And copy Maya 2016's (or ZBrush's) sculpting toolset when you are at it. XD

Oh and all sculpting and free modelling brushes in Houdini should create a history like the Paint Fog Volume SOP (under Strokes) and you should be able to collapse these strokes. In other words you should be able to delete the history but keep results to free up memory. The option to create a stroke stack should be optional.
The main advantages are clarity and you get the ability to manipulate and play around with your creation history.
If you are very clever about it, you might be able to create different blend shapes quickly, by editing creating copies of your edit node and playing with the history of your form-giving strokes. Or at least you might get there a bit faster.

I made my own minimalistic toolset. I hate maya after 13 years of sex Houdini has a lot better tool creation environment. And we can do better tools then ‘Modeling Toolkit’ after v14 release. But i like ideas from main 4 packages: blender, lw, silo, xsi

I hate Maya as much as the next 3D guy, but Maya 2016 really has brought many positive changes. So I suggest you don't dismiss it outright as a reference.

Maybe this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7WbSIRtpgU [youtube.com]

I like it a lot

is the tool out yet?

Maya 2016 has sculpting tools, but not the clipping sculpt brush and hard edge curve sculpt brush and no such automatic remeshing tool. - I might be missing a few more presented in that video.

that's R&D for future releases…he was sort of saying that Mudbox might get integrated into Maya in release 17 or 18

vux
Maybe this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7WbSIRtpgU [youtube.com]

I like it a lot

i was thinking some time ago if openvdb as a core could be used for the clay modeling…. didn't had much time for making a prototype but i think it should be possible….

https://youtu.be/X_h2_KWD5tE [youtu.be]

Another intriguing addition, Alexey. Your imaginative customizations demonstrate how flexible Houdini's architecture can be.

here is a RnD and Demo with VDB Sculpting:
https://vimeo.com/155271366 [vimeo.com]

I am surprised that the backend actully is there. its just the tools missing and some limitation with the draw curve tools. so you can only paint layers like stacking paint over paint. Its not really a good workflow but i think it could get there. i would love to see sculpting with voxels in houdini.

Doudini, awesome work. Congrats!

vux
Doudini, awesome work. Congrats!

thank you vux, its just a demo atm. I found some new ways now and I tested a Mari like baking of the sculpt layer so its now possible to stack up paint strokes. I also saw about the StrokeCaching Tool built from SESI. It seems to do what i am looking for to improve calculations from stroke to volumes. But so far i dont understand how to make it work. However the limitations i thought where there are gone now.

The more I digg into it I feel that a full set of tools for sculpting can be done within houdini. My main concern is speed but so far its okay.

The stroke sop is a real game changer to build up artist friendly tools imo.

ohh, that's wonderfull

looks relay nice :-)

made some time ago a simple stupid test setup for stacking the painting. :roll:
as you said the functions are there the questions comes up if the python api gives you all the required vdb access for a production tool.

when there are to many strokes the speed will slow down with the sdf painter but when they are splittet up in multiple sdf painter nodes you won't get a slowdown. that means in the sdf painter subnode volume rasterise curve will run on every created curve again when there is one new curve created. that has to be solved to overcome the limits.

Basically the standard paint nodes need to have a “bake” button to combine the strokes into a volume, mesh, or whatever it paints.
I think we should make RFEs for that.

DASD
Basically the standard paint nodes need to have a “bake” button to combine the strokes into a volume, mesh, or whatever it paints.
I think we should make RFEs for that.

I think this is already there with H15 now. its that new Data Parameter. it doesnt seem to be documented anywhere? To be honest I didnt find any information about it except a short mention in the Whats new in H15. It seem to be able to store geometry data and other data? I was able to store geometry in it and read it back.

you can read it back from the cache with a python sop:

node = hou.pwd()
geo = node.geometry()

g = node.node('..').parm('data_parameter').evalAsGeometry()
if not g:
g = node.inputGeometry(1)
geo.merge(g)


To store it you can do a python definition on your HDA:


def setCache(node):
node.parm('data_parameter').set(node.node('NODE_NAME_TO_BAKE').geometry())

I took this from the grooming tools. its in curvegroom HDA. Still have to explore them deeper they seem to have some nice built in stuff in them that is not documented anywhere yet. If you edit the parameter interface and put all invisible off you can see there is a cache and reset button to bake the strokes.

Edit:
here a demo that shows the speed boost:
https://vimeo.com/155498488 [vimeo.com]

That looks great!

Wow! This looks great so far.

Doudini

DASD
Basically the standard paint nodes need to have a “bake” button to combine the strokes into a volume, mesh, or whatever it paints.
I think we should make RFEs for that.

I think this is already there with H15 now. its that new Data Parameter. it doesnt seem to be documented anywhere? To be honest I didnt find any information about it except a short mention in the Whats new in H15. It seem to be able to store geometry data and other data? I was able to store geometry in it and read it back.

you can read it back from the cache with a python sop:

node = hou.pwd()
geo = node.geometry()

g = node.node('..').parm('data_parameter').evalAsGeometry()
if not g:
g = node.inputGeometry(1)
geo.merge(g)


To store it you can do a python definition on your HDA:


def setCache(node):
node.parm('data_parameter').set(node.node('NODE_NAME_TO_BAKE').geometry())

I took this from the grooming tools. its in curvegroom HDA. Still have to explore them deeper they seem to have some nice built in stuff in them that is not documented anywhere yet. If you edit the parameter interface and put all invisible off you can see there is a cache and reset button to bake the strokes.

Edit:
here a demo that shows the speed boost:
https://vimeo.com/155498488 [vimeo.com]

Nice info. Thanx!