BTW, it would be nice to have the online docs upgraded too, as I couldn't find the fur tuts here: http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini9.1/ [sidefx.com]

Dragos

when I click the fur on the online doc, it said“page not found”….

It's just a personal opinion, but I like tutorials to have completed versions to examine when they're non-trivial like this one. I understand the whole mentality of ‘you don’t really learn it until you manually go through it', but that can be left to the discretion of the end user. Some people find it faster to study working examples rather than go through tab-add-connection exercises, probably related to their amount of experience with Houdini. Maybe in the next incarnation each tut can have a ‘work in progress’ hip file attached?

Cheers,

J.C.

arctor
Changing the color of the fur using the color attribute.

1 . Insert a Point SOP node after the Copy SOP in the Fur geometry object you created in Basic fur setup.

this should read;

Insert a Point SOP node after the Copy SOP in the Fur geometry object you created in Using Guide Hairs.

Updated the docs.
Thanks!

Bernard
Is it also possible to have hair clumping on a specific part of the total hair field? (like the FUR sop in H 8.1)
There it was possible to scatter some points, copy custom formed curves on those points and use them to clump the hair (in the form of the curves)

The Fur Style SHOP has a parameter to control clumping. Like all parameters on this SHOP, its value can be overridden with an attribute on the geometry. Try following the “Using Clumping” part of the tutorial and then paint a “clump” attribute (float) on the skin geometry. Paint “0” where you do not want clumping and “1” where you want clumping.

The “Using Clumping” part of the tutorial also illustrates how to use the Fur SOP to create the clump geometry. The Fur SOP is a little nicer than the scatter and copy method as it can easily incorporate styling done to the guide hairs.

rmagee
If you get download and install 9.1 169, you can find the fur docs by clicking on Contents > Fur from the online docs page.

I just looked in the houdini download area, and the newest version that I can see is Houdini 9.1.124. (Windows 32 bit)

I have a license for Apprentice HD if that makes any difference.

Thanks

9.1.124 is the latest production build. If you scroll down a little bit to the Daily Builds section you will find the latest and greatest.

graham
9.1.124 is the latest production build. If you scroll down a little bit to the Daily Builds section you will find the latest and greatest.

Aha! Thanks Graham, time for new eye glasses here! :-)

Cheers

or a new mouse wheel :p

by the way i have a question.

When it comes to styling the hair/fur, hair naturally goes in a lot of directions.
At the moment i cant find any way other than hand tweaking the copied lines to get the style i want.

Is there another workflow im missing?

At the moment its the only way to get total control. Ive heard of ways of painting the normal direction, but i dont think that would yield any decent result but the less hairs i have to manually tweak the better so the skin usually very very low rez so i dont have to spend hours tweaking.


-andy

you could either put a noise expression using a point sop on the guide hairs, or, if you're using the fur style shop, you can use the frizz option

The direction changes are very varied but have a certain flow but more than a noise expression can predict.

Otherwise it would end up more like a furball than hair. It would be usefull for a full creature like a mouse or (any rodent of your choice).

Can guide and derived hairs have more than two points? Can they be curves with arbitrary number of points like canned hair solutions for example XSI hair?

Houdini allows you to have as many cv's (points) on the curve that you want.

There are two parts that should match: previs curves, procedurally generated curves. Match in terms of Primitive Type (NURBs or Polygons) and by the number of cv's.

For the previs curves they can be either NURBs or Polygons. If you have a lot of guides with lots of points, might as well switch your previs curves to Polygons. The procedural should be set to NURBs. Just as long as the number of points in the guide hairs matches the number of points specified in the procedural.


You may/will need more points when you introduce dynamics with the wire solver in DOPs or a myriad of other SOP/POP softbody spring approaches.

JColdrick
It's just a personal opinion, but I like tutorials to have completed versions to examine when they're non-trivial like this one. I understand the whole mentality of ‘you don’t really learn it until you manually go through it', but that can be left to the discretion of the end user. Some people find it faster to study working examples rather than go through tab-add-connection exercises, probably related to their amount of experience with Houdini. Maybe in the next incarnation each tut can have a ‘work in progress’ hip file attached?

Cheers,

J.C.

no one else has agreed with you here - so i will! the devil is often (always in 3d) in the detail. a finished hip file (with in progress objs) would be v v useful. seconded! (also, wouldn't these be potentially useful for regression testing?)

edit/ i was answering el_diablo's question and didnt refresh the page, plus Jeff answered it much better .

Hello,



why do you have to set the display flags ON on the SKIN_REFERENCE, GUIDE_REFERENCE and CLUMP_REFERENCE nodes in object level, to make the FUR procedural work ?

Example:

If you set the display flag OFF on the SKIN_REFERENCE node, Mantra renders ‘black’….(Basic FUR setup tutorial)




thanks,


bern

in the “Styling the fur” section, combing etc, no mention is made of the need to use the attribute re-orient node so that it wont go crazy in animation (deforming skin).

A few months ago in H8, I spent a whole day trying to figure out why my fur went nutz as the skin moved… this during a job with the obvious pressures involved. I was nearly convinced it was a bug but I persevered until I finally found a post with some clues…

this must be in the docs as its a guaranteed stumbling block, specially for newcomers.

cheers
S

Bernard
Hello,
why do you have to set the display flags ON on the SKIN_REFERENCE, GUIDE_REFERENCE and CLUMP_REFERENCE nodes in object level, to make the FUR procedural work ?
Example:
If you set the display flag OFF on the SKIN_REFERENCE node, Mantra renders ‘black’….(Basic FUR setup tutorial)
thanks,
bern

because you have ‘turned off’ the object…
in Houdini, if something isn't displayed it doesn't exist.
if you want something to render, but don't want to see it in the viewport, go inside the object and put a null SOP down, put the render flag on the node you want to render and the Display flag on the unconnected node you just made.

arctor
if you want something to render, but don't want to see it in the viewport, go inside the object and put a null SOP down, put the render flag on the node you want to render and the Display flag on the unconnected node you just made.

In the case of the procedural it is even stranger because we need the geometry to “exist” for the procedural but not render. Therefore we are setting the render flag on the objectmerge so that it is available for the procedural but turning off the renderable parameter to make sure that it doesn't render. Conceptually this can feel confusing but it does work.

I also asked a variety of developers to see if there was an advantage to assigning the material at the sop level compared to the object level. Both methods work the same and therefore the lesson as written will give artists all the control they need.

As usual there are a number of different ways to set things up in Houdini. Thanks for suggesting some of the alternatives.

I also asked a variety of developers to see if there was an advantage to assigning the material at the sop level compared to the object level. Both methods work the same and therefore the lesson as written will give artists all the control they need.

I guess I'm confused…
if the material is assigned to the FUR node (which is not rendered) at the object level
and the SKIN_OUT node is object_merged into the SKIN_REFERENCE node

then rendering the SKIN_REFERENCE node WILL NOT have the material…