Hi Guys,
I am new to Houdini and it's procedural Fur system and most of often I found that being procedural, it is bit restricted in terms of artistic and creativity wise.
I am facing following issues with Houdini's Fur system as of now, please help me out how I can resolve these issues.

1)First as I cannot style guide curves according to my requirement procedurally ,Is there any tool which would help me style,Something similar to shave and hair option where I can style each guide curve .
2) How I can implement curves generated in other software e.g. in Maya and use those curves in houdini as my guide curves for styling.
3)I am also facing some issues with Houdini's bend option present in Fur menu.
a) When I paint bend some Fur moves in other direction irrespective of that fact whether I have reflection On or Off.
b)Also when I change some brush properties guide curves moves unexpectedly they should be remain stable to the last setting unless I paint them.
c)Bend brush works in a very annoying and unpredictable fashion and doesn't provide any control of direction .
d)I would also like to know how i can save hair and hair shader presets and use them .
So please advise me how I can achieve the desired result with or without the present options available in houdini.

It is very surprising that I haven't received any single reply even though 83 people has seen the post.
Please help me out to resolve this issue.

Maybe it's because your questions appear as a lack of knowledge of Houdini and a lack of desire to learn the basics on your own. I'm pretty sure Houdini is going to handle your needs.

gregjenings
1)First as I cannot style guide curves according to my requirement procedurally ,Is there any tool which would help me style,Something similar to shave and hair option where I can style each guide curve .
2) How I can implement curves generated in other software e.g. in Maya and use those curves in houdini as my guide curves for styling.

Custom guide hairs can be used by replacing the SOP network in the Fur Object's contained “guides” network with your own SOP network. Of course, the guide hairs will have to be animated to match the character's motion.

When building a custom SOP network to define the guide hairs, ensure the curves all have the same number of vertices, have vertex numbers increasing from root to tip, and have a primitive vector3 attribute called “guideorigin” indicating where each hair belongs on the character in its rest pose.

gregjenings
3)I am also facing some issues with Houdini's bend option present in Fur menu.
a) When I paint bend some Fur moves in other direction irrespective of that fact whether I have reflection On or Off.
b)Also when I change some brush properties guide curves moves unexpectedly they should be remain stable to the last setting unless I paint them.
c)Bend brush works in a very annoying and unpredictable fashion and doesn't provide any control of direction .

Consider using the “Comb Fur” tool before using the “Paint Bend” tool. Hairs should bend in the combed direction. Note that both bend and comb values will have noise added to them make the fur look less regular. If the hairs are near perpendicular to the skin, the combed direction may be poorly defined (especially after noise is added). To reduce these noise values, look in the “Hairs > Guide > (Comb|Bend|Twist)” tabs.

derrick
I have posted my issue after taking care off comb and noise thing as suggested in the help but still i am facing the guide curve issue.
thank you for custom guide curve problem solving may be my curve points were different,I'll try again and keep you posted.

sl0throp
I suppose forums are for helping people and making them understand what they might be missing and not for showing arrogance and stupidity.if you can't help then please don't ruin the post with your childish comment.

What kinda fur are you making Gregjenings?
I find houdini fur very good for making short hair (bear/dog/cat and so on)
But if your making hairstyles that need alot of custum grooming i would recomend try using other software for creating the guides. Houdini lacks a good guide groomer like shave and haircut or maybe something like Hairfarm.

Cg creatures and other typcial cg fur jobs often need short hair, and for that i think houdini of the shelf fur does the job.

And i love that the grooming is proceduraly. So nice to be able to groom in layers. If you have several groom nodes or paintfur attributes nodes you can easily try out different styles without messing ut the whole groom.

Thank you Korhon for your reply

You are right ,in fact I was trying slightly longer than short fur and something bit stylize length of fur may not be longer than length of lion's mane or you can say it resembles something like creatures of “where the wild things are”.

That is why I also asked if I take out obj (curves)from other software such as hairfarm or shave and hair how does that work flow works out with Houdini fur.

I was a shave and hair user before and I shifted to Houdini because I like it's procedures workflow

You can now also Zbrush to sculpt hair with the export curves options in the fibermesh palette.

If I import curves from some other software how can make sure that all the curves have the same number of vertices as suggested by “derrick” and how can I make number vertices equal without making much impact on the look of curves.
As during export most often things change ,I usually use obj format should I use some other format for curve export for Houdini.

To ensure the same number of points per curve, you can use the Resample SOP with the Maximum Segments enabled and Maximum Segment Lenght disabled to rebuild the curves. Use the Segments parameter to determine how many points are on each curve.

Works well if the originating curves were NURBs.

You can follow up with a Convert SOP and convert the curves back to NURBs Curves. This is one way to rebuild the curves such that all the curves have the same number of points.


If the original curves were polygons, either convert to NURBs curves or use the Polyspline SOP, whichever works best to rebuild the curves smoothly. Then follow with the Resample SOP with the above settings..

could be possible to share an example Hip file?
or make one on for the Help documentation.

Thanks