Leaderboard

In case it's useful to anyone, here's an asset I made a little while ago and finally got round to documenting. It takes one or m ore curves and generates 3 levels of braided curves - first level coiled around the input, second coiled around the first and the third around the second. Additionally it can make a final level of 'hairs'. It supports animated inputs, and will transfer velocity onto the output but in many cases it's probably better to use a timeshift to generate the rope on 1 frame and use a point deform or similar. This also avoids texture jumping problems if using the supplied 'pattern' colour method. There's a fairly comprehensive help card with it and below is a demo video. If anyone finds bugs or problems, please let me know and I'll try and fix them when I have time... I'd be very interested to see anything anyone makes with it... TB__RopeMaker_1_0.hda

Hello, I have been experimenting with Grains node and shelf setups as as custom setups. I started with a sphere, then a sand castle and last was a statue. Some results were pleasant then I ran into some issues. Weird and strange behaviors such as floating sand clumps. Mainly it looks like too much force or friction. The problem that the solver feels like it is too sensitive (minor values can change things very quickly). Any pointers or advice is greatly appreciated. Copy_of_SandCastle.mp4 SandCastle_002.mov SandCastle_003.mp4 SandSolver_issue.mp4

lol. I would stick with alembic. It's a flat hierarchy. Once you import one you can see how the creation script modifies the default nodes. Then you can make an HDA from that imported files, that does the same, but all you need to change is the file it loads from disk. It's pretty obvious and interesting how it works. Then you can use the same alembic camera in all DCCs.

Once you get to the point where you are pulling library of assets, and modifying them for different sequences, shots and environments. Crowds, Cars, Fire hydrants, city blocks more standard Houdini bread and butter. Cool good luck!

Nope what you are doing with @shop_materialpath is the fundamental basics that has not changed in a long time. Albeit we do not use the shop context as much anymore... now we use materials, but they won't just shut it off at some point when they make the switch. Manipulating this path is the key for material assignments. It's always an absolute path, so if you store your materials at an object level context like /OBJ/MATERIALS (or always in the material context which I don't suggest) as you did it becomes real easy to reassign the materials with basic string edits, and especially python. You could make a string attribute like "material" as you were doing before or "name" as is common for dop workflow(though consult with your fx team first) and then use that to help you reassign materials if you need later. Having two string based attributes is really cheap as it saves them in a dictionary, unlike unique groups that use integers. Since it's a dictionary of values you can just list the unique instances of those materials, and create a respective hda with python based on where that material should be stored. So /OBJ/MATERIALS/Sequence/... /OBJ/MATERIALS/Shot/... /OBJ/MATERIALS/Character/... /OBJ/MATERIALS/Common/... you can also use those names to create the correct HDA (like principled shader) and apply the correct preset to those HDAs now however you stored them. There are a lot of possibilities here, so what ever works best for your system.

I could have sworn I used it several times yesterday.... Seems to do the trick! Thanks so much!!!

not sure if I'm on the right track here...but here's an attempt. Try disabling prevy = curpos.y; and see if that's more like it...(I doubt it) vu_levelling.hipnc

I'm working on something related to art direct the swirly motion of gases; Its an implementation of a custom buoyancy model that let you art direct very easily the general swirly motion of gases without using masks, vorticles, temperature sourcing to have more swirly motion in specific zones, etc. Also it gets rid of the "Mushroom effect" for free with a basic turbulence setup. Here are some example previews. Some with normal motion, others with extreme parameters values to stress the pipeline. For the details is just a simple turbulence + a bit of disturbance in the vel field, nothing complex, because of this the sims are very fast (for constant sources: average voxel count 1.8 billions, vxl size 0.015, sim time 1h:40min (160 frames), for burst sources, vxl size 0.015, sim time 0h:28min). I'm working on a vimeo video to explain more this new buoyancy model that I'm working on. I hope you like it! Cheers, Alejandro constantSource_v004.mp4 constantSource_v002.mp4 burstSource_v004.mp4 constantSource_v001.mp4 burstSource_v002.mp4 burstSource_v003.mp4 burstSource_v001.mp4 constantSource_v003.mp4

Hello. I'm so sorry for replying so late - I had to switch to another project, then I had to change cities - during Xmas season and all that. It was a nightmare, no more time for fun However, your tip is greatly appreciated! Before you've posted I got close to one solution, explained here: https://sidefx.com/forum/topic/52961/ Your solution sounds like the best one somebody was willing to share - I hope I will get a chance to get back to this soon. Thank you so much Bruno

Good, that worked. SDF_voppop_particles_flow.hipnc