Loving a lot of the new grooming features, but one thing is perplexing me: the guide groom node seems totally un-procedural now. The "recache strokes" button is gone, so if anything is changed upstream then the groom gets reset to square one. That can't be right. What am I missing? Here's a video showing the difference between H19 and H18.5. Thanks!

BrianHanke
Loving a lot of the new grooming features, but one thing is perplexing me: the guide groom node seems totally un-procedural now. The "recache strokes" button is gone, so if anything is changed upstream then the groom gets reset to square one.

Yep...

BrianHanke
What am I missing?

Nothing really. When asked, they said to use guide transfer, but that only works if you have uv's and doesn't allow for out of order edits.

Hmm, that is very unfortunate. Even Interactive Groom in Maya is more procedural than this. Setting aside how much of a pain it would be to "guide transfer" every time a single little thing changed upstream, the node doesn't even seem to work correctly. It transfers the first time you hook it up, but if you click the original guides everything is gone, everywhere. Disappointing. I was looking forward to moving all my grooming to Houdini, but the current state of things is a major step backwards. I hope some upgrades are coming soon in daily builds...

Ok, stand down red alert. I've practiced some more and I see what Side FX was going for here. The workflow is a bit different than existing solutions, so it takes some figuring out. Very happy with it now! Just a single guide groom, a guide process, a wrangle for width and taper and that's all I need. Incredibly powerful. Plus XPU is an amazing lookdev tool. H19 is an artist's dream come true!

Did you figure out where your brow absconded to?

That one is still a mystery. Could be a bug, definitely doesn't seem like the right behavior. The solution is to never click the original guide groom node again! (Or cache stuff out, I guess.)

BrianHanke
That one is still a mystery. Could be a bug, definitely doesn't seem like the right behavior. The solution is to never click the original guide groom node again! (Or cache stuff out, I guess.)

I noticed in your video, you were running hot. Maybe exiting the tool (esc key) would also prevent the bug.

BrianHanke
Hmm, that is very unfortunate. Even Interactive Groom in Maya is more procedural than this. Setting aside how much of a pain it would be to "guide transfer" every time a single little thing changed upstream, the node doesn't even seem to work correctly. It transfers the first time you hook it up, but if you click the original guides everything is gone, everywhere. Disappointing. I was looking forward to moving all my grooming to Houdini, but the current state of things is a major step backwards. I hope some upgrades are coming soon in daily builds...

Hey Brian i am having the same issue with my guide groom for H19.. i draw all the guides and later if i decide to change the shape and volume of the head, I cant do anything except guide transfer which is a pain.

Yeah, it is a pain. I hope SideFX will improve it. I've mostly gotten used to it now and all the other new stuff is so good that it's still worth grooming in Houdini. Guide transfer seems to be pretty solid, so as long as you work with a final or very near final model it's possible to keep problems to a minimum. Still, working with Interactive Groom in Maya you can smoosh the model around however you want and the hairs follow along no problem. Would love to see that in Houdini.