Hello,


would it be possible to paint FUR on geometry and also style it (via comb or something) ?




thanks,



bern

You can paint attributes on geometry that can be used to determine where fur will grow or where guide hairs will be placed. You probably would want to paint this information in a texture map instead though. Painting the attributes on the geometry may require very dense geometry in some cases to get the variation over the groom you will want.

You can use the comb SOP to comb surface normals and the paint SOP to paint attributes which will effect the groom's style. It's not a particularly artist friendly process though, especially if you are used to tools like Shave and a Haircut.

Fur is quite doable in Houdini 9 with some effort, longer hair styles are much more difficult without a reasonable hair brush tool at least.

Drop down a fur sop, look at the help card and check out the examples at the bottom. They are helpful.

This is the one thing that is stopping me from buying Houdini, an artist friendly hair styling tool set like shave an a hair cut has. :cry:

I hope that Houdini 10 will be that magic number for me.

The definition of artist friendly is debatable but I agree. Easy and fast viewport manipulation of hair/fur is a strong wish for me as well along with at least some basic texture painting. As you say MichaelC this would be more straightforward on a texture map than painting on dense geometry, especially when it is rigged and rely on subdivision further down the pipe.

A viewport-based, interactive toolset is for sure very needed for Houdini.
That being said, Houdini has probably the best fur tools on the market even now, but you need to do a lot more work than in another app to exploit them. It might be worth it, however.

Dragos