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Thanks Benyee and ItsMeM , I'll take a look this evening after work. Looks like I should continue with my Vex studying, as the bits I had previously learned I now use more frequently than I expected I would, as simple as they were.

Thank you everyone! @Aizatulin and @Benyee, thank you and I appreciate the sample files and it does seem to do what I'm after. Although, I'll need to dig around a lot to work out how to adjust and modifiy it a bit for my needs or at least understand it more, as it does look like a lot of complex maths. I've only got half way through the Joy of Vex intro course so all those Wrangles are way up on another level. When I first read your reply, you made it sound so simple haha Thanks @ItsMeM, your description sounds exactly like what I need also, as yes my topology would be static. I've been unable to install the HDA from Orbolt. It's probably something wrong with the way I'm loading it as it didn't work for me using the Launch with Houdini option. I'll keep trying EDIT However, just realised you also had an an attached file and it's perfect! Exactly what I'm after, thank you so much! I didn't even need the extra Wrangle as your Animated checkbox did it on its own. I'll look at what the other options do but I think that's sorted it, much appreciated! Thanks again:)

Hi, is there a way to make or extract the animation of something relative to a chosen point? For example, the way the Earth orbits the sun. From afar, and if you were animating this in Houdini, you would put a sphere (Earth) on a path circling another sphere at the origin (Sun). I would like to pick a point on the Earth Sphere, and have that then be static at the world origin, so you end up with the Sun apparently circling the Earth, from the pov of someone standing at the origin. I'm not sure if this just requires lots of maths beyond my capability or if there is a clever node, either sop or chop, which might do it. Something like the Align Components tool, but which takes the animation into account as well, with the source component and connecting geo moving to the origin then staying put and everything else moving about it. I've also looked at the Inverse Transform option on the Transform sop, so I'm wondering if it might involve that too. Thanks.

Hi thanks for the reply, yes, I have seen it and been through it more than once, unfortunately didn't help at the time, mostly for the changing skeleton issue between files. That said, at the time of my original post the manual retarget video was down for some reason so didn't get to go through it again. Seems ok again so will have another shot. I also came across this old post (link below) which looked promising, but the skeletons they used from the CMU database didn't match the ones I downloaded which was weird. They were more like the Mixamo skeletons around the problem shoulder area so I'm not sure if the author had already done some rig matching. They mention Make Human which I'm not familiar with but it could be a missing link perhaps. Maybe I will get in contact as it was only from last year. In the meantime I have revisited the Mixamo library and realised it has far more non-combat animations than originally thought, enough for my needs which are quite basic. Also managed to convert a combat motion walk into a more normal walk with RigPose which was handy so am pretty sure the same will work for many more of their library. Given their auto-rigger works out of the box I'll stick with that for now. Will post here if I come back to the original issue and solve/ make progress on it. Thanks again

Hi, has anyone been able to successfully match the Mocap skeletons from the CMU database to a Mixamo skeleton? I've been trying for days overall, trying all sorts of combinations and tutorials but I end up with twisted skeletons and arms all over the place. I think it has something to do with the CMU skeletons having their shoulders inside on top of the next points wheras the Mixamo ones are in normal shoulder positions, but using rig match pose nodes to move the points around hasn't helped here. Have watched a lot of tutorials multiple times including the ones by Parker Coleman on Youtube which are great, as well as a few official SideFX ones, and I've learned a bit about Kinefx in all this but not enough to get there. Thank you.

Hi Henry, Thank you so much! The polyframe is something I've used a lot in the past few weeks so at least that's something I'm familiar with. Although as I guessed, there is much power to be had from understanding VEX. Longer term goal.

Thanks toadstorm and Noobini, I also I found another example in the end which does it with one point wrangle. I'm trying to figure through all of the methods you've provided. Regarding toadstorm's method, I'm having trouble getting the second point wrangle working. Should the Run Over parameter be set to Primitives? If I leave it at Points then I'm getting an error, regarding undefined variables. Thanks again.

Hi, would anyone please be able to help with the following? I've searched to no avail. I have a curve, followed by resample. I would like to slide all of the extra points along the curve, in a similar way that you can do with one point using the Carve sop. I've been experimenting with the uv attributes and like the Shift sop, but it only moves the point number along, as opposed to the point itself. Ideally at the end point, they 'reset' back to the start of the curve. It's been a while since I used Houdini and I imagine it's the sort of thing you can do easily with vex, but am experimenting with sop solutions. Thanks

Well well well, I had written out a fairly lengthy reply whilst I was trying some more things which I had been researching last night. I'm not sure which of the following was responsible, maybe one, maybe all or a combination, but the short version is, it's working now- both 11 and 12, so many thanks. In case others have such problems: Registry keys: the orginal error I mentioned '..application is configured incorrectly..' was according to some hardware forum people, maybe something to do with it. After having installed and reinstalled various times, it was suggested to remove registry keys in the registry editor, which I did after finding some Houdini related ones. I didn't particularly know what I was doing so I trod carefully. I also installed a Microsoft C++ redistributables 2010 package which I saw mentioned in various places as a its absence would be a potential culprit. Deleted anything and everything with Houdini in its name on the computer on the C Drive, in case there were some strange files from previous non-working versions which were confusing the new ones. There were lots of these. Updated the NVidia driver (again.) Although when I was trying two days ago I definitely had a new driver as I only downloaded it a week ago, yesterday just before I wrote my last post I did a system restore to not long after I did my system reformat I mentioned previously, as that is when I last installed H and it was working. Unbeknownst to me it had also rolled back to the old nvidia driver which I should have realised (though I'd never used the function before so I didn't know), and being quite old, I had to download a newer one again. So now it's 6.14.13.142 (15/05/2012) Plus the security updates which you mentioned last time. Though I thought I had done those and they would be up to date due to having upgraded to XP Service Pack 3 just recently. So, many thanks edward. As I find happens quite a bit, looking over the same problems over and over again seems not to make a difference sometimes, and only when writing them out and asking someone else does it resolve itself. A bit like finding typos in important letters I guess. Thank you!

Thanks for the suggestion Edward- though unfortunately the situation is still the same, at least as far as v11 is concerned, it does install but have missing shelf and other bits and pieces. However, I have managed to get v12 to install, EDIT though it's still unusable.. the viewport background is always white (even on reinstallation), no matter what I change the display setting to; light/dark/COP/disk file, and no geometry can be seen in the viewport, though points, point numbers and normals, plus the gizmos and grid, can all be seen. Changing the viewport mode to wireframe or any of the other options has no effect- still white. Thanks.

Hello, I've recently reformatted my computer, fresh install of everything, and Houdini (Apprentice) now doesn't install/work properly. I have WinXP SP3, Nvidia 8800GT, latest driver from Nvidia site. I had v11 on my machine ok for a few days, but recently it went weird, gave some error message which I can't remember, and then on pressing tab, none of the nodes were there. On reloading, the Shelf had gone too. I've uninstalled, reinstalled all versions of 11 still on the download page, plus I tried v12 too. Many times, always restarting on install or uninstall just to make sure. They all give some variety of an error message during installation, and when I try to run it, the most recent error message (Build 11.1.201) is a windows message: 'This application is not configured correctly', and won't even start. Other builds of v11 did start but there was no shelf. V12 won't even start, there is some brief flicker of a message in the console, maybe to do with the lisence server. V10 build 245 seems to get the furthest, it starts with the Building UI Cache box, then near the end, has a Fatal Segmentation Fault 3292. One of the other builds of V11 was giving messages as in the following link on sidefx forum: (2nd Quote box) http://www.sidefx.com/forum_index.php?page=viewtopic&t=22452&highlight=&sid=c9e0a714b2ccb84693a34801f495b1d3 I've had this computer for years and Houdini has always run fine on it, so it has to be something to with my setup after I wiped it clean. There's hardly anything on it still, Houdini is one of the first programs I installed again. Any ideas please? Thank you. .

Very happy After various weeks on and off trying different combinations and methods both in and outside of Houdini I've at last achieved the effect I need. I had to do the physics in reactor as I was mentioning (also only recently properly achieved) but have managed to use Houdini to solve all orientation problems (which resulted as a side effect of having position-perfect data). I never mentioned the specific orientation problems here as I knew it was something I should be able to solve myself, and a matter of spending time digging through forums, checking out help files and trying to adjust to my situation, and it has payed off. Basic but critical technical bits out of the way, I can get on to the interesting stuff now. I'll continue to use Houdini where I can with this learning project. I'll come back to the curve constraint issue in dops at a later date, but for now though the major milestone is beaten down, it's nearly Friday and it's warm and sunny outside. cheers mangic

Hello- yes it was 3ds max. I think I will have to leave it with fbx as you say until I come up with a better solution. Sorry- the clip i made wasn't particularly descriptive- I should have put a couple of objects on the path like in yours. I will keep trying.. Thanks for your help and suggestions

Hopefully this is visible- The path I've just made renderable in viewport. The rotation you can't tell but at least the position is faithful to the curve and doesn't jump about. abacus2.mov

Hi again, Thanks- that has been my plan B all along and I have indeed been using that method for the past few weeks in a different program and have recently started to do it in houdini- but the results so far for me aren't as good as when I was doing it with reactor. Also, I'm trying to make the movement precise. I managed to smooth the bumping motion/rotation using chops (recently started on Andrew Lowells chops book) a little using filters and so on, but then that always causes the path to move slightly. I've come across in the Constraint Tools Dops a couple of dops - such as AnchorObjectSpace that have under Constraint Type option- 'Constrained to Line'. This sounds promising but I'm still trying to figure out how it works and how you set it up. If it does what I think it might- then I'm wondering if subsequently I could reference something into the xyz fields, so the line is actually a tangent which constantly changes depending on how far the object travels along the path. Of course I may be thinking about this all wrong- even if I was right with that- I'm not sure I could pull it off as I'm still new to all this. Thanks again- EDIT: in fact the method I've been using up until now and that which you mentioned also has it's advantages, because it sort of helps with the next step in my procedure for my project, but again- only approximately- using the abacus example the beads rattle around- the hole in the middle of them needs to be big enough to allow bends in the path otherwise it gets stuck, but at the same time, it's more vulnerable to tiny movements (hence my filtering it with chops). But because this weekend I started to sort out a workaround with respect to the rotation using attribute transfer- I'm hoping if I can get dops objects to follow a curve precisely directly in houdini it will make everything a lot more accurate. otherwise I will fall back to importing the dynamics using fbx and filtering it inside houdini, reexporting etc etc. My final goal would be to make a digitial asset with a 'Select your input curve' affair. Currently I'm not as comfortable with curve creation in houdini as the other package where I've been importing my rail geometry from. I've not mentioned what is I'm actually trying to do yet- as I would like to advance further first..