anim

not very lengthy, just create one Embedded asset and add all needed textures or any files into Extra files, then reference them as mentioned, you can keep adding more as you need

Extract Transform SOP + Transform Pieces SOP

purely technically it's possible, however I've never been a big fan of Houdini's blackbody shader as it seems off and weird that the tonemapping has to be used, but for what it's worth here is the setup as it's used in the pyro shader pointVOP_blackbody.hip

Primwrangle, Constraint geo in first input, Vellum geo with attrib you want to scale by in second string attrib = chs("attrib"); int pts[] = primpoints(0, @primnum); float v0 = point(1, attrib, pts[0]); float v1 = point(1, attrib, pts[1]); f@restlength *= avg(v0, v1); ts_vellum_paint_restlengthscale.hip

not knowing anything about HDK, but there is a checkbox on Empty Object and therefore Flip Object too called Solve On Creation Frame, which is off by default that's why default external forces are not applied on the first frame, so possibly your implementation needs to consider that flag

the jittering is caused by your popvop1 as you are constantly flipping the tangent v vector every frame - to fix that you can just swap the inputs on the cross2 node - also on your popvop_modify_P_and_drag node enable normalize1 node - lastly, connect your two popvops after everything else, otherwise solver may still move your points into 'collisions' which will not be corrected for

set Equalize Lengths and Stiffen Boundaries to 0 then it may help if you randomize prims before (Sort SOP) and pre-triangulate your geo (divide SOP) as old sop did it internally

or something along these lines (contains layer and wedge attribs) connect_to_center_3.hiplc

make sure you are looking at your values outside of your SOP solver, not inside

divergence field is automatically created from your particle attribute (you can turn on it's visualization on FLIP Object) however by default Divergence Scale on the FLIP Solver is not animatable, so in your case you are creating divergence all the time causing fluid to expand, so you either: - unlock, dive inside and in update_divergence_field change dropdown next to Post-Mult to Set Always - or animate your divergence attribute instead (in DOPs)

don't use solver inside of the for loops the best workflow nowadays for that will probably be TOPs, where you can run every objet through your sim independently, and also change only the ones that you need if you need to iterate more

element size or scale is the inverse of frequency, arguably more intuitive and if you use any Fractal Type, you'll see controls for roughness too you can also use Point Velocity SOP in Keep Incoming mode and Add Curl Noise

give it some time, every new technology needs to mature, also having overlapping contexts during transition period is not sloppy but very smart, if TOPs are gonna replace ROPs this can't happen over night, so having them in parallel can help the transition, also backward compatibility and artist knowledge needs to be considered. You simply can't just remove a feature or entire context with a snap and expect everyone to be up and running with a completely new set of tools just like that LOPs and Obj don't necessarily overlap 100% so I can see them both taking a specific path in the future rather than one being removed also I'll always prefer to have a choice between 2 ways to do something rather than 0

silhouette and convex hull are potentially different shapes, but here is example of both 2d_silhouette.hip

you can use Attribute Reorient SOP to reorient the vector attribute from rest geo to deforming one