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Mardini_day31_solarisMaterialVariation.png (2.9 MB)
Mardini_day31_solarisMaterialVariation_screenplate.png (36.7 KB)

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MaterialVariation.jpg (619.0 KB)
MaterialVariation_ss.png (595.8 KB)

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223031.jpg (280.6 KB)
220331_02.jpg (200.7 KB)

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day31.png (1.9 MB)
day31Screenshot.png (2.6 MB)

Day 31 | Material Variation
it's over already
had soo much fun
but not with this node
houdini crashed more times today than in the whole month

Attachments:
d31.PNG (915.0 KB)
d31_vp.PNG (5.4 MB)

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MARDINI_Day31_MaterialVariation.jpg (687.8 KB)
MARDINI_Day31_MaterialVariation_ScreenShot_KentaMorinaga.jpg (775.7 KB)

Day 31 - Solaris Material Variation Node!

Another node I struggled with because it needs a setup which is not really elaborated much on

not my best entry for sure...

Attachments:
AndrewBell_31_SolarisMaterialVariationNode_Render.jpg (935.7 KB)
AndrewBell_31_SolarisMaterialVariationNode_Screenshot.jpg (709.4 KB)

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mardini0331.karma1.0001.jpg (483.4 KB)
31view.png (1.2 MB)

That's all folks! Solaris sort of beat me though.

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march_31_material_var_comp.png (2.0 MB)
march_31_material_var_screenshot.png (1.7 MB)

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meteors.JPG (39.5 KB)
Capture.JPG (80.6 KB)

Day 31 - Material Variation

As today's is the very last day of the competition, I decided to go nuts with amount of work that needed to be done and do something different than the projects I've done so far. Many of my recent works were very moody, sometimes even creepy. So it was time for something cute and nice.

I decided to go with a seal. The very first obstacle was modeeling. It might be not that difficult to sculpt one, but unfortunately Houdini does not have sculpting tools. So as a first step I blocked out the main shapes of a muzzle and a jaw using spheres and edit node with proportional editing. Then, I added the eyeballs and used these rather crude shapes as my reference geometry for retopology. Once retopo was done I had a basic shape of the seal's head. Low number of polygons allowed me to reshape it closer to my liking and also extract a scalp I used for grooming.
The fur was rather simple to make thanks to great grooming tools. I used guide advect tool to quickly create flow of the guides. Then with help of a few manually painted attributes I managed to generate the fur.
Whole process step by step can be seen at the very bottom of this post.

It was time for rendering. I imported everything to Karma and applied Karma Hair shader to my fur, whiskers and a few smaller hairs in the eyebrow area. To break the uniformity of the white fur I used the Material Variation node. While Karma Hair shader allows for randomization of some parameters Material Variation gives much more flexibility. I used it to modify locally melanin for some of the hair to break the color. I also modified the the thickness scale shader parameter which changes the appearance of the hair without changing the actual width of the hair. These parameter cannot be randomized by default, so Material Variation was very handy here. These two changes made the fur much more believable.

I've had a blast working on this project and was surprised how much more fluent in using Houdini I got during this month. I would never thought I could achieve it really.

These are the results of my today's endevaours:

Screenshot presenting use of Material Variation:

Seal modelling steps:

Attachments:
31_mv_18_final.png (1.5 MB)
Screenshot.PNG (620.7 KB)
WIP.png (3.6 MB)

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day31_materialvariant.png (2.8 MB)
nodesday31.png (824.3 KB)

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Screen Shot 2022-03-31 at 8.46.10 PM.png (4.6 MB)
Screen Shot 2022-03-31 at 8.45.37 PM.png (4.3 MB)

What a strange, long trip it's been, right? Well, maybe not that long, but it sure was a hell of a ride.

Obviously, I'm very, very happy. I never thought, when I started, a bit randomly, out of a joke somehow, and 100% lighthearted and sure I'd do a few days and call it quit, I'd actually end up where I ended up.

With so many talented people working hard and well on their submissions, I feel humbled and revigorated. I HAVE to show my appreciation of EVERYONE who engaged in the VIDEO section, because sometimes, one image of your work, gals and guys, was already far ahead in terms of quality than what we people sticking to the Image section would have done.

I'd like to extend my gratitude to the top guns, who pushed me to better myself by doing amazing, incredible work each day.
I'd also like to thank Sidefx, of course, for the whole Mardini challenge. It brought me so much more than I bargained for - in a positive way. I learned as I went, a story my pictures actually tell : from a handful of curves on a black background to whole sceneries in Solaris / Karma with Kinefx animation ? IN LESS THAN A DAY? whaaaat?!

I hope I brought a little joy to folks around here, with my little improvised stories and "weekly arcs". The underground ancient mayan civilization, the Egypt arc, the Lovecraft arc, and finally the steampunk/murderbots/world fair arc. Creating those little stories may seem like a bit of a challenge, but it actually gave me a serious line to follow, which was easier than just the nodes.

Anyway, hope you enjoy that last piece. It's not as advanced as the previous, I reckon, but we need the sleep

Take care, y'all.

Attachments:
mardini_31_matvar.jpg (194.3 KB)
mardini_31_network.jpg (223.5 KB)

We did it! This was both really fun and incredibly frustrating at times, but I've learned a bunch in this one month I wouldn't have otherwise.

So cool to see everyone's takes on stuff which is so different from my own. Well done everyone!
I need sleep now.

Attachments:
Mardini2022_31_Material_Variation.jpg (485.9 KB)
Mardini2022_31_Material_Variation_Network.jpg (192.0 KB)

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EE_31.png (1.8 MB)
EE_31_Houdini.jpg (451.2 KB)

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material_variation.png (1.1 MB)
houdinifx_Y53PY0F7JX.jpg (334.2 KB)

DAY31

Attachments:
Mardini_2022-03-31_jefflim.jpg (659.9 KB)
Mardini_2022-03-31_graph_jefflim.jpg (155.7 KB)