Dweeble

'Extract Centroid' can store the centroid as a primitive attribute. You can get the same effect by using centroid(0, *X/Y/Z*) in 'transform3''s pivot, then scale by 'prim_scale'. Not sure how the setup makes sense but maybe I'm missing something.

I sometimes have extremely slow nodes and deleting the contents of 'houdini_temp' in User/<Username>/AppData/Local/temp has always resolved it.

I want to agree with #1, but if I don't consider efficiency early I'll usually feel like I'm building a house on mud just so I know exactly where to put the foundation after I'm done building. This point: Is a good one. You don't learn to pick battles until you've lost a couple thousand.

If you google "Techie Houdini", it's a .se site with a few Houdini tools. There's a 'Color Sampler 2.0' HDA that populates a ramp based on an input image. Has a ton of settings as well including samples, distribution of samples etc. It's a free download but there are also a few paid ones on there and I'm not sure how frowned-upon linking to such things is. If I recall Substance Designer has the line-painting mechanic? The HDA has a 'line mode' but as far as I can tell that just does the straight line. Doesn't look like modifying it to accept Draw Curve would take much work, though.

I don't work in 3d/fx for a living, but spend a good 6-10 hours a day in Houdini doing exactly this. I don't have tasks assigned to me, no responsibilities to deliver anything, no deadlines to meet. I'd love to save myself some frustration but so far I've lacked the willpower to brutally put down the need for my stuff to be better.

What kind of end-result do you want to use the mesh for? Do you want the original geometry's topology? Like this? O6F9b5nQDF.webm If so you could boolean the mesh away: RnD_Infection.v01.hiplc That's the old mesh on top of the new mesh. If you get rid of the white section you still have 'nasty' topology wherever the geometry isn't defined (the inside of the column). Not sure what kind of topology you're looking for. If it's quads and perfect edge-loops I have bad news for you :D.

I have this often. It's usually point 0. In this scenario I'd probably set my normals relative to the circle's center (Polyframe Style set to Primitive Centroid), or "@N=getbbox_center(0)-@P;" in a wrangle. In looping but not circular geometry I manually set point 0's attributes in a wrangle (like averaging its neighbors attributes, or manually calculating the tangent from the geometry's last point). If that doesn't work I resample to a gazillion points and interpolate. If that's not an option I clip half the geometry off and mirror it. If that's not an option I delete my graph and abandon the project. Hope you get a cleaner answer, I've been wondering whether there's an easy, universal solution.

I hope to one day be the proud owner of a... "_Blender Library/Scans/Donut/Sprinkled_Donut_01_C.OBJ"! Until then you could use this maybe? It acts wonky unless you flatten the points against one axis, but your thingie looks circular enough for it to work. I tried to copy your geometry and it sorted it alright. sortish.hiplc