Capybara Character FX in Houdini 20.5 with Vellum

SIDE FX TUTORIAL I CREATED:
https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/intro-to-character-fx-using-vellum-and-tops/

I had fun bringing this capybara to life using Character FX in Houdini 20.5 with Vellum!

For this asset, I built four simulation setups: muscles, fat, skin/wrinkle/ground contact, and cloth. I also designed the rash guard garment in Marvelous Designer.

A couple of things I really like about Vellum:
✔️ No need for high substeps—"1" often works just fine.
✔️ Toggling the Sliding Rate on vellumattach makes it super easy to create a skin slide effect when using a connected collision geo on input3.

To ensure my muscle sims were driven by animation, I added muscle tension lines and connected them to a muscleflex node.

Next up: refining the shorts to prevent stretching in the center by tweaking the garment model and exploring sim adjustments for more natural deformations.

Highly recommend Muscles Masterclass Essentials by Liesbeth Levick for anyone diving into muscle sims!