christianl013

Yeah, in summary, you have to calculate v by importing the tangent normal of the curve and pcopen allows you to import the normals from the curve so that you can use it for velocity and in turn apply that to your POPs. You can also just try using the pops curve force node, it works with multiple splines as well. I hope that's helpful, the files linked in this thread were helpful for me as well and hopefully could be of some use to you too. Cheers, Christian

Hi Guys, I noticed that TOPS does not seem to recognize the $JOB variable. Is there a workaround for this? Do I have to create an attrib that can be read by TOPs specifically. I am a TOPs noob for sure so I just wanted to ask and see if anyone else has run into this. Thanks! Cheers, Christian

Hi Guys, I have a ball of yarn I made with curves. I need a poly sphere to push through this ball of yarn from the inside moving out and have the ball of yarn return back to it original state (form). I tried the ray sop but the points snap back into place and do not move smoothly across the surface of the sphere. I have only been using Houdini for a year now so I am still a bit of a noob and I am not sure if there is a way to solve this with sops as opposed to wire solvers. I am not that familiar with wire solvers as of yet and I am not afraid to dive in but I am on a bit of a deadline so I am trying to get a jump start here on which direction I should go on this that will get me there the fastest. I have looked at alot of things on the net but I have not been able to find any solutions on how to achieve this effect. Does anyone out there have any ideas on how I should go about doing this? Thanks alot. Cheers, Christian

Thanks, that was a great idea, I seem to have gotten somewhere with this. I now have thousands of these on a geo via copy to points but I need to get it into max. I packed them using a pack node before copy to points and then exported to alembic. When I imported the abc into Max my RAM went through the roof and Max pretty much locked up; so clearly I did something wrong there. I tried reducing the poly count as best I could but I think I am missing the general workflow here. Have you done this before? Can you clue me in on how this usually is done if I need it to go to another 3d application like Maya or Max? Thanks! Cheers, Christian

hey guys, I am pretty new to Houdini and am trying to achieve a specific effect. Here is a link to a video reference of what I am trying to do: At about the 1:53 mark is a good reference of what I am trying to achieve in terms of the animation. It's kind of like a liquid metal growth that I need to turn into solid metal over time, like a mesh that turns solid. So, my question to the great Houdini minds out there is this, how would I go about achieving this with Houdini? I know the answer may not be a quick one but even if I was pointed in the right direction it would be a great help. Thanks! Cheers, Christian

Yes, exactly, The cubes would occupy the surface topology and I just want to be able to have a "mograph" type control over the cubes while they still sit on the surface as you see in the pic that I attached. Cheers, Christian

Hey Guys, I am working on making a character out of cubes. Basically I want to be able to have the cubes on the mesh, conform to the topology and then have the control to be able to move, rotate and scale the cubes independantly while still conforming to the mesh. I have been looking around and found some good solutions for this (see attached images 1 and 2) and I feel that I am close but I have been running into a few snags that seem to be a bit above my level of expertise and was hoping to get some assistance. As you can see in image1 the rotations seem to tear or collapse into the cubes as opposed to rotating on a local axis from where it is placed. Basically after calls to primuv and prim_normal any calls to rotate or scale points don't seem to apply the way they should or how you would expect them to. (I hope that makes sense.). If you guys see or know of a better way to implement this type of solution then I would be more than happy to listen and learn. Thanks for your time. Cheers, Christian

looks like a just answered my own question on using mulitple curves. But what if we want the particles to orbit around the axis of the spline? How does one acheive that? Cheers, Christian

Thanks alot, your answers were very helpful. One thing all these example files have is one spline per scene and this is piped into the pop/dop network with the first or second context inputs. But what if I have alot of splines that I need particles to follow? Can I call pcopen on a wrangle and just point it to the spline directly or how does one go about this type of setup with multiple splines in the system. Thanks again. Cheers, Christian

Hi Guys, I have a system of Pops where particles are following several splines with a PopCurve Force node. I got everything working the way I want except for one small detail that I have not been able to figure out. The detail is how do I align the particles so that they face the direction of the spline? I don't want them to bank along the spline per se but just have an axis aligned to the spline almost like dominos or people marching in a single line along the path of the spline. It has to feel very organic which is why I am using POPs with forces and things like that as opposed to doing it in SOPs. I thought maybe a POP LookAt would work but I am not sure how to get the curve alignment data to POPs. I am sure this has been done twelve ways from Sunday but I am pretty new to Houdini and haven't able to figure it out fully as of yet. Anything advice on this would be awesome. Thanks! Cheers, Christian

Thanks alot, That seems to work.

Hello, This is my first post here and I am a one month houdini noob and was looking for some help on how to achieve a certain effect. I have a box, made of glass, that I need to procedurally shatter and then have it reform back together again. The trick with this is that when the box comes back together again I do not want to see any of the fracturing that was done but I want it to be whole again. Since the box is made out of a glass material when it reforms it looks all fractured up from all the cutting of the voroni fracture node. Is there a way to weld the geo back together again once it reforms so it looks like a glass box without cracks? Thanks! Cheers, Christian