mrCatfish

For Redshift, I think you have to do it this way:

Yes, I'd say if you can do it with hscript, you should. Python is great, but it's slower than hscript and most of the time, longer. I've seen files with trillions of lines of python where most of it could be done with SOPs or simple hscript. I guess if all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.

Regular Houdini has had a cache node ever since I remember, however I seldom use it. Before the "time" SOPs existed, the cache node was a good way to do time-warp effects. However, the cache node in Solaris does double duty AFAIK... it caches data so indeed it does not need to be recalculated and also, as the docs say, "This node is also useful to enable motion blur in the viewport for transformation data authored in the LOP network." And yes, Houdini evaluates everything time-dependant every frame. Every frame is a whole new world and by default each frame knows nothing about the previous frame unless you are using a solver of some sort.

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You didn't include any of the fbx files. Can you just use the stash SOP to stash this geo in the hip file?

Can you post a hip file? Even if it's just the collision object.

A reference picture of what you are trying to do would help.

Well, if you do it my way, you don't need the null... you just plug in the camara. However, I suggested you switch the transform to camera space as the world space transforms will now be taken care of by the parent relationship.

ch(chs("camera")+"/near") ch(chs("camera")+"/far") ... should do the trick. A more elegant way of doing what you are doing might be to plug the cam into the node. I don't have the node definition though, so not sure if this will work with the transforms and all... but maybe changing "space" to "camera space" and this will work:

I think you are going to have to do some kind of wacky smoke retime thing where you slow the smoke right down until it stops. At the same time, you take the same density VDB and convert it to a surface and erode/unerode it so it looks like it is forming from the smoke. Then you will probably want to treat that further by adding some procedural noise so it begins to look like ice and doing some blending in the shader. Then rendering in a million layers and AOVs and comping the heck out of it.

Here is a working version. I don't use the polyframe anymore personally... orient along curve does everything polyframe does but better. corner_test_machineFX.hipnc

Have you tried doing the polywire at a rest frame and point deforming them using "id" as the piece attribute? You can also give the wires an up vector on the rest frame and this will usually prevent this kind of flickering.

point(0,0,"speed",0) Which mean: use first input, look at point 0, look at the speed attribute, look at the first index of this attribute, (there is only one because it is a float). Of course, if the speed varied and you wanted the average or something, you could attribute promote to a detail set to average, then use the detail expression instead of the point expression.

You can use the chop expression. First, you ahve to determine the name of the CHOP channel... in CHOPs, middle click and you should see the channel name is "chan1." So in your offset parm: chop("/obj/chopnet1/warp1/chan1") Hope that helps! Sean

Will this do? warp.MachineFX.hip

Image from above... I turned down the lights and converted to area so you can see the colors.

The official help is here: https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/render/instancinglights.html Here is your file with the instanced colored lights working. I reduced the number of lights otherwise it just kind of averages to white. pineTree_02MachineFX.hipnc

You will need to use a SOP solver or CHOPs for this. This takes the previous frames value and maxes it with the current frame, so the values will never decrease.