Minimalist challenge | Procedural pipes

[magneto]

Hi,

Recently I watched the latest SESI tutorial about creating procedural pipes, but found it a bit overly complicated, so decided to create it my own way. It's not 100% the same. I just wanted to create a single pipe as opposed to multiple. But you would only need a foreach sop if you wanted to do the same operation per curve

Mine uses 16 nodes, the tutorial file uses 70 I think, including the number of nodes used in a custom HDA that they use.

Do you think this can be done differently with fewer nodes?

Here is the video:

Thanks

procedural_pipes.hip

Edited March 4, 2013 by magneto

[mangi]

Hi Magneto

Can this system work if need to change the curve.

I just did a test,

Look what happens when you add a segment to the original curve.

I was just test driving this.

mangi

[magneto]

Hi mangi, that's very normal

Basically the network assumes there are no inline points between each section of the pipe. So if any shape was to be passed in and the requirement was to handle this as well, I would use the Facet SOP and turn on the "Remove Inline Points" option.

Also it has to be a continuous curve. If you want to do this for multiple curves, you also need to use the Foreach SOP.

If you wanted to have the ability to increase pipe divisions, that would also be very easy to do as well. I would do it when the shapes are separated in the network, by using the Resample SOP.

Basically this is a simple example that can be extended very easily, but by no means handles everything you would want in a procedural asset. If you wanted to do that though, it would be fairly simple, you wouldn't have to redesign the network or anything. I just didn't want to spend time to do that though

[mangi]

Okay, great Magneto

Thanks for your clarification. really good points

Mangi

[magneto]

No problem man, enjoy it

[tjeeds]

Thats a fun problem! I gave it a shot too; 13 nodes, 1 control parameter, accepts multiple curves, VOPsploitation

Only works with right angles though.

procedural_pipes.hipnc

[mangi]

Ya pretty fun tjeeds, that you tweeked on Magnetos file.

But , check it out theres a bit of random weirdness.

On tight coners. the conection don´t pop togerther always.

can you debug this and maybe tell us why it happen to just get some knowledge .

mangi

Edited March 4, 2013 by mangi

[magneto]

Thanks tjeeds. Using your example as a base, I got it down to 8 nodes

Can this be done using less nodes?

procedural_pipes.hipnc

[magneto]

Ok now reduced it to 5 nodes It only works on a single curve, so for multiple, you have to add a foreach sop to repeat the same thing per curve.

Overall it's 16 times more efficient and simpler than the example shown in the video. I think that's an improvement

Btw we should do more of these simple examples that you can achieve using the least number of nodes. It might seem impractical but I think this restriction really forces you to be creative and also find out about specific uses of certain nodes that you wouldn't know otherwise.

procedural_pipes2.hipnc

Edited March 4, 2013 by magneto

[mangi]

really cool magneto.

Ya it works really good and clean and fast.

pretty damn procedural to me.

Mangi

[tjeeds]

Nice! Never knew the Fillet could do that, well done!!

[magneto]

Thanks alot guys, every approach inspires new ones

I really wanted the ability to control the number of segments in the fillet joints but Fillet doesn't seem to allow that. I could do it with Convert but that meant 1 more node, so had to sacrifice that