Mused
Breakdown
The guide curves were created in Houdini because of the control of manipulating geometry and non-destructive workflow. The curve can be quickly drawn on the hair proxy geo and merge several strokes into a single curve.
Each long guide normally was created with more than one stroke. Using fuse node can merge the closest points from different curves. However, the primitive stays the same, this will cause issues later in the grooming process.
I used a for each primitive loop to loop through each connected curve
Build new curves based on connectivity
Remove all the old curves
Before exporting the curve, the roots need to be snap to the skin surface. I used ray node to snap all the root points to the geometry.
The guide curves then be imported into Maya and converted to Xgen guide. Houdini didn’t have an efficient method of parting the hair like region map. So I decided to do the groom in Xgen.
