953u6015t

If I’m guessing it right you must be Alessandro Pepe. If so, cheers for your “FX Thinking” blog! Yes, I agree with what you mentioned. Things like independent events or trail such has the benefits. Eddy for Nuke was interesting but wasn’t aware it was sparse!

Basic smoke solver built within SOP solver, utilising openVDB nodes. Happy exploring & expanding =) P.S. DOP’s smoke solver still solves quicker in many cases though. vdbsmokesolver_v1.hipnc

Good point. Something I have to improvise I guess. Initially I wanted to but was lazy, easier to put a setup than writing. I'll consider in future though!

Filament like structure, combination of Smoke Solver, VDB Advect Points + Volume Rasterize Particles. smokesolver_v3.hipnc

Another, focused on instancing smoke objects. Manipulating points with basic instancing attributes, i@cluster, v@scale and f@sourceframe. How to activate smoke object and holding a volume source. This method ideal for triggering independent gas simulation on impact data. Additional examples, e.g. grid clustering method for trail and non-trail which I'm merging from a separate thread. smokesolver_v2.hipnc

Subjective question, at least this how I started: 1. Shelf tools, learn the basics and concepts. 2. Dive into DOPs OTLs/HDAs and look around to see how they are implemented. My examples are just a product of what those Side Effects guys implemented. 3. Read Houdini's documentation. 4. Be inspired by all the test that posted on Vimeo/YouTube that doesn't look like off the shelf imagery.

Few tips and tricks to manipulate gas simulation. 1. Independent resolution grid. E.g. Overriding vel grid size independent to a density grid. 2. Creating additional utilities. E.g. gradient, speed, vorticity and etc which can be used to manipulate forces. 3. Forces via VEX and some example snippets. smokesolver_v1.hipnc P.S. Some of this technique are not Open CL friendly though.

An example of grid clustering. cluster_v01_01.hipnc

Shameless plug: https://www.orbolt.com/asset/953u6015t::gashybrid