object.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

I have been thinking that it should not take to much work to create an OTL that would work very similar to Z Brush. I'm not sure what it would take but it seems that the sculpt and subdivide SOPs combined properly should work just as well.

Hey JJstanely,

Yeah its true you could do that but you have to consider that Houdini will not be able to handle the same number of polys subdivided with realtime manipulation because it is a procedural package. So you are going to get built in slow downs and limitations in the number of polys that can be used. In addition you would need a painted shader system in VEX to reproduce the brush system in ZBrush. Its just easier and faster to incorperate ZBrush into Houdini.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler