Hello everyone, I started documenting the information that we have been building in tutorials for the fox to have a friendlier approach to it than just the video series.

Some of us learn better with videos, and orders learn better with images and text, trying to complement everything together to create complete documentation about the pipeline and how we structure things.

The diagrams will be the start of the series, structure, and documentation in text and image format that will help us better understand how everything flows not inside Houdini itself but more about the pipeline information. It will show us how much we can manage, how we can assemble things, and it will help us to understand how to complement our pipeline into the new structure.

I always love to use diagrams, and I haven't had the time to implement them in our tutorials. I also love to have reading tutorials. Now it's the time for the new community to start having more of this high-level content that works for any level artist from CG SUPS to Juniors. We can begin to unravel how everything assembles and what can we change, what can improve, and how to have everything clear, so we will start these years with a lot of images, graphics, and certain things that will help us to understand the pipeline.

Check the whole diagram here, https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lTAHKec=/

THE MESH AND THE GROUPS

Each groom will have certain related things, so we start with a mesh that gives us all the information we need.

We will create groups using the mesh information; they can vary from groups based on shapes or groups based on the creature/Digi-double traits.

THE GUIDES

We will then use the groups to generate the guides; we can divide them by the groups or use more than one to develop them. The way we divide guides is based on a lot of attributes and characteristics, be aware of certain aspects like the inner ear, which is a perfect example of a guide division that does not represent a group.

THE MAPS

The maps then are also generated from the mesh, not necessarily from the group. We can do the maps in two ways; on the whole character or groom-based maps. The first one will have more maps per node as it will contain more general information, while the second one will have a more targeted map to drive each groom.

General maps will look like this, while groom specific maps will have one of this per groom.

Specific groom maps, will look more like this.

THE GROOMS

The grooms are the most specific part because we can grow them to be in the group area. We can base them on the guides or base them on the maps. The groom the structure that can be very malleable. Remember that we can have different types of grooms. For this example, we will use the system of the fox that we are building. For the fox, we are using one groom per area and dividing the grooms into under-groom, main groom, and guards groom, but we are also using different guides to drive each of the grooms, so we will jump into how this one will look.

CONNECTING THE MAPS TO THE GROOMS

Once we have the groom, it's time to start adding the maps. The way we connect the maps to the grooms depends on the workflow that we are using. If we are using one master map note for each groom, we will have to connect it to the main groom. If we are using one master node per groom, this means one per each of the underground, main groom, and the guards; we will need to connect the maps to each groom to pass along the information. This part may look a little bit complex, but interconnection is just merely because it's repetitive.

The first example is the general map, connected to a master groom. Each map will have all the attributes of the other grooms, so we need one single connection.

The next example is a bit more complicated in concept, and each map will have the information of a groom.

And finally, the minute, most hero variation. Each Map will have three nodes, and they will be connected independently. This variation is the one used on the fox groom.

Here we can see the connection applied as a general map for all the grooms.

With a more complex level of control, as one map per groom it will look like this.

To check the whole structure you can use this link:

https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lTAHKec=/