Hi guys, really need your help on this! Is it possible in Houdini to make 6 heightmaps and them stitch them seamlessly together so that they can then be projected to a sphere like this? Any tutorials (free or paid) or specific workflows you can recommend? Any help will be much appreciated! Thanks!

Depending on what kind of heightmap, you could bake a it Houdini, ZBrush or Blender.

Is it just a procedural displacement, or something more specific ?

toonafish
Depending on what kind of heightmap, you could bake a it Houdini, ZBrush or Blender.

Is it just a procedural displacement, or something more specific ?

Hey thanks for your reply!

No no baking is not a problem - the problem is I don't know whether it's possible to create 6 different heightfields in Houdini so that they are stitchable (seamless) between each other - please see the pic below.

What do you think?

Ah, I suspect if the seams don't match you're going to get some kind of a visible seam, unless you fade the stitch ?

Maybe if you create a new displacement map for each grid where you overlay a mirrored version of a bordering displacement map so the edges match, and then fade the seam with an alpha ?

So as an example to match grid A + B, maybe mirror the displacement map in Pshop of the center grid B over what's the Z axis in Houdini, so the edges that have to match in the geometry match in Pshop, and overlay it over the displacement map of grid A and create a fade with an Alpha ?

Maybe you could do the same in Houdini by duplicating and mirroring the UV map and use that for a 2nd displacement map layer, and fade the map with an alpha attribute ?

And rinse and repeat for every edge that has to match.

You might get into trouble at the corners though.

Just thinking out loud, so most likely there will be some issues I don't see :-)

Thanks I will try this approach too!