Isleofgough

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

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

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 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.

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?

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!

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?

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?

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

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!

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:

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.

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.

Flatten doesn't seen to do anything (in scene view). Opening up the DM menu does weird things with the mouse (changing position, making it unresponsive, etc.). For me, this slowed up modeling. The geometry library however was a bit helpful. Supposedly these issues are unique to Macs.

Without a video, it is easy to explain one obvious issue. If one selects the DM_menu tool and clicks on any box, (like "smooth"), the smooth node gets created and the DM_menu disappears. The parameters cannot be changed without pushing the escape key. The space key doesn't work either.