Scales : Houdini Digital Asset

Studio: Hashbane Interactive / Vikas Prajapati / Instinction ( game )

Render shows scales plug-in result + custom zbrush sculpt pass

This is an Indie Houdini Digital Asset for creating Scales which will save you days of modelling /sculpting time.

An FX version might become available at later stage. Depends on interest and sales. If you are interested, do let me know ! My contact info is at the bottom.

Features:

• Smooth & Intuitive controls : draw / edit guides, control density, size and growth direction.
• Fast: GPU-accelerated: The relax and growth solvers are written in Opencl so the heavy lifting is done on your graphics card.
• Create Scale Types: Edit the shape of your scale type and link it to any existing guide.
• Layer based color editing: Add ramps, noises & masks. Blend layers , randomize by scale ID & distance to guides .
• Made by an artist, for artists :)

Compatibility:

• Made with Houdini Indie , the HDA is in format .hdalc and black-boxed.
• Houdini 19.0- 19.5 ( previous version might work, untested)
• Personally untested in H20 but people have reported it works fine
• Tested in Educational/Apprentice, Indie, Core, Fx
• Works in Houdini Fx/Core but sessions will be downgraded.
• Possible( Houdini) bug on Linux + 3xxx Nvidia series causing fatal crashes which I cannot fix as I don’t have that particular setup

Installation:

Copy the downloaded HDA file to your Houdini otls folder.

For example : C:\Users\wout\Documents\houdini19.0\otls\

The node needs an an input to be unlocked, anything will do ( a null for example ) .

• Claiming / releasing a license requires internet connection.
  

License Agreement:

By using the Scales HDA you agree to the following:

Subscriptions come with a supplementary use of the license to unlock the Scales HDA on a second computer/laptop, or to work in dual boot mode. The license is restricted to a single artist, who can only use the Scales HDA on one of these computers at a time.

Before you begin:

• Check the demo scenes for some examples.
• Check out the HUD / Info panel in the top left corner of the scene viewer:
• Check the input : The size of the input geometry matters. If you find that the guides are lacking in detail, your input geo is probably too small. If you find that you need a lot more growth iterations to close the gaps, the input geo is probably too big.

Future Updates:

I have a ton of ideas for new features . These may or may not get added, it mostly depends on how sales go.

In no particular order:

• Hero scales ( draw custom scales around which the other scales grow )
• A paint mode to control density/size/direction/color..
• Wrinkles
• A magic button that analyzes the input geo and sets density/size/direction/ automatically. Curvature based for example.
• A layer stack like the existing color layer feature but for blending scale types
• Viewer state controls/improvements ( invert guides, multi selection, shortcuts for editing guide settings, symmetry mode, etc..)
• Ramp controlled guide falloffs
• Etc...

Contact:

If you have any questions, remarks, bug reports or feature request, feel free to send me a mail or message on Discord:

wouttgh@gmail.com

Discord : wout_tgh

You can also post on the SideFX Forum in this thread:

https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/75586/?page=9#post-376609