January 26, 2024
This week, I pitched my capstone project idea: creating a groom for a human character model. My original plan was to use XGen, but I've decided to switch completely over to Houdini after feedback.
I set up a calendar, as well as gathered references and resources to assist me. I've included a photo of some of my main references.
I already have one mentor for this project: Michelle Robinson, Head of Characters and Look Development Supervisor at Walt Disney Animation Studios. Her feedback will be so valuable to me and my success!
February 2, 2024
My goals for this week:
- Project setup in Houdini
- Create guides
- Block out shape of hair placement
I met with Michelle Robinson this week to discuss my pitch and receive feedback from an industry mentor. She assisted me with deciding on a hairstyle; she also gave suggestions on what I could do before beginning the grooming process. I completed some draw-overs to better understand hair flow and what I want my character to look like.
February 9, 2024
My goals for this week:
- Reach out to recommended contacts
- Take reference photos myself
- Find or create a sculpted hair mesh to use as reference for groom
I accomplished all of my goals this week, as well as obtained another industry mentor: Megan Walker, a Look Development, Grooming, and Material Artist/Supervisor at DreamWorks.
Below is a picture of my updated model, as well as a sculpted reference similar to what I want the hair to look like. The hair sculpt I chose will not be visible in the final product.
February 16, 2024
I began working on guides this week, but I've been having issues with Houdini's built-in tool. As seen from the images below, the guides are very jagged and are cutting into the mesh in some areas. I figure the next couple of weeks will be some trial and error, as I would like to see how I can get the guides to look if I generate them with a more procedural method instead.
February 23-March 1, 2024
The past couple of weeks, we gave our Milestone presentations in class. My biggest goal was to have some hair generation to show. I tried a procedural method of generating hair in Houdini, in which guides can be created at a specific density and then interpolated. This was my first pass:
The main issue with this method was that I was generating far too many guides, as pointed out by my mentor and professor. The guides were also generating completely straight and choppy, when the hairstyle I want to create is more wavy and soft. I attempted to make some alterations using Houdini's built-in groom tools, but the results weren't turning out great, and I felt pretty limited in terms of what I could do. After some further research, I committed to purchasing Groombear, a plug-in with more flexibility for grooming in Houdini. I also went back a couple steps to rework the guides. Using Groombear, I've begun drawing and sculpting the guides to have more control over what the hair looks like when it generates.
I've been really impressed with Groombear's flexibility so far! I'm looking forward to hearing feedback on my mentors on what I can improve. Obviously I still need to add guides to the top of the head, which I will be working on before my next check-in. I will also be meeting with a friend to get my groom into Renderman.
March 8, 2024
I continued working on my guides this week, and I got a first pass of my groom in Renderman. I met with one of my mentors as well, who gave me some great feedback.
There a couple issues I've been running into: the hair seems to be interpolating strangely along the part, and it doesn't seem to be faceting in Renderman. I also need to figure out how to get the hair along the hairline to follow the density mask I painted earlier in the semester.
March 22, 2024
I got some more mentor feedback this week and continued to make adjustments to my groom. I was able to fix the issues with the hair generating outside my density mask, resulting in a much cleaner look for the hairline. I also made some adjustments to the model that were causing me problems.
The next task for me to tackle is the issue of hair generating inside the mesh of my model. I also want to focus on making the hairstyle look more like the reference, as it's begun to stray from what I want for the final look.
March 29, 2024
This week, I've been focused a lot on trying to figure out technical issues. Since beginning this project, I've realized it can be hard to find documentation on very specific grooming issues in Houdini, especially as someone who is newer to the program and the grooming workflow. I reached out to one of my peers, and she agreed to take a look at the problems I've been running into.
Another thing I've been focused on is making the hair appear more wavy. I've made progress on that since my last update, though I still need to make refinements.
My priority at the moment is to fix the hair falling through the model's head. Based off mentor feedback, I used a guide partition node as a region map to tell the hair which way to interpolate. It seems to be helping the issue (the first picture below is without the node and the second is with), but it doesn't solve it completely.
April 5, 2024
After meeting with a few of my peers this week, I finally resolved all of my technical issues. The hair generation in Houdini is no longer interfering with the mesh of my model, and the curves are displaying correctly in Renderman. I have since sent updated renders to Michelle Robinson for feedback.
For the hair generation issue, I went back to the mask I painted for my hair part and made slight changes to the density. This allowed me to have more control over the hair, and I was able to paint out the area where the hair is parting completely to erase the pesky hairs that were falling through the mesh.
The Renderman issue was a simple fix: I just had to run a convert node, along with a resample node and a smooth node. This ensured that there were divisions to the curves and that there was no more faceting.
I also met one-on-one with my second mentor, Megan Walker. She gave me some tips that I plan to implement this week.
April 17, 2024
I continued to make adjustments to the shaping and styling of my groom this week. I also decided to split my guides into separate sections (top layer, middle layer, and bottom layer) after meeting with Megan. This allowed me to have more control over the shape of the hair, ensuring that it could match my references better. Additionally, I added some softer waves and clumps to my groom.
I met with Michelle and Caleb as well, both of who gave great feedback. Michelle noted that the hair is getting a little too scraggly at the bottom, and that there are some chunkiness issues with the clumps. She also mentioned bringing up the roots of the hair a little bit for less of a flat look, as well as general shaping tips (making sure the silhouette is appealing, randomizing and adding noise to the hair clumps, and smoothing out some of the hair pieces that are too wiggly). Caleb gave me some useful advice for what to look for in clumping hair and modifiers. I plan to make these adjustments, as well as fix the "balding" areas in my guides.
April 26, 2024
We had our final presentations in class this week! I still have a lot I want to refine with my groom, but below is what I presented. I made changes based off previous feedback, and I also added an eyelash groom.
I am extremely happy with how far my project has come over the course of the semester, but there's still a lot I want to change, and I believe my groom has a bit of work before it's finished. Both Caleb and Michelle, as well as my classmates, have given me notes of things I should address. I'm looking forward to refining my groom further, and I will be sure to showcase the finished project here!