christianl013

Ouch. Okay, I guess that could explain it. Thanks. Cheers, Christian

Hi guys, I just upgraded to houdini 18 and for some reason the render to backround button is not working. it keeps telling me that I need to save the file first, but I have saved the file every time and hit the button immediately afterwards but it still gives the same message. However, if I close and reopen the file for the first time it works if all I do is push the button as soon as the program opens. I am using Houdini 18.0.391 on windows 7. Anybody else have this problem or know how to fix it? Thanks. Cheers, Christian

Thanks, that solved it for me. since I was re-sampling the prims I had to put the attrib transfer before the resample, otherwise the point ids were all scrambled. Anyways, thanks for the direction on that. Best, Christian

Hello, I have a setup similar to a plexus effect where I have a point cloud that has lines connected to the points by proximity. The issue here is that after a time the connected points need to animate to a different position and the lines they are connected to start to pop off and on due to the change in the proximity of the points. Is there a way I can lock this down after they are created so that the lines always stay anchored to the points without losing their connection? I only have a production file right now so I can submit a hip right away, but if anyone has any ideas that would help alot. Thanks. Best, Christian

Thanks, I was using vray proxies and I found that I had to promote the UVs to points. that seemed to solve it for that specific case. Best, Christian

Hi Guys, I am making a shot where I have a vellum source emitting thousands of cloth patches into a tube. The source geo has UVs and seems to be textured properly in Houdini, However I have to export this system to another DCC for rendering at my studio. When I did the export (abc) and apply a material to the export the material does not go on like it did in Houdini. I ensured that the UVs were exported when I did the export but it would seem that this does not work the same. Does anyone have any experience with this? Do I need to do something else to get the UVs to transfer properly? Any help on this would be awesome. Thanks. Best, Christian

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