djpeanut

If you click on the OpenGL tab in your shader parameter pane, you'll see the texture is referenced there as well as in the appropriate section of the Parms pane. AFAIK the OpenGL tab is where the shader is configured for OpenGL shaded rendering, and also the OpenGL 3D viewport. What I'm saying is that if your shader is showing up on the viewport, its path must be correct in the OpenGL tab of your shader. But if it's not showing up in your renders, maybe the path in the Parms pane is somehow different...

Sounds like you should check the paths to your textures in your shaders. The OpenGL texture reference must be correct but the mantra one may not be...

Hey Jason Thanks for the comments. I wondered why the texture was doing that. It's a shame I didn't notice it until the renders were done. As for moving leaves, I think it would be quite difficult to add that kind of movement to the tree models - they were generated solely using L-systems and are just .bgeo files with groups for bark/leaf and corresponding textures. I would have done extra animation work if I had had the time and knowledge to set up such a system before the deadline for this project. Branch bending should be relatively easy to set up though and I'll probably work on that and add some falling leaves. I will play with the lighting as it was not my highest priority - I like the projector map idea. I've actually used significant amounts of compositing effects in most of the shots although they are so fast-cut it's difficult to see, but the hi-res screenshot I posted a few posts back shows it well. (I used Z-depth additive fog for imitating very bright sun and Z-depth defocus for greater effect of distance.) I did actually use Z-depth fog in the underwater shot, but it needs a riverbed and more fish and foliage to give it better perspective. I've set up fish shoal flocking HDAs and foliage HDAs so I can add them very easily. I also intend to add some 2D animated distortion to the shot to add to the underwater effect, once I have time to research and implement a way of doing this. The lightrays are something else I didn't have time to play with - how could this be done in Halo?

Nice stuff! I might be able to help you out with a rigging tutorial. I wrote a very detailed one for the character in my own WIP project (see the post entitled Monkey Rig and check out the video link I posted today). If you think a tutorial for rigging something like this is what you need, let me know. I need to do a bit of editing but it was my intention to publish it online eventually.

Here's a clip of the finished shots so far (about 35 seconds of video). It's in DivX format and you'll need audio enabled to appreciate it fully... http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/ug/cs02/tra/swamp_divx_wip.avi Comments very welcome! Things I intend to work on after my finals: - Hair too springy (any other dynamics solutions I could use for better effects?) - More facial expressions - Slow down the pace - Add more foliage and background life - Create a fly-through intro

it's an anglicism meaning "mighty pleased"

Since I've pretty much finished the project I thought I'd post an enlarged still so you guys can see how it's looking. In this shot, the character has just suffered a rather painful landing on a rather inconveniently-placed branch. (Just for reference, this is my computer science undergrad major project, and the objective was to produce a short education/entertainment film for kids based on a fictional script but with setting/characters modelled from real-life animals and environments (the Amazon flood-plains). The result was expected to be very rough and basic, but given that 7 months ago I'd never done any CGI/film/Houdini work in my life, I'm pretty chuffed with it!) I'll post the finished video once all the rendering is done - it's taking quite some time!

I think this would be a better method than deforming several hundred thousand points. I haven't had time to try it yet but simply transferring that many capture attributes is going to eat memory. So I'm trying this method right now. I assume that if I just create a float point attribute and use this to scatter, it'll work ok after deforming? EDIT: It works just fine now, thanks! Also, it was scattering based on primitive area that caused the problem, since the area of each prim was changing due to deformation. Any ideas how to set and lock the new scatter point attribute based on the prim areas at the rest position?

Thanks for all the help guys. I'm going to try thekenny's solution today. Will post later with the results of it. Thanks again - phew!!

Ah, a slight problem has occurred. As I have previously mentioned elsewhere, I've simulated hairs on a creature's body. This is done by using an Object Merge to bring in the deforming geometry, using a Scatter SOP to generate template points for the hairs, using the AttribTransfer SOP to transfer normals from the geo to the points, then copying a NURBS curve to each point and adding a Spring SOP to simulate dynamics. (That's a very simple version, but you get the idea!). This all works fine if I render individual frames from the character's animation, or non-animated sequences. The moment I try and render the sequence, however, the simulation goes crazy, and the hair starts reacting completely randomly on a frame-by-frame basis. This started happening a while ago but I thought it was fixed. Now it looks like the problem never went away. Images of what I'm talking about are over at this topic. I have an inkling that the problem is occuring due to the Scatter SOP. With non-deforming geometry, it will generate the same points for a given random seed. However, if the geometry deforms, it'll generate a whole new set of points in different locations with different numbers. I'm guessing that this is the problem, because the amount of weirdness seems to correlate with the amount of the geo that is being deformed. Basically it leads to the `root' of each hair in the simulation being arbitrarily translated every frame. Obviously for a single frame, it would just cook the particle simulation based on the locations of the points on that frame alone. Assuming this is the case, I guess I'll need to create all of these points before any deformations occur, group them and then get them deformed as well? Is there any way I can do this, given that I've already set up my capture regions, set up a MTM (blendshapes) system for facial animation, and begun to animate? Or do I have to go back to square one a fortnight before deadline?

Thanks edward. I'm going to try this now. As for the wiki I've got a lot of deadlines but I'll add what I've learnt when they're met. I've also been creating tutorials for the stuff I've been making, currently about 100 pages worth in LaTeX format so I'll post them somewhere for other Houdini noobs to use. EDIT: Select entire subnet, of course!! Works a treat now - thanks. PS. Does anyone know why my character goes loopy when I try to transform it in object space? The whole thing just turns into a huge mess of deformations gone wrong...

The help card says "Simulates a distant attenuated light source." (I don't want any attenuation...)

Hi, Just a quick question, really. I've not a clue how to create Light shaders. How can I create an infinite light for a scene? (By infinite light I mean parallel light rays throughout the scene. I'm trying to represent the sun. Houdini doesn't seem to come with infinite light shaders built in.) Thanks!

Here's a test render of the model with nice looking hair, courtesy of Arno... And a close-up of the face, with my own shaders... Still a fair amount of tweaking to go, though! Comments appreciated!

Hi, I'm creating a HDA from my character rig. I'm at the stage of exporting the handles that control the rig to the type properties so that the thing can be animated at the top level. Currently I'm exporting a handle and it's creating all of the parameters. Then I'm deleting the unwanted ones and locking the ones that I had originally locked in the rig. Is there a quicker and better way of doing this? My other question is whether it's unavoidable to have every single handle displayed in the viewport when the HDA is selected? Thanks