Connecting Primitives

[galagast]

Hi, I seem to have hit a dead end (with my limited Houdini knowledge).. here's an image of the problem:

I can't seem to locate the proper SOP to use in order to combine/merge the primitive edges, resulting in holes (encircled in red).

Here's a similar scenario inside 3dsmax, which is something i want to achieve in houdini.

I also attached the hipnc file.

Regards,

Jeff

connecting_primitives.hipnc

[anim]

you better reverse the order of your operations

first fuse everything together

then subdivide all to certain level

then subdivide inner group to higher level

I think that's the way you did it in max as well, isn't it?

connecting_primitives_fix.hipnc

[galagast]

Thank you very much for the reply Tomas, indeed I missed the Fuse part after doing the Copy.

And yes, you are on spot with the max workflow:

But looking at the result, now it seems like i would also have to find a way to fix those polygons encircled in red in order for it to look cleaner.

But just out of curiosity, is there some kind of way to do a clean fuse down the flow?

Let's say this is the scenario:

Inside the Foreach SOP loop, there's a subdivide SOP with the Detail setting stamped by the FORVALUE.

I attached the hipnc for this scene: connecting_primitives_foreach.hipnc

Thanks and Kind Regards,

Jeff

Edited May 1, 2013 by jlim

[anim]

you need to use For Each with Merge Results off so it sends whole geometry to the next iteration etc

so you can start with all primitives in the group for subdivision and by each iteration subtract one group so it will not be subdivided more

at the end you will have the result you want without separated pieces as you would get with For Each Merge Results on

EDIT: and for those problematic areas, that's the downside of using more than 4 sided polygons since down the line they get triangulated anyway as you can see, I doubt it's different in max

what you can try is to change Boundary on Subdivide SOP to Triangulate

connecting_primitives_foreach_fix.hipnc

Edited May 1, 2013 by anim

[galagast]

I really appreciate the replies Tomas, learning tons from your examples

argc(primgroupmask(opinputpath(".",0), "piece*"))-1[/CODE]

That is such an awesome way to count groups! I'll keep note of that.

I understand now, Foreach would need to process it as a whole (Fused), rather than per primitive.. that way I'm only gonna subdivide via groups. Really cool.

I also managed to find a solution for cleaning up the Fused parts using the (conveniently named) Clean SOP

I attached the fixed hipnc with the Clean SOP.

Thank you so much for taking time to help!

One small question (not related to the above problem).. is there a way to rename a file/folder in the Houdini file browser?

EDIT: coool, I missed your edited post, using the Triangulate option for the Subdivide SOP fixes it much better than the Clean SOP solution I found. A million thanks!

connecting_primitives_foreach_fix_clean.hipnc

Edited May 1, 2013 by jlim

[magneto]

I don't think there is a way to rename files/folders in the Houdini file dialogs since AFAIK it's a custom dialog so it only has features specifically implemented by SESI, not everything that standard Windows file dialogs have. For example they added navigating via arrow keys recently. But you can submit an RFE using the following link:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=768&Itemid=239

[galagast]

Thanks, I'll submit an RFE then!