Hello , I’m fairly new to Houdini and working on a creature I have an idea for which is in the early stages. Long story short I want the wing membranes to be like spider webs in my pencil sketch . It’s gonna be a wyvern/alein creature that I want to have in different poses or even a short animation and I’ll will have textured it in Mari. Again the Zbrush blockout is just that (a blockout)and you can kinda see my epic fail . Anyway how would I go about getting photorealistic weblike looking wings like this. I’m planning to do a creature course through rebelway in the near future so hopefully I’ll learn
a bunch there but I really want to tackle these wings to start with. Any help you s appreciated and I’m sorry if this is posted in the wrong section.

Search tutorials for Force Edge Bundling in Houdini , you gonna Get more Freedom to Art direct those membrane veins !!?!?! otherwise
go to qiita web site and search for advent Houdini calendar vector Tips , you gonna Find some Nice growth Veini-sh Stuff ...Search also for Entagma tutorials Houdini.Have Fun.

Thank you, these look very much along the lines of what I'm looking for going down this rabbit hole. Much appreciated, but wow this stuff is complicated . Is there not a way to use grooming to create the effect before diving into a bunch of coding in VEX and what not. There has to be a simpler way.

dparcell87
There has to be a simpler way.

If you want a REALLY simple way, wrap a loop of mesh around the wings and slap an opacity map on it.

Assuming That you know How to make groups and UV's in Zbrush for that Wing (Dragon) use this file and I think its not complicated to make that Membrane. Try ... You can make membrane using Groom , you can use also Vellum , you have endless Solution in Houdini for this , use scatter and connect adjacent smooth and polywire...Or just Post that Wing with correct Uv's .

you can use Particles with minPose on that Uv's and make diff variation based on Noise Cd and Rest .

Alright, very informative and thank you for the reply. What tutorials would I need to check out to learn all this as a m new to Houdini and scatter brained as of now. I know gnomon has a grooming one but then yeah I’ve seen vellum as an option, which do you think would be better? Thanks again for help as I’m getting somewhere now.

Grooming and Vellum are not mutually exclusive. Grooming refers to creating and manipulating hair/fur, and Vellum is a physics simulation system. Regardless of how you end up creating the webby membranes, you'll probably want to Vellum simulate them.

I just came across this tut, it made me think of your wings a bit - it uses vellum like gordig suggested; might be worth a look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd8f3Ek5tLI [www.youtube.com]

Oh nice! Yeah this is another good one as I go down this Houdini rabbit hole. Thanks again and much appreciated!