Houdini Rough Idea: Deformation Based Displacement

This is a very rough and quick setup to create displacement based on changes in the surface mesh. I go through a simple tube to using lines or curves from a face mesh to drive displacement and other shader values.

Thanks to Chris Jones for posting his great work on BlenderArtist.org (https://blenderartists.org/t/human-pr.... His ideas influenced some of the ideas presented here.

This not a finished work tutorial but a conceptual idea sketch from which one could build.

Certainly, lots of smart people will point out all the better ways to do something like this. I am always open to hear suggestions, please leave them in the comments. I hope this helps someone to add that missing piece.

This video does not go node by node, but gives a general overview of the workflow.