Fibric for Houdini: A Sweater, Several Million Curves and No Regrets

For those who don’t know the tool: Fibric is a collection of Houdini Digital Assets for building cloth from curves. Developed by Pepe Buendia and Agustin Gonzalez, it creates woven and knitted structures, stitches and surface fibres inside Houdini. The production interest is close-up textile construction: individual yarns become geometry that you can shape, deform and render, rather than detail carried entirely by a surface texture.

A sweater, but make it procedural

Fibric is available commercially through CG Lounge, following its FMX 2025 presentation. We covered that first outing; the toolset is now offered alongside an Essentials course and the free Leena character asset. A knitted jumper still looks uncomplicated until somebody requests a macro shot. Then every thread needs an individual career.

Patterns first, garment second

The Pattern node defines the textile structure before Generator wraps it onto the garment mesh. Woven patterns read black-and-white weave diagrams, with separate warp and weft counts, widths, offsets and colours. Standard knitting repeats a modelled ribbon; purl controls invert selected columns. Custom knitting accepts your own curve, while Custom Pattern accepts a patch of curves for structures such as lace or crochet. Those custom routes require more manual adjustment.

Generator controls tiling, rotation, yarn width and surface offset. Real Life Scale normalises pattern scale using texel density; UV Scale uses the UV islands directly. Selection controls restrict a pattern to chosen primitives or groups. Jacquard offers Replace and Multiply modes, while texture-driven knit inversion and a secondary pattern input extend the knitted variations. Non-overlapping UVs are required to avoid artefacts. The UV layout has, predictably, found another way to become everyone’s problem.

Seams and the inevitable fuzz

Stitches can build seams from selected edges, curves drawn on a mesh or in UV space, and texture inputs. Cross, feather, zigzag, line and braid options sit alongside custom stitches, with controls for spacing, thickness, rotation and stretch. It also works directly on a mesh without a generated Fibric fabric, so adding a seam does not require rebuilding the whole wardrobe.

Fuzz adds loose fibres, fibre clusters and fraying around mesh or UV boundaries. Density, length and width can be controlled globally or through attributes and textures; root-to-tip ramps shape fibre thickness. Avoid Inner Threads removes self-occluded fibres, and Avoid Backfaces removes those growing inside the garment. The Low visualisation mode is a preview state: switch back to Full before finalising the setup.

Deform the cloth, then the detail

Fibric does not require Vellum, but it can use simulated or deformed mesh caches. The Deform Procedural LOP applies the deformation through Husk in Solaris. Preview Houdini Procedural provides interactive feedback. Tearing breaks fibres when their displacement from rest exceeds a threshold; it is not a replacement for a mesh cache with convincing tearing behaviour. A transferred burn attribute can drive fibre width and shader blending in Karma.

That render-time route only deforms curves and points. Stickers meshes must be cached separately, and the procedural currently does not work outside Husk in Solaris. The developer says render-farm execution requires neither Houdini Engine nor an additional Fibric licence, but workers need access to fibric_deform_graph.bgeo.sc and the FIBRIC_HUSK_PROCEDURAL_GRAPHS environment variable.

Choose what leaves Houdini

For a texture workflow, Fibric Baker outputs base colour, tangent-space normals, anisotropy angle, alpha, displacement, ambient occlusion and identification masks. Its 2D mode flattens curves into UV space, with potential issues where stitches cross UV islands; 3D mode uses inner and outer cages for ray projection. The documentation specifies PNG maps and EXR for raw displacement, although its format-control description still says PNG only. Check the required output in your installed build. The FAQ recommends baking for Unreal Engine rather than carrying dense curves into a real-time scene.

Licences, learning and the bill

Indie’s perpetual licence includes one year of maintenance. Core expires after its annual term unless renewed; standard licences do not permit shared or floating use. Custom studio and site arrangements are available, and commercial production use is permitted. The EULA makes those distinctions explicit. The live store exposes the US$59 Indie option; a current Core checkout price could not be verified.

The developer FAQ specifies Windows and Linux and excludes macOS, despite the store’s broader platform claim. Confirm Mac support directly before buying. Most main HDAs are locked, while utility nodes are open for pipeline adaptation. Studios can request trials. For a first evaluation, use the free Leena asset and Fibric Essentials course, then check the actual shot’s curve load, exports and farm configuration before committing the wardrobe.

The original FMX walkthrough

The SideFX-hosted presentation showed pattern creation, stitching, damage and the Husk workflow – that was in 2025…. It supplies the longer view of how the pieces fit together, for anyone whose sleeve close-up has stuck in Development limbo.