Netvudu

umm....I remember this bug hitting Houdini with older versions. Maybe it has resurfaced?

Hi Kev, where did you go off track...can you get colored areas to show where the displacement will be applied? EDIT: Here you go. This is something I just did in a hurry. The shader ain´t exactly the way they explained, but it´s pretty similar. I had to invert the SDF values at shading time to get something useable. Also I ended up creating the SDF with VDB as opposed to the Iso Offset the tutorial uses. VDB is way faster for heavy geometry, so it´s better this way. I locked the geometry and referenced the node from the shader so you don´t need to cache any geometry at all which is another nice bonus. Something funky happened to my license while I was working, and it seems you need an apprentice to open the scene properly. Sorry for that. Finally, it´s a bit unorganised, but I quickly put this down for you. Hope it helps. RBDFractureDisplacement_v001.hiplc

Personally, I don't even touch a single polygon if I don't have a camera shot already unless I'm prototpying a tool or building a setup for several shots. When working on any FX shot for a demo reel, start with an animatic, just like any studio does. Until your shots look proper and nice with dummy geometry, don't start working on the shot.

thanks for the help....the op: prefix threw me away

I'm trying an apparently simple example. If I try to get the For Each iteration on an Attribute Wrangle with something like f@distance = detail("../foreach_begin1_metadata1", "iteration",0); it's not grabbing the iteration number. If I do the exact same thing on an Attribute Create, it works. Am I forgetting something on VEX, or is the Wrangle node having a problem with this data?

Hi. Let me chime in as this is a difficult topic but I also have first-hand experience. I´m not as experienced as Andrew in the industry, but I share with him that I was the sole Houdini instructor at FX Animation in Barcelona. I say "was" because I´m now working at MPC as FX TD (I´m leaving the Houdini program on the very capable hands of someone who has been working at MPC for the last 2 years, so it ain´t gonna stop at all). As you might know FX Animation program is also (along with Lost Boys and a few others) one of the VERY few certified by Side FX and you can check the work both in the reels and in Side Effects latest education reel where those works are very present with several projects and I have been consistently releasing Houdini reels from the school for the last 4 years. I´m going to begin stating something that Andrew and instructors from other schools might not like but it is 100% true and I have the data to back me up, and that is the country where you learn is what marks the main price difference. Of course, it would be absurd to try a debate on which program is better. And I´m 100% sure that Lost Boys Houdini program is awesome.The thing is, at our school in Barcelona I was making very similar employment numbers as those shown by Andrew just mainly in London instead of Canada or LA. (The main reason for this London placement being visas, which are difficult to get for America, while working in the EU is free for other EU citizens) Again this data is verifiable with actual names. When I got hired by MPC, 5 people working at the FX department had been my students, 2 of them the previous year so they went in directly from the school. They are now my work mates...how interesting can life get? BUT, and here comes the key difference, education in Spain is WAY cheaper than both London, Vancouver or LA, so our students payed about 20% of the numbers I´ve seen here related to Vancouver, and those London numbers look astronomical, since they are almost double to Barcelona´s program, but FX Animation program duration is 1 year (40 weeks). It´s not that those schools are overpriced. It´s that the economy of the country where you study dictates the price you pay for the education. Regarding "self-taugh vs school" I completely agree with Andrew in that the school gives you a head start and a huge support. It is perfectly possible to get into the industry being self-taught if you are organized and highly motivated, but it is harder (as with any other career choice, BTW). And above anything else and most importantly REEL REEL REEL. Your education should be deeper, but your job-hunting probabilities are as good as your reel. Before studying anywhere check the students reels. Period.

I just found about this stuff, that was brought at last year´s (2015) SIGGRAPH in Asia and it might be the next "great thing" not just for fluids but for compositing, and many other stuff... I think it´s mighty interesting. http://www.physicsforests.com/

Props to everyone. Great work all around. I imagine some permissions are harder to get since I know of some very big projects not featured there. But what´s there looks awesome.

Yes. In a nutshell what he´s doing is creating an empty accum floating parameter and another init parameter where you want the effect to start propagating from. Now, as you mentioned, the pointcloud operation is inside a solver SOP so it will be repeated for every frame. Every frame the VOP network checks for any points with accum parameter: - In the first frame there are none, but he adds the init paramater to those and makes the sum of those the new accum parameter - For the following frames we already have an accum parameter and thanks to the point cloud we add those points close to them. - Don´t forget for every frame he is also adding the "old" accum parameter so that we have the new added to what we already had as the final value. As we don´t want any accum value above 1, we use a clamp to limit it to 1. Otherwise those points that already had a value of 1 would take higher values. And then outside the Solver, we just color the accum parameter and depending on the intended effect we might delete everything not red. This is not the only way to implement a propagation (you could add to a group instead of using a parameter), but it is one of the most common, and this tutorial and example are very nice. Props to Ben Watts for it.

I can´t help with other names for Houdini as I only used GridMarkets with it, but I´ve tried other farms for other software and I think GridMarkets is EXTREMELY affordable compared to other similar solutions I´ve tried before.

meaning nearpoint calls a pointcloud? Interesting! I didn´t know that.

I didn´t check your file yet, but the test looks like a very nice start. I would like to know what´s the difference on speed between "nearpoint" and a point cloud system. That could be a very important factor for an optimized tool, since your scene is kinda slowish in my system. At some point I think any system for this kind of effect should have some sort of complement at shading time to account for small strands on ripped areas.

Yes. Usually the best way to "melt" any object is to separate the parts and convert them separately so you can optimize the different areas according to the geometry.

Wow. Impressive body of work. I´m sure anybody working with you will learn a lot of tricks!

I´ve done something similar to the chopper effect....with another chopper effect, duh The way I did it was to attribute transfer the velocity from the helicopter blades to some random points in the fluid, add some more randomness in VOPs and then use those points as pumps for the fluid. I´m sure the same method can be used for a explosion. You would just need to get the velocity field from it, and transfer it to the fluid points, or maybe use an intermediate geometry to receive that velocity, "massage it" and then transfer it to the points that will act as pumps. In theory you could transfer directly the velocity as you tried, with an advection, but from an artistic point of view it becomes a nightmare because only seldomly you will get a nice visual effect. Probably because the way the velocity affects pyro and fluids is very different regarding magnitudes/visual representation. At least IMHO.