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Right Orientation Of Boxes?


Zanozza

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You need to add an Up Vector attribute with the Point SOP. Append the Point SOP before the deformation, as far up the chain as you can. In the Point SOP's Particle Folder, enable the Up Vector. Delete the existing channels on the three parameters.

Now inspect your grid. You want to set the Up Vector such that it either points up in Y (or to the side) if your grid is on the XZ plane. That would be 0,1,0.

The up vector locks down the orientation of the boxes along with the Normals (or velocity) directoin.

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Yes polyframe is a great solution when your geometry is quads and their vertex order and orientation is somewhat regular.

Jim Price (wolfwood) crafted an excellent post on the Copy SOP and instancing. Jim clearly shows the relationship between the orientation of instanced and copied geometry and the normal + up vector attributes plus other attributes:

Copy SOP & Instancing Attributes

Given the intimate relationship between the Copy SOP and render time instancing, see this documentation link. This is how I set up my networks when using the Copy SOP set up to also get render time instancing with the identical result:

Copying and Instancing

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To install the Poly Frame SOP, you need to resort to the command line tools. If you are on windows, go to Start > Side Effects Software > Houdini ... > Command Line Tools.

This will launch a command-line shell. I first make the shell larger by stretching it down quite a bit.

Simply type in the command:

proto_install

Just follow the instructions. Again if you can't see all the options, drag the shell window larger.

There are all kinds of useful operators, scripts and more that ship with Houdini. These tools are not directly supported by Side Effects but if you do find a problem with any of these tools, please submit a bug (did that make sense?). There are a few reasons why some of these tools do not wind up in the distribution. I believe the reason Poly Frame is not shipped is it's dependency on the incoming geometry NOT changing topology and resulting in flicking copied geometry as the up vectors can flip around.

Here are the entries I find helpful. SOP_PolyFrame.inst, SOP_CaptureMerge.inst, SOP_PointPrim.inst, SOP_MatchPrimPoints.inst, SOP FlowField.inst (should be install IMHO as it is that useful), EXPR_ufacedist.inst, SOP_CarveCurveArc.inst, SOP_PointMap.inst, SOP_CreepMulti.inst.

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