Isleofgough

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!

much better solution than I came up with. I didn't know the node "hole". Thanks! I was curious about why you needed to add a resample node, though. The hole node worked for all but one letter and the resample node was required to fix it (a "D"). Why was that necessary?

I have looked at various ways of rendering just the visible edges in Houdini, and it seems like I have to use Flipbook. To add the lines on top of an existing texture, I have to do a double render and composite them. Is there a shader that basically just adds lines (multiplying an image of the edges on top of a constant or principled shader?

Thanks for the example, but I don't think that will work. If I did what you did and create a group of polygons where I want to reverse the normal, it will then extrude the outer part as well as inner part the same direction but not do a cutout (which is what a compound path is supposed to do). I would still need to set it up roughly the way I originally did and create some blast nodes and a boole to subtract the inner part of the compound path. Indian_Health_Service_Logo.ai.zip IHSlogo.hiplc

I am trying to recreate a few old projects in Houdini. One has a fairly simple logo which was created from a Illustrator version 8 file (nothing complicated but compound paths from changing text to shapes): When I bring in the illustrator file to Houdini, instead of using compound paths, it reverses the normal of the inside section, so it brings in things like this: I can get around it by creating a boole (see image) but is there something I am doing wrong on import?

That is very helpful! Building shaders is not something i’ve had to do in other 3D programs excepting connecting some intuitive nodes. Other programs with npr shaders generally have outline features as well, but in Houdini this is a separate shader that has to be assigned to instance or copy - and it works only when the other is assigned a cartoon color shader. The prebuilt toon color shader doesn’t have many options, so your tutorial on building it manually is invaluable!

Thank you. I am still trying to get my head around shader nodes. I find them less intuitive than geometry nodes and am looking for free or paid tutorials to understand them better. I really appreciate your example. I looked at the toon outline and toon color shader’s internal structure and they are formidable. In addition, the outline shader doesn’t work right if the copy or instance has a principled shader. Sidefx has registered this as a bug, but I’m sure the solution is in the nodes.

That is PERFECT!! I tried to modify the color toon shader, but it is not something that can be easily altered to quantize more than three levels. I will look at the details to see how you made this, but it works great! Quick question, though: I assume your shader doesn't read your color data? It looks like your color is derived from the texture map.

How would I set up a shader to create non photorealistic banding based on luminosity remapped to a stepped color ramp? Here are C4D and Modo shaders that get that effect:

Looking at your file, it looks like you defined pscale not over a 0-1 range. You could use the fit01 function if you want to change your scale. (go into the geometry view for the foreach_end1 node). There are various ways you can define pscale. See attachment for a few examples where pscale was defined by an attribute wrangle. pscale.hiplc

Mr. Vanzhula asked if his tool worked correctly on OSX if I accessed this through a hot key rather than through the shelf. It does. None of the strange mouse effects, need to press escape etc. happen if it is accessed through a hot key; only when accessed through the shelf. Thanks for the solution. Now it does help speed up modeling.