Simple modeling op

[Jim M]

I am feeling really stupid right now.

I have a curve and a box in the same sop context, and I want to parent the box to point3 on the curve. I have tried to do it for about an hour, but it certainly isnt intuitive. Any help greatly appreciated. Damn this is a hard piece of software to pick up!

:/

J

I was going along the lines of...

Group point 3 so i could isolate it, then use a point sop to get its TX TY TZ etc then relative reference that into the boxes translation. At best I get the box moving to the origin of curve. Argh

Edited August 20, 2010 by Jim M

[Ratman]

You can easily do this in object level with Rivet.

And then either go inside the curve and work from there, or object merge it onto another node and work from it from the new position.

[Macha]

I would use Ratman's method. But another way would also be to append a point sop to the box and then something like:

$TX+point("../curve1",3,"P",0)

etc...

It would only parent position though and not orientation (and may have to be corrected for any offsets). That would become more difficult using that method, but not impossible I reckon.

Edited August 21, 2010 by Macha

[Jim M]

Thanks Rick that does help. So many tools to learn

I imagine its entirely simple to do it in sops, just too advanced for me

+ thanks Macha, I will attempt that shortly + do you know how to animate points on a curve within the sop. It doesnt seem to work for some reason.

I am just doing some simple projects to get me familiar with the tools, from a perspective of the sorts of things i need to do/want to do. Thanks again for the help

Edited August 21, 2010 by Jim M

[Macha]

+ do you know how to animate points on a curve within the sop. It doesnt seem to work for some reason.

Try if resample or carve do what you want. You could also use UV coordinates on a curve to move along I suppose.

[Jim M]

Try if resample or carve do what you want. You could also use UV coordinates on a curve to move along I suppose.

Sorry I wasnt clear. File attached.

I am already using a carve to animate the growth of two curves. Its the CVs I want to animate.

Two things which I am trying to do....

1. Animate individual control points in a simple way, so I can keyframe curling and so forth. (I realise when you just move the points it gives you an edit node, and you have to manually put down a transform node). Using the transform node for each and every selection and keyfaming is a really dirty method and possibly will end up being very confusing to go back and ammend.
   
2. Attach point0 on curve2 to pointN on curve1 (mostly arbritrary names). Thats the first hurdle. (then using chops or some method I want to affect the translation of the other points on curve2 with some kind of ramp/gradient falloff/lag, but this can wait)
   

The thing is with the point referencing or attachment is I want to find a simple solution as I want to connect potentially 50+ curves to the main stem. Which gives me a thought, it might be good to do any CV animation after they are all connected (If I can merge them or something) as this might keep that process all in one place.)

+another thought ... maybe if I could resample the curves and somehow convert them into bones (you can convert curves, polylines into bones in Lightwave, so I imagine Houdini can do it). Then I could keyframe deform the curves that way.

grow6.hip

Edited August 21, 2010 by Jim M

[Macha]

Mmmh, not sure I quite understand everything correctly, but some ideas:

-Blendshapes sop to blend between curve shapes

-Chop to animate point positions

-Simple or complicated expressions acting on curve points

-"Advecting" through a home-made field (attribute transfer something from a point cloud)

-Link curve points via an expression to animated nulls

-Magnet SOP and other metaball goodness

-Copy stamp for 2.

You might want to have a look at LSystems for such things although they require a degree in Botany and Mathematics to get predictably animated results.

Edited August 21, 2010 by Macha

[Jim M]

You might want to have a look at LSystems for such things although they require a degree in Botany and Mathematics to get predictably animated results.

Thankyou my friend. I did look at LSystems, and thought ... errrr maybe later.

I think I will go the bones root for animating the curves bends. Particularly if Houdini has joints as well as Zbones. Cant see them though. The make bones from curve is nice, so I should be able to just rig a load of straight curves, and curl em all up. Its good exercise, but i find myself getting quickly out of my depth on a very regular basis. Hopefully that will pass