This will be available along the week
for the Houdini shelf, we currently have 21 HDAs + a custom hair generator, and 2 base templates.
The plan is to add the feather tool and the light turntables in the next 2 months.
1. Attach hair to skin has two options, snap the roots to the mesh or move the hairs completely
2. Attribute by attribute Creates an inverse square operation to drive a new attribute from an original existing one, and has the option to remap it.
Useful for cases like density, when it depends on the length of the hair, extremely useful for feathers.
3. Attribute comp
It's a multi-purpose comp node for simple operations between attributes has multi-layer settings and converts attribute classes
4. Attribute copy
Its a simple variation of the copy for the groom, taking an attribute list, copying into a new and clean mesh for stability, and with the possibility to mirror
5. Bounding box delete
Is a beta tool that deleted the content of the bounding box, while always snapping to the skin. Is in beta because one of the main functions is in the development
6. Clump Color Visualize the clump color ( attribute by color ) of the inputs on the mesh, this helps at any point of the process for an easier grooming experience
7. Color by curve u
It's one of our best tools, as it helps the user to improve the readability of the groom in Houdini, with color and sampling tools for every stage of the process. It also adds width controls and randomizations makes the viewport faster and the preview easier to read.
8. Curl
it's a guide-specific tool that lets you control the shape of the curl with directions easier than what the bend node will do. It also adds more possibilities in the mask levels.
Its guide is specific because it's slow in the full hair.
9. Delete prim percentage
It's a tool that will let you choose percentages of the hairs based on selection, attributes, or count. Useful at generating passes for simulation, or LODs for the crowds.
There are some clump techniques that can also be used this way.
10. Groom Ingest is our basic groom investor, reads the exported packed groom and re uses it for other departments or for lighting. Its deformation ready and packed with all the information it needs for the pipe
11. Groom Pack Packs the clumps, guides, and hairs for the groom to be exported. This is what the groom ingest reads.
12. Groom unpackTakes the input of the grooming pack and reverts the process
13. Hair Geometry distributor This is one of our main tools, distributes geometries along the hair strands. Sand, leaves, branches etc.
You can see it fully working here https://jesusfc.net/blog/hair-geometry-distributor
14. import guide curvesthis is a guide curve ingestor, for when the hair or the guides are being created on a different DCC or even on the same DCC but they don't have all the attributes. The curves get recreated internally to make them compatible and clean in case they had any issues.
15. Model IngestSimilar to the groom ingest, this is our basic ingestor for geometries as ABC, it has a versioning system, scale controls for Maya transforms, and basic ABC process that need to happen in the geo to prepare them for the groom.
16. Parting Guides
You can see this tool working here https://vimeo.com/444039524
Creates partings in the hairs to simulate the real effect of the partings in nature, it can also create parting attraction and not just push
17. PolywrapIts a simple deformer to simulate mayas blendshape, useful for the feather system.
18. Probability Mask
It's another of our main tools, this will let you create a probability-based texture for lookdev and texturing that will be controlled for complex and more advanced groom procedures. It also has a multi-param block that lets you stack multiple masks together. It has operations like comp.
19.Root RotateA simple rotation by root angle gives a huge boost to the groom quality. Root rotate is a super important tool for the groom as it adds a level of break up that looks super natural and gives a lot of control to the user
20. Tangent Noise
Another of our flagship HDA, this is one of the most important nodes we have, it's a tangent noise that fixes many of the issues that the frizz noise has in Houdini. Improves massively the quality of the grooms and adds another layer of control to the groomers.
you can see a video and comparison here https://vimeo.com/444004355
21. Tube to curves (BETA) Is one of the tools we have currently in development, it helps to create grooms from model proxies and it gives you better control of the result.
After that we have our two templates, they are a more robust structure for groomers that we use on our system. it comes with multi clump params, model ingest, basic shaders, and a basic groom structure
Template 01 has a full groom breakdown and preset to build the general structure, with dependencies and a correct multi clump workflow
Template 02
Is a top to bottom structure with instructions. this one uses as a base in our fox tutorial and it's a reinterpretation. Also has a custom hair generator as its core.
HairGenerator It's a tool that uses our template structure to generate a groom from a single node. Pretty fast for first iterations or non hero grooms.
