Should SideFX invest in brush technology for Sculpting and Painting?

Given tools like ZBrush, 3DCoat, Adobe Painter - what could be the differentiator for SideFX? Especially given that most studios already have these tools in the pipeline?

Looking forward to everyone’s perspectives!

I was picturing them competing with Windsor&Newton based on your title, lol

I really hope Houdini has a better solution for Sculpting. It doesn't have to be ZBrush or something. I just need something better than Edit/Sculpt SOP to make my corrective blend shapes. (Also a pose space deformation feature would help a lot too)

I think this is not diffcult for SideFX,beacuase we already have the Vellum Brush,it's similar to sculpting tools in someway.

raincole
I really hope Houdini has a better solution for Sculpting. It doesn't have to be ZBrush or something. I just need something better than Edit/Sculpt SOP to make my corrective blend shapes. (Also a pose space deformation feature would help a lot too)

You do realise there's a SOP called pose space deform yeah?

L

lewis_T
You do realise there's a SOP called pose space deform yeah?

L

I'm talking about the (imaginary) sculpt tool. I hope it will have some feature to help set up PSD/Blend Shape quickly. I'm not implying one cannot do PSD in Houdini now.

I've said this before but I think a basic sculpting toolset will be necessary for when SideFX wants Houdini to be used for the actual animation stage of a production. (Looking at you Houdini 20 )
I personally already like animating in KineFX (mainly objects so far) but the second I have a creature/character/mushy thing and want to create blendshapes I rather go into a different application that has sculpting tools.
And why should someone get used to animating in Houdini if they already have the tools in Maya without switching applications?

There are also other benefits like creating geo for muscle sims. Sure, high end creatures will probably be sculpted in Zbrush including their inner anatomy. But every step more you can do in Houdini opens the door for individual artists or smaller teams to work faster since you don't have an iteration loop through different software, or possibly different artists.

Then there are of course the general modeling enhancements. I remember when Maxon added a basic sculpting toolset to Cinema4D. It was fine from the start but you needed an extra sculpting tag on your geo, which essentially made your object exclusively sculptable but not editable otherwise. With the next version, they made all the sculpting brushes available for normal geo. Pretty much every time you have something organic a Pull or Grab brush is easier than using the edit node in Tweak mode. And to be honest, if all your tweaks are saved in the edit node it's not any more procedural than a sculpting node would be.

I also feel like the quality of tools that SideFX release is very high. I doubt I would be disappointed with their implementation of sculpting.

I've always thought sculpt would be a great Labs project. Something basic like the Maya built in tools, a little smooshing here, a little smoothing there. Brush alphas and masks and multires and all that not needed, just let us move stuff around a bit and get more "organic" control over models.

Labs team,we are watching on you.

Painting attributes/ color in uv space with a better UI then the atrib paint node whould b verry usefully in the verryleast for grooming but also texture work and who knows what else.

I'm just having a play in 19.5. I was hoping the sculpt tool would be a little more full featured but it doesn't seem so. Personally I'd be happy with just the addition of a move brush so points can be interactively moved directionally (flatten would be a bonus!). I guess sidefx knows already that this would be very welcome and there's some good technical reason that this functionality isn't there yet. Now after doing a bunch of modelling in houdini, this is right at the top my wish list!

alnh
Personally I'd be happy with just the addition of a move brush so points can be interactively moved directionally

You can do this with an Edit node, although it's not as convenient as a proper brush tool.

On the edit node, you want to turn on Tweak Mode which lets you interactively move points without selecting them first. To trigger the soft radius, you need to select a point once, because otherwise the setting is greyed out. You can do this in Tweak mode by clicking on a point and immediately letting go.

Then change the soft radius parameter. You can now continually move parts of the model with a soft falloff. Unfortunately it doesn't work when you want to move a polygon, so you'll have to make sure that you always move either a point or an edge, as the soft falloff is ignored when you move a polygon.

Personally, I would prefer that Houdini stayed true to its roots, and development was focused on procedural tools & sims, rather than going the Blender way, and trying to be a jack of all trades.

At the end of the day, it's about deciding to dedicate your engineering resources to doing one thing well or many so and so.

no, no interest. Houdini is not general purpose 3D software like Maya.
First, modeling tools need to be improved.
When we need to model an object we use maya, not houdini...

biborax
no, no interest. Houdini is not general purpose 3D software like Maya.

It's not? It's the only 3d application I have installed.

But this notion is to be expected when even the guy from Entagma called modeling in Houdini "miserable" in his Siggraph talk, which is a ridiculous exaggeration that may have held true years ago. Many of the people who complain about the modeling tools don't even know that the radial menus exist.

maybe, but when a studio, or people, buy houdini, it's not for its modeling tools, but to do VFX. Well, there is a reason.

Digipiction

alnh
Personally I'd be happy with just the addition of a move brush so points can be interactively moved directionally

You can do this with an Edit node, although it's not as convenient as a proper brush tool.

On the edit node, you want to turn on Tweak Mode which lets you interactively move points without selecting them first. To trigger the soft radius, you need to select a point once, because otherwise the setting is greyed out. You can do this in Tweak mode by clicking on a point and immediately letting go.

Then change the soft radius parameter. You can now continually move parts of the model with a soft falloff. Unfortunately it doesn't work when you want to move a polygon, so you'll have to make sure that you always move either a point or an edge, as the soft falloff is ignored when you move a polygon.

By "directionally" I mean like the move tool in zbrush - ie. click and drag to the left to move points to the left, or click and drag to the right to move points to the right. As far as I can tell, the direction is either along the normal or a manually set vector.

I'm not asking for zbrush like sculpting - just the basics to hopefully skip the odd trip to zbrush or maya. I understand the criticism of houdini for modelling, it took me some time to be convinced. But Houdini is great for modelling - much better than maya for many things - eg. manufactured objects, damaged objects and even some more organic stuff like rock and terrain. It also allows for easy changes and multiple iterations.

alnh
By "directionally" I mean like the move tool in zbrush - ie. click and drag to the left to move points to the left, or click and drag to the right to move points to the right.

That's how Tweak Mode works, unless I misunderstand you. It doesn't move along the normal, it moves to where you click and drag: click and drag to the left, and everything moves to the left.
Note that I'm referring to the Edit SOP, and on it you have to stay in the tab Edit/Transform, don't switch it to Edit/Peak or to Sculpt because that changes the behavior.

Digipiction

biborax
But this notion is to be expected when even the guy from Entagma called modeling in Houdini "miserable" in his Siggraph talk, which is a ridiculous exaggeration that may have held true years ago. Many of the people who complain about the modeling tools don't even know that the radial menus exist.

Off topic, but that Entagma guy has been painfully slow to pick up on a raft of changes that SideFX have implemented to make Houdini easier to use. The fact that they are a popular channel and not keeping up with the release notes is not doing Houdini any favours.

Next level solution: sculpting with Vellum Brush! :P