Houdini "Character Selector" - Building From the Red Panda and Color Masking/Grooming More Animals

After creating and hair grooming the red panda, I got hit with some inspiration:

• I wanted to groom some additional animals

• With its distinct color patterning, the red panda color segments can be used as masks

• Various animations and poses for the characters could be easily swapped between

• If I used the same foundation for the animals, I could blendshape them together

I started by making a comprehensive list of cute animals I'd be interested in modeling.

The possum and racoon won out, but Before modeling the new animals, I compiled reference boards:

I modified the red panda model and used Mixamo to pose the characters:

Possum	Racoon

I downloaded, compiled, and edited a set of idle, walking, and running animations for each character, giving them subtle personalities as well as 3 poses for them to strike.

I groomed the animals and modified their UV textures until the animals looked just right according to their references. Afterwards, I masked out the animal color groups.

Possum	Racoon

The final step was building a network switchboard in Houdini and creating a master node to select character options in, as demonstrated in the video at the top of this page.

The user has the option to switch out the selected character and character colors, with the additional option to swap character actions.