Hair Plugin

About

This tool is a Houdini plugin that implements the 2025 SIGGRAPH paper, Transforming Unstructured Hair Strands into Procedural Hair Grooms.

Development Instructions

This plugin was made in Houdini 21.0.631 and Visual Studio 2022, on Windows 11. Make sure you're using the same versions, or building the files might not work.

In your environment variables, set the following system variables:

• H21_PATH: C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 21.0.631
• H21_VERSION: 21.0.631
• CUSTOM_DSO_PATH: C:\Users\[YOUR USER]\Documents\Houdini\dso
  • This should be the location where you're storing all your .dll files.
• HOUDINI_DSO_PATH: %CUSTOM_DSO_PATH%;&

How to Build

In the root directory, run:

• cmake -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A x64 -S .\ -B .\Build

This will create a Visual Studio solution.

Visual Studio Settings

• After Visual Studio loads, right click on the project and select “Properties”.
• Change the path of the output directory to the path where your Houdini plugin dsos will be stored, i.e:
  • C:\Users\[YOUR USER]\Documents\Houdini\dso
• In C++->General check the Additional Include Directory path properties to make sure it corresponds to where the Houdini toolkit include directory is located on your computer, i.e:
  • C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 21.0.631\toolkit\include

Load into Houdini

For the plugin to automatically load into Houdini, add this line into the houdini.env file in your Houdini install location, i.e. C:\Users\[YOUR USER]\Documents\houdini21.0:

• HOUDINI_DSO_PATH = C:\Users\[YOUR USER]\Documents\Houdini\dso