Noobini

in Max, it's a simple Unify Normals...could not be any simpler....so after digging around in Houdini looking for a simple node...there has to be one I thought....I was so close to putting up the Bat signal for help...when I stumbled up on the Doc.....Polydoctor... in Topology tab, enable Correct Winding of Polygons to Majority in their Manifold Patch Note that it's quite a mouthful...and that mouthful means it doesn't correct the cubes in the above file from PixelNinja because each cube is its own patch..is already 'unified'. It works best on individual connected geos that is screwed up. vu_unifyNormals.hiplc

oh, never knew that, thanks.

because during import, you have Retriangulate Polygons disabled. Tick it. Then after imported, select all polys and clear out Smoothinggroups

this is why I specificly quoted your conditions.....a CLOSED shape. If they're not connected how can it be closed ? If they were random non connected points...you can still use triangulate 2D but there's no guarantee of it working for overhang/concave parts.

given the conditions above, it's quite easy...just 2 nodes required (you can add an extra sort to reverse order if required) vu_sortradial.hiplc

I've gone this route...if someone asks you to bend a 1x1x1 segment box.......well you can't cos there ain't enough segments for it to bend. So I decide if the pearls are sooooo low res, they would less likely to deform. So in my new file, if you sim it now (don't go down to peak and subdiv yet) the pearl sphere have Freq at 2, you'll see deformations as they smash into each other. Substep for the sim is at 2 which is a minimal increase. Now go up to the sphere and change Freq to 1, sim again....to the naked eye...that's good enough for me as a rigid object. Then now you'll see the cheating purpose of the peak and subdiv, they are simply there to get back the volume of the pearls that were lost due to extreme low res setting. I'd take this approach with the cost as a minimal substep increase. Of course, I don't know how extreme your situation is....is there a mock up test file ? vu_hankypearls2.hiplc

Houdini Vellum is Pure Evil.... (stuff the FB group....won't post there....bunch of idolators)

had another thought....the reason it works with higher scatter count is...because of many/dense neighbours...they jostle each other and cause them to 'wake' up..... Does that sound reasonable, gurus ?

ok, I don't understand how things work under the hood...but here's what I found with a bit of prodding... Believe it or not, if you INCREASE the scatter...say 200....IT WORKS !!! The lower the count, the more chance there would be strays that get left behind. What the fook is going on ? Aha, gotcha ! So now if you DECREASE the count to say as low as 20.....there would be strays that get left behind. now go into to DOP, increase Sleeping time to 10..voila......all get moving again... (there's still the mystery of why higher count works even with the default Sleeping time at 2...)

this here has the handkerchief, naturally as vellum cloth, then it also has pearls which are like RBDs....but the pearls are really just vellum cloth objects that are incredibly stiff...so it 'looks' like 2-way interaction between RBD and vellum

ok, at last, no more manual flipflopping.....it will auto select the correct part under the wax seal to pin down for you. vu_vellumseal4.hiplc

stuff it, going back to using edgefracture cuz the Boolean sometimes shits itself... vu_vellumseal3.hiplc

ok, this version will rip without you having to sometimes flip flop the pinned geo, so just vary the mountain to shape the wax...then let her rip... vu_vellumseal2.hiplc

not sure about RBD involvement here. Here's my quick proof of concept, you can vary the size/shape of the wax seal, the rip will auto update. (the paper looks crap but hey...just a proof of concept) (a bit annoying that as you vary the shape of the wax seal, sometimes the edgefracture flip flops the result, so if you've just modified the seal and suddenly the larger piece of the paper is now pinned...just go into group after edgefracture, and change the @piece==0 or 1 to the other one...) vu_vellumseal.hiplc

my thoughts are these: - if you plan to blend the last 15 frames...then run a non-loop sim first, then pick the initial frame as somewhere about 15 frames from the end.....ie. it will not be DRASTICALLY different from the last frame. Of course, once you picked your initial frame and rerun the sim, you'll still have to pray hard that it turns out similar to your previous run. - I think toadstorm's approach is same as the Gamedev's shelf tool. To me if you spend a lot of time tweaking your sim, then you want to loop it and this will compromise your orig result because of blending....so I want to compromise the least amount...ie. some frames at one end rather than mirroring 2 ends and blend middle. But who knows, it may give you a better look, give the Gamedev one a go. - yeah the stash is great, you'll just have to get used to run some sim, scrub to where you like the 'shape', connect the result from bottom back up to stash, update stash, disconnect input of stash, rerun....rinse repeat....bit confusing at first...but great once you've grasped the workflow.