Training material/exercises for vopsop's and voppop's?

[chiess]

Hi,

I often walk through houdini files from other artists (I am quite sure many of them are seniors) and they all have one thing in common. Heavy use of vopsops and voppops. I was wondering now, is there a way to train yourself in these areas somehow? There are not a lot tutorials out there for such topics. Most of them cover really tiny areas. I would love to see some kind of exercises, examples, a range from beginner to advanced user.

It already helps to have those files to look at, but it is kind of hard (or takes an immense amount of time) to walk through all those nodes (which many of them are customized anyway) and understand every single bit without anyone to ask really. And obviously, all these setups are made for a specific effect and are quite unique. It would be great to understand a nodes (and a connection of multiple nodes) purpose in general. The help documentation is good, but not great and it often ends in more questions afterwards.

Is there any website or tutorial you would recommend when someone wants to get serious with vopsop's and voppop's?

Or, to all those masterminds out there, what was your approach to familiarize yourself in these areas?

Thanks,

Chris

[kleer001]

I'm not a master, by any means, but I do find myself using VOPs (in SOPs and for Volumes) more and more. And while I didn't watch any particular tutorial to learn how to use it, I did have some very experienced Houdini artists sitting right next to me. And that's kind of the catch 22 I see with using Houdini in production, is that you kinda have to be working on a team to learn how to use it.

Having a good knowledge of maths behind the VOPs is important. All the vector stuff especially, like dot product and cross product, length and normalization too. And even quaternions a little too. There's a fair bit of color stuff and logic too for some essential building blocks.

I know it's not helpful, and I'm sorry, but if I were in your place I would bug my coworkers about what they used and why (when it's convenient for them). You even might go so far as to stockpile interesting looking networks for reverse engineering in your off hours.

Edited September 5, 2013 by kleer001

[loudsubs]

I feel your pain buddy, getting good with VOPs takes time. Knowing the math is half the battle.

I'd recommend checking out the book, "3D math primer" by Fletcher Dunn, and trying implement some of the ideas in Houdini with VOPs.

Get in the habit of trying not to use expressions apart from really simple stuff. Instead do it in VOPs, its waaaaay faster

A couple good tutorials that make heavy use of VOPs:

-cmivfx "directable particles." It's all about using point clouds, a very powerful part of VOPs.

-cmivfx "clouds and fractals." It's all about building a layered noise tool using a for-loop in VOPs.

Collect every useful example file you can find. Good Luck!

Edited September 12, 2013 by Loudsubs

[kev2]

I've started using the wrangle nodes more and would love an "VEX for Artists" reference with examples. The help cards are nice but some short simple examples would help a lot, especially with syntax. The problem for most artists this far into visual effects I think is that they have done some basic coding along the way but haven't focused on coding or spent a lot of time in C or VEX. I know when I need to use a loop but even a slightly complicated if-then conditional can be a syntax pain for non-coders.

[chiess]

@kleer01, yea, I've started to use vopsops a lot nowadays and I am really sad that I can't remember ANYTHING from my maths classes and all the vector calculations . Same as you, I am sitting next to very experienced artists, but due to tight schedules, I can't bring it over myself to bother them. I rather spend more time to figure it out myself somehow (and using odforce ).

@Loudsubs, thanks for the great references and sorry for the delayed response, completely forgot about that thread!

I'll definitely check out the math primer and the cmivfx videos - especially the directable particles one. I am currently trying to direct smoke via point clouds by creating customized velocity on the points (via vopsops).

I've spend many many many hours in vopsops the last 3 weeks and I've learned freaking a lot so far. At the moment I am trying to figure out some good ways how to use quaternions and the cross product. I kind of know how it works, but it feels like a "try & error" approach rather than knowing what to use when and where.

@kev2: totally agree with you. Syntax examples and more practical examples (short ones are good enough) would be great.

Edited November 28, 2013 by chiess