ghidra Posted May 2, 2013 Share Posted May 2, 2013 (edited) Hello, I'm fairly new to houdini and trying to do what I think is a fairly simple effect. I just want to release some smoke from a source, and have it go into a shape, like text or even a simple torus. Something like this: I've read some info about gas analysis, but I'm not exactly sure where to even start with that node. I'm a XSI ICE user, and I'm having a difficult time in wrapping my head around the way houdini would like me to think. Volumes and sdf and fields are a bit of new concepts to me... any direction is greatly appreciated. Thanks Edited May 2, 2013 by ghidra Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Annon Posted May 3, 2013 Share Posted May 3, 2013 Well that's quite a complex effect if you don't know those things I'm afraid. Basically an SDF is a Signed Distance Field, which will hold the distance of a voxel to the nearest surface and whether it's inside or outside (so a positive or negative value). Using VOPs you can get the direction and magnitude using "volume gradient" and "volume sample". The GasAnalysisDOP will create a vector field with all vectors pointing back to the fields surface (like what you can get out of an SDF). So what's going on in Alejandro's effect I believe is he's adding the gradient back onto the velocity of the smoke, making it hug the geometry. He's usually happy to share his scenes, so you might be in luck, but if it's just for learning purposes, go and learn about SDFs first and what you can do with them (points, particles, geometry etc) before moving on to doing DOP microsolver stuff. I've created you a little scene explaining how SDFs work with points. Hopefully it should be some help to you to get your head around it. Good luck! Christian tut_sdfExplained.hip 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dobin Posted May 3, 2013 Share Posted May 3, 2013 Container Tools tab- Attract Fluid tool is doing just that Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slamfunk Posted May 3, 2013 Share Posted May 3, 2013 Container Tools tab- Attract Fluid tool is doing just that Totally. Try playing around with the Attract Fluid shelf tool! Used it recently to do just that and it was very straightforward to figure out and control. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Annon Posted May 3, 2013 Share Posted May 3, 2013 Hmmm, didn't know that was there, I hate building things from shelf buttons... Looks like a nice setup to learn from inside of the "targetForce", have a little browse around it and see if you can work out what's going on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghidra Posted May 3, 2013 Author Share Posted May 3, 2013 (edited) Thanks a lot! I'll have a look into it. Edit: Also thanks a lot Christian for taking the time to make a scene to give me some perspective Edited May 3, 2013 by ghidra Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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