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Is anyone in the process of creating a Challenge #2? If not I would be willing to try and create one.

Great File. I meant to respond earlier, but got distracted going through your file, very helpful. In regards to simulating wind, there is an example help file using Wire Dynamics to simulate an l-system in the wind, though this may be over kill. Depending on what you would like the wind to look like I would be tempted to use expressions to animate the points. I'm not sure what you mean by "sky sensitive" leaves, do you mean you want them all to be facing up? If so in the past I have used a VOP SOP to bias normals to point upright, without rotating too far from there initial direction. Can't wait to see the next update.

Really Nice. I really like the shading and over all style. What did you use for the light ray effect?

A little late but here is the final. I set it to render last night before I went to bed, but didn't have a chance to post until this afternoon. pirate_ship_o.mov pirate_ship_o.hipnc I didn't get as far as I would have liked. I built a cannon, but never animated it, so I didn't include them in the final animation. I would have liked to add details to the card texture, but I think the idea gets across. Let me know what you think. ~Marshalll

MENOZ- Sorry it's taken so long to reply, this week was the start of a new Term. The expression is actually creating channel names, with the same naming conventions as the Geometry CHOP. I got the technique from the CHOPs tutorials from the Old School Blog. The first part of the expression (t[xyz]) creates three channels: tx ty tz. The last portion in brackets [0-`chopn("../input_geo")-chopn("../tx_tz")-1`] is used to add the point number to the channel, and create the same number of channels as the input_geo CHOP. chopn("../input_geo"), returns the number of channels in the input geometry, this is 3 times the number of points in the actually geometry. chopn("../tx_tz") returns the number of channels when all of the ty channels are removed or 2/3rds of the input geometry. When put all together the expression would evaluate to something like [0-99] if the there were 100 points in the Input Geometry. So if the entire expression would then generate channels tx0 tx1 .. tx99 ty0 ty1 .. ty99 tz0 tz1 ... tz99. I hope this helps. ~Marshall

pirate_ship_l.mov After playing around with CHOPs some more I finally got a working solution. I have rearranged the animation, so that the boat builds from the bottom, I also reworked the animation of the cards on the bow so that each set of cards grow from the previous set. I changed the timing on the animation so there is more overlap. pirate_ship_m.mov I also took some time to rough in the animation of the deck. I think the movements of the deck are too linear. I will take some time to go back and add some easing to the card falling as well as the slide across the deck. I'm also going to add the sails, and cannons before I get too much further,

pirate_ship_h.avi Here's an update with a render (I hope this works for everyone, first experience with mencoder in Ubunutu). I'm still having interpenetration problems. To animate the hull and the back deck I'm using CHOPs to blend between two positions on a per point basis. What I would like to do is blend between multiple shapes on a per point basis. I looked through the help and found an example using a Composite CHOP that claims to do what I want, but I can't get the Example File to load. Any ideas on how tackle any of these problem would be useful. I'm not dead set on using CHOPs, but the Blendshapes SOP would only blend the entire mesh at once. pirate_ship_k.hipnc I've attached my most recent HIP file. If it seems to freeze on load, it's because it takes a second to cook the expression CHOPs, but once cooked everything runs smoothly. I would also appreciate any help to get these networks to cooking faster. Thanks for the Help. ~Marshall

So I have spent some more time modeling the pirate ship. I created the sides of aft section, and the hull from a set curves extracted from a NURBS surface. I also used the these surfaces to orient the normals for instancing. The decks were created from grids, and a Group Paint SOP. I created the mast from a group of cards bent to form a small cylinder, and then copied them vertically. I plan to animate these groups to build the masts. I still have a number of things to tackle, most notably cannons, sails, and trim. I think I'm going to have cannons on the deck, instead of outside the hull. I also plan the to extend the pairs of card on the front all the way along the bottom of the boat. Originally my plan was to add the ocean, but I'm worried I will run out of time so instead I'm going to add a rudder and some detail to the keel. pirate_ship_i.mov I started animating the cards assembling the hull. The bulk of the hull is animated using CHOPs. They are basically animated to go between a rest position and a final position, with a little secondary motion. I used some point attributes, along with a few expressions and channel numbers to offset when the animation started forming the wave effect. I animated the pairs of cards on the bow as a local group driven from a spare attribute. I stamped the spare channel with an expression, to create the animation. I want to rearrange the timing of the animation, so that the the hull starts at the front on both sides and the back starts to build after the sides. I hope to get some more work done tonight, and set up a render. pirate_ship_i.hipnc

I've decided I would like to build a pirate ship, not the adobe one specifically. I have done a few tests with assembling the cards into various shapes, using CHOPs. If I have time I would also like to take a shot at building the textures procedurally in COPs. I hope the HIP files isn't too hard to follow, I will mark it up with some comments later today, I just wanted to post it before I took off. ~Marshall Scene File: pirate_ship_c.hipnc

I have had plenty of success writing out OBJ sequences from Maya and importing them into Houdini, what was the problem? Did the OBJ's not export? Did you only get a single file? You need to write a script MEL or Python to export the sequence. Do the OBJ's display incorrectly(Flipped the Normals)? What about FBX? Is that only in 9.1?

Maybe I am over simplifying the problem, but couldn't you scale the velocity with point a sop ($VX * 0.1 as an expression for velocity)? ~Marshall

I don't have anything technical but here are my impressions. I installed the 8800 GTX in September, about the same time I installed Ubuntu 7.10. The card runs well under Windows XP (not 64). No longer am I plagued by Houdini GUI redraw errors. The view port is smooth, and Houdini 9 would go longer then 10 minutes without crashing, About a week after I installed the card I switched from Windows to Ubuntu, Under Ubuntu after turning on the restricted drives, the 8800 is a dream, It runs smoothly, without issue or error, and gives me unneeded confidence. To be honest I was impressed how well the Ubuntu 7.10 and 8800 worked together. I would recommend this card to anyone.

Generally speaking I'm not sure how to do that other than using an Add Vop. However in the case of a For Loop (or Illuminance Loop), Create a constant VOP outside of the for loop and set an initial value. Then plug the constant into the for loop. Inside the for loop connect '_constant' to an Add VOP, and connect the output of the Add VOP to '_constant' in suboutput1. This will add a new output for the For Loop. I hope this helps. I've attached an example file. ~MP for_loop_example.hip

I've attached an H8 and H9 version. It includes both a diffuse example as well as a phong example. I'm going to create a tutorial on how to build the shader. Hope this helps. ~MP illuminance_loop_H8.hip illuminance_loop_H9.hipnc

Another alternative is to use an illuminance VOP, and create you own custom diffuse (or any lighting model) VOP. When it's finished you can save it as an OTL, and use the VOP over again for custom shaders. I just finished this my self, so if you need any help, or would like me to post an example, let me know. ~MP