I've been trying ipad app called Feather that is allowing you to sketch in 3d with apple pen.
Really intuitive and fun:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtt7XyyplLo

3d to AI:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu3JEfx3PHM&t=640s

InstantMesh: Efficient 3D Mesh Generation from a Single Image.
Works ok to get basic proportion. Can export obj.

You can try it on hugginface:
https://huggingface.co/spaces/TencentARC/InstantMesh
Or run locally:
https://github.com/TencentARC/InstantMesh?tab=readme-ov-file

#ai #3d

Free set of nodes (with explanation and screenshots) to recreate film look in Davinci resolve:
https://mononodes.com/photochemical-film-look/

2 big updates for Substance Painter:
Custom Fonts and Native Illustrator File Support with artboards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSVgnyiDADc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lMpyz0Vhx8

Modern frequency analyzer with ability to reference tracks and tons of other useful features. And it's FREE! Goodbye SPAN :)

Review from Dan Worrall:
https://youtu.be/tMzQVOfNVbo?t=48I

Do you know what is cats-eye bokeh?
Not much tutorials about 3d talk about this part. Here is one showing how to recreate it in Nuke:
https://youtu.be/dfWVXSjDkzQ?t=224

Epicpen (free) now is available on Mac OS too.
https://epicpen.com/

Flexible Color Assignment in Houdini and Redshift

How do you assign random colors from a specific set to objects and keep the setup flexible for changes with Houdini and Redshift?
Let’s say we have several plastic cups in a scene and 4 specific colors from a client.

Create a class attribute with a connectivity node (you can name it whatever you like).
Promote it to the vertex level with an attribute promote.
In the shader tree, use an RS Integer User Data node to bring in the attribute named “class” (or any other name that you gave it earlier).
Connect it to an RS Jitter node (name it “max_variations_01”) and select “User Data ID” in Input ID Mode. In “integer jitter,” set the min to 0 and the max to 3, so we will have 4 variations. With this node, we only control the number of variations.
Create another RS Jitter node (name it “lightness_range_01”). We will use it to create lightness variations. Keep the color to black and set Saturation Variation Max to 0. Now, with the Value Seed, you can control the randomness.
Create an RS Color Ramp (name it “recolor_01”) with 4 colors from your client and set the interpolation to constant.
After adjusting the seed on the “lightness_range_01” node, you will need to move the colors a little bit on “recolor_01” so each of them will end up in a range generated by “lightness_range_01.”

Another thing that you can do is to offset UVs for each object. So when you add textures for roughness, they will not repeat obviously. To do this, after the connectivity node, add an attribute wrangle node (Run over Vertices) with this:
@uv.x+=rand(@class);

#houdini #redshift

https://photoindra.com/all/flexible-color-assignment-in-houdini-and-redshift/

https://photoindra.com/all/baking-textures-with-redshift-inside-houdini/

Baking textures with Redshift inside Houdini.
I had to bake some texture maps in Redshift inside Houdini. Haven't seen any clear tutorials on how to do that. So here is short guide.
Let say I created complex material mixing different textures, adjusting them with color corrections and gradients, noises. I'm happy how it looks in the Redshift renderer. And want to pass geometry to 3ds Max and setup materials with Corona.
General ideas is that you need to create custom AOVs to bake all those textures. Link to documentation about custom AOVs:
https://help.maxon.net/r3d/houdini/en-us/#html/Custom+AOVs.html

Just for visual reference I'm adding black nulls to know what maps I want to bake. And connecting here those nulls to red nodes (StoreColorToAOV or StoreIntegerToAOV). Sadly you can't use opinput(".",0) to get the name of connected node in MAT context like you can in SOP. So you'll need to copy paste names from nulls.

Create separate Redshift render node. In RenderMaps tab set Renders Maps Baking Enable.
If during testing you want to switch fast between textures resolution (from 512x512px to 1024, 2048, 4096) add an integer slider (with range from 0 to 3) to the inteface of RenderMaps tab (I called it indra_res_mult) and in the Output resolution add:
512*pow(2, ch("indra_res_mult"))

If it is black and white texture like roughness or mask use data type scalar. And it will be saved as 8 bit greyscale image in this case. They need to be with gamma 1. But if you render them in Redshift in png it will save in gamma 2.2. So if you want gamma 1 you need to save in tif. And for channels like base color use png.

Things to remember:
- No tessellation on obj level. It took me more than 1 hour to figure out why my maps were looking strange and it was just this one checkbox.
- No overlapping uvs.
- Faces has to be coplanar. I personally didn't have a problem with this.

Tips:
- If you have assigned groups to geometry and want to use it inside redshift materials: you need to promote it to vertices on SOP level and switch on "Output as Integer Attribute". You don't need to create node for each group. Just use GRP_* in group name field. (I usually start names of all groups that I want to keep with GRP_ in the beginning). Then read it inside materials with "RS Integer User Data" node. Just writing "GRP_group_name" or "group:GRP_group_name" will not work. That's why we need convert group to integer attribute.
- To write those masks you need to use "RS Store Integer to AOV". StoreColorToAOV will not work.

Here is a table with maps names, what value types they should be and what profile to put in color. Can be useful when preparing shaders and textures in new COPs contexts in houdini 20.5 #houdini