Houdini Hair and Fur Development WIP

Working on my Hair and Fur Houdini tool knowledge this week. A lot of great features that give a great amount of control. I have used other grooming tools for other 3D packages too. I still use those tools. Since we have been using Houdini as our main package, I want to try and keep everything in one main software.

Model comes from Aaron Guiterrez, one of our character artists at work.

***I learned a lot about Hair from abvfx here https://vimeo.com/88711732  Please check out his video about Hair and Fur in Houdini.

Houdini allows a great amount of control through painting maps. You can paint paint Density, Frizz, Frizz Frequency, Frizz Roughness, Clumping, Thickness, and Base Color. This is really helpful when you want to control the amount of hair in certain areas.

Density values are controlled through black to white scale or 0 to 1. Houdini defaults with 2,1,1. I change it 1,1,1.

Houdini Default values

Changed Value

Even the default value for Attribute Create furdensity is set to 1. Changing the value to 0 will allow you to paint the area you want to affect versus painting and taking it away.

Here is what it looks like with my initial furdensity painted for the beard. Using a separate node for the Beard, Hair and Sideburns gives me individual control over how much Frizz. Clumping, Density and Thickness is applied to each part.

In Order: Thickness Map, Density Map, Frizz Map, Clump Map, Frizz Frequency, Frizz Roughness

The eyebrows are part of the beard Node at the moment. This will change later as I want better control for the eyebrows apart from the beard.

Painting the density for the eyebrows. There are a lot of options for painting the density of the eyebrows. You can adjust the opacity of your map, which makes it very nice to adjust the density.

 

My initial layout of the beard, eyebrows, and hair. 

This hair is more uniform and looks like it has been brushed a lot. It also looks like the hair is very thick and coarse. I eventually went back into the hair and adjusted the thickness attribute, fuzziness profile, and fuzziness profile. I also wanted to give  him some dirty dusty hair. I was able to achieve this through the color on the hair material. Adjusting the root to tip blend will adjust the two colors.

Here is what my final hair looks like. 

Still a lot to learn using Houdini 15.5 Hair and Grooming tools. I like using the tools. A lot of control with the air so far. I want to try Braids or rough course hair next.