Isleofgough

Thank you. With the amount and type of other software I use, not to mention data only on a time machine backup, switching operating systems is not desirable. The comments on configurations were helpful.

I am trying to keep buying a Mac Pro under $9000 with discount. I burned out my iMac from probably overheating with many days of rendering. If rendering models with high definition texture maps but little simulations is the goal, would it be best to upgrade the processor from 8 to 12 cores, expand RAM, or upgrade the graphics card to a Vega?

It looks like "sheen" was what caused the problem. Changing it to zero fixed the render issue.

There is no patterns section in Houdini 17.5, but you can add a principled shader and right click: allow editing of contents, and add a pattern within this

It sounds like you don't have good Uv mapping. Check your uv view to see if you have a shape other than just a line or nothing.

I am rendering an image that takes about an hour and a half on a Imac 2017 and it has more grain than I would like (see attachment). How would I improve this without significantly increasing render time? My current Mantra render settings are: Mantra tile size 48 Reflection limit 4 Refraction limit 4 Diffuse limit 0 Color limit 3 Ray tracing Bias 0.001 Sampling pixel sample 5x5 Gamma 2.2 Min ray samples 2 max ray samples 8 noise level 0.001 Global quality 2 Diffuse quality 1 Render 16 bit integer Tiff with gamma 2.2, 2500x2000 px

I figured it out. I needed to transform the grid slightly. Everything is working ZipTie.hiplc

I am trying to create the beginning of a plastic ratchet tie, and I can't seem to get the notches to align properly according to the normals of the curve. I am using copy to points. How would I transform them afterwards according the direction of normal of the curve? What am I missing? Thanks.

That looks useful. Thank you for sharing!

I discussed this with Mr. Goldfarb from SideFx and it does not appear one can change the default behavior of new bone creation in ortho views. However, it was possible to fix the rotations with a somewhat tedious method of clicking on each bone, enabling child compensation, cleaning any transforms, rotating the bone 90 degrees in z, cleaning rotates, and then disabling child compensation.

I have been trying to rig two hands from a model I exported from C4D as obj files. (I tried the fbx export, but there was a lot of junk bones brought over that way). I tried to follow the Houdini hand rigging tutorials, but when I place bones, they rotate on the y axis for flexion, rather than the x axis. I tried to add just one bone and then change the initial null to a 90 degree rotation around the z axis, but when I add subsequent bones to the first bone, it reverts to placing bones that rotate in the y axis for flexion of fingers. I am trying to have the bones orient in the z axis but rotate for flexion/extension in the x axis. How do I change the defaults for bone placement to do this? Thanks.

... almost as in ~20%, but thank you. I see what you mean about the Convert Line method too.

I still think there must be a way of doing this all in a shader. (since many other 3D programs DO have a built in cell shader). I know absolutely nothing about what I'm doing in shader editing, but I tried to at least get a start with this. If I could remap the greyscale with some sort of ramp to pure white and pure black, I would be very close. I'm guessing this wouldn't work if actual UVs were applied: FakeCellShader.hiplc

That is a clever solution. Thanks!