hello, I recently started using Houdini for creating fur & have encountered a small issue.
When I use screen brush on my imported mesh guides penetrate inside the skin, however this doesn't happen when I comb them on sphere object. Can anyone tell why this happens? Thanks!

do you have topological holes in your geometry? this is the main cause for this occurrence. you have to have a “closed” mesh, as in no holes at the eye sockets, throat, ears, etc.

hello, Yes I do have topological holes in the geometry, Is there any way to get it to work with topological holes? or do I need to have closed geo only?

topological holes only matter for the sdf. If you can provide your own sdf from a capped version of the model, it should be sufficient.

yes, but that's rarely practical to do so. beside that, I think one can work on a closed mesh (w/e the method used for achieving that) save the groom on disk and read it from there, but having a deforming mesh inside Houdini (i.e. a rigged mesh) kinda leaves you with a single option from a simplicity pov.
in short, just close your mesh if you're dealing with a character/creature, it's rarely worth it to not do so

Providing a different SDF for the groom is far more practical that using a different model for the groom. Unless the groom will never be animated, the groom model must be a topological match to the animated model. It makes for simpler groom rigs if you don't have to shuffle in a different model and rebind everything.

I meant that providing a different sdf (of a closed mesh) is less practical than using tge same closed model from the get go. and yes, of course for animation purposes, topologies have to match.
i think the op has enough info to make his own decisions now, probably more than he bargained for ha ha