9 replies to this topic

[strages]

Dear community,

Having imported an illustrator .ai file ( say for example a spiderweb ), I want to let it grow from the center. However the spiderweb is imported (this can't be changed) now i have a lot of lines, points primitives vectors etc. How can I grow them like with the carve tool but really from the center.

right now i made a construction with various carve sops, however for each web, every line begins at the same time, wherever it starts. Also i want all lines to grow in the same direction as they are randomly growing in direction ( i know i can change this by reversing u and v with a prim node, however i haven found a procedural way to select only those going in the wrong direction)

help is appreciated!

thank you!

[hopbin9]

Can you post the AI file?

I'd like to give a crack at it.

[zarti]

strages, on 17 August 2012 - 07:33 AM, said:

..

.. . How can I grow them like with the carve tool but really from the center.

..

hi ,

i believe you somehow you have to rebuild the web in houdini so the Carve SOP can do what you want .

with rebuild i mean clean prims but keep points with some attribs maybe to later reconnect those and bring back original design .

at least that is wat i did lately in a similar situation ..

carve seems to respect vertices .



.cheers

[strages]

hopbin9, on 17 August 2012 - 12:44 PM, said:

Can you post the AI file?

I'd like to give a crack at it.

Hey thanks for your time, however I can't post the ai file as it is not mine to share ( part of the project at the company i work at )

Edited by strages, 19 August 2012 - 11:49 PM.

[strages]

zarti, on 17 August 2012 - 04:14 PM, said:

hi ,

i believe you somehow you have to rebuild the web in houdini so the Carve SOP can do what you want .

with rebuild i mean clean prims but keep points with some attribs maybe to later reconnect those and bring back original design .

at least that is wat i did lately in a similar situation ..

carve seems to respect vertices .



.cheers

cheers indeed I got a clean import of the data out of illustrator. However rebuilding is hard, because if i delete all primitives and only have points and so left. Houdini doesn't know which points to connect.

got an idea maybe: to sort primitives on some sort of proximity to the middle. ( as in a board to shoot arrows in to at archery ) and then use the carve tool setup i made.. will try!

[zarti]

strages, on 19 August 2012 - 11:53 PM, said:

cheers indeed I got a clean import of the data out of illustrator. However rebuilding is hard, because if i delete all primitives and only have points and so left. Houdini doesn't know which points to connect.

got an idea maybe: to sort primitives on some sort of proximity to the middle. ( as in a board to shoot arrows in to at archery ) and then use the carve tool setup i made.. will try!

here i did something ..

- in my file 'imported_web' node assumes that it is the imported vector file in the network .
- before playing with carve_Final , try the carve_test node
- the re-building procedure appears more simple than i thought ( black netbox )

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 zpiderWebCarvedFromCenter.hipnc   91.84K   53 downloads ( H11 file )

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hope this works for you too ..

.cheers

[Ole]

strages, on 19 August 2012 - 11:53 PM, said:

cheers indeed I got a clean import of the data out of illustrator. However rebuilding is hard, because if i delete all primitives and only have points and so left. Houdini doesn't know which points to connect.

To circumvent this, perhaps you could group your primitives using partition (or assemble sop) and run the sort and rebuild within a for-each sop based on groups.

[stabby]

This should work with arbitrary geo.

The nodes you might have to tweak are in yellow.  Pick you start points with ROOTS, adjust the max number on GET_DISTANCE so the mesh has no yellow, and use the Distance channel on ANIMATE to carve away the mesh.  

There are three carve nodes because sometimes just using one doesn't totally cut all the poly edges into separate prims - three usually does the job.  
The network relies on every prim having only two vertices.

Also, there are occasions when an edge should be carved away from both ends,  this network doesn't deal with that.  Instead, the edge will be carved from one end only, but too quickly...

 carve.hip   150.98K   56 downloads

ps. to make it grow, not shrink, change the expressions in delete1 to $CUT == 0, and delete2 to $MAPU > $CUT

Edited by stabby, 23 August 2012 - 02:43 PM.

[petz]

stabby, on 22 August 2012 - 06:51 PM, said:

This should work with arbitrary geo.

The nodes you might have to tweak are in yellow.  Pick you start points with ROOTS, adjust the max number on GET_DISTANCE so the mesh has no yellow, and use the Distance channel on ANIMATE to carve away the mesh.  

There are three carve nodes because sometimes just using one doesn't totally cut all the poly edges into separate prims - three usually does the job.  
The network relies on every prim having only two vertices.

Also, there are occasions when an edge should be carved away from both ends,  this network doesn't deal with that.  Instead, the edge will be carved from one end only, but too quickly...

carve.hip

ps. to make it grow, not shrink, change the expressions in delete1 to $CUT == 0, and delete2 to $MAPU > $CUT

nice one!
here is another try.

petz

Attached Files

•  carve1.hip   533.36K   77 downloads

[Joker386]

You can use point Clouds !

Resample your Web's curve to make too many point near together.

put center point in group for example Group1.

use point clouds and dop network to put neighbor points in the group1 in each frame.

delete points except group's points.

for learn to use point cloud see cmiVFX tips and tricks 4 tutorial .