How to achieve this in Houdini? (Promixity Morph)

[magneto]

Hi,

 

It seems simple but I couldn't get it to work like in the video.

 

 

Definitely point clouds and fitting the distance to near-far distance and then using this as the blend amount. But in the video it seems like it's doing a simulation where when the point gets out of range, it slowly starts to blend to non-animated version?

 

Any ideas?

 

 

Thanks

[kgoossens]

To me it seems like a simple falloff controlling the morph.
I would approach this using chops for reading the animation per point. 

[magneto]

Thanks Kim. The blendshape sops don't allow the amount to vary though, right? So you mean actually doing the blending manually in VOPs?

 

Other than that I don't know how to use CHOPs for this. I imagine that will allow you to access the animation at any frame you want? Am I right in assuming the points outside the range will slowly start to blend back to original positions? If so, how would you control this? By a simple normalized value controlled by a ramp to slowly blend back into original positions based on a fixed amount of total time?

[kgoossens]

You can create a sequence of shapes for the morph. If you take a sequence blend you'll get a linear blend between each one of the shapes.

Then take that animation into chops. use 2 filter nodes. First shapen and then a gaussian blur. Like this you can achieve a cardinal "like" smooth spline and you'll have a fluid animation.

That result you can use for getting the animation.

[kgoossens]

Each point's animation is represented by its animation curve.

[eetu]

Had to try this, the one on the left is the mesh sequence, the one on the right picks up different timepoints from the former according to distance to an effector.

 

ee_proximity_time_morph.mov

proximity_time_morph_v005.hip

[magneto]

Thanks eetu, exactly what I wanted. I don't know chops so I wouldn't be able to do it this way. Can it be done without chops? I assume that would require simulation, i.e. Solver SOP?

[eetu]

Solver SOP gives you access to the previous frame, but here you need random access to all previous frames per point. Maybe something like a Time Shift SOP inside a per-point ForEach SOP might work, but it's not exactly pretty

(Or, if all else fails; write the sequence to disk, and seek the different frames with an expression-driven File SOP inside a per-point ForEach..)

[eetu]

I don't know chops so I wouldn't be able to do it this way. Can it be done without chops?

 

On second thought, I gave you the wrong answer first. The right answer is: learn CHOPs. I don't know much CHOPs either; I first tried this yesterday, failed, got frustrated and set it aside. Today I picked this up, did some searches and read up a bit, tried a couple of wrong approaches, but then got it working. Just bite the bullet, that's how progress happens!

[magneto]

Thanks eetu, I agree. CHOPs are the most overlooked aspect of Houdini Can you do subframe look ups without CHOPs though in your above mentioned methods?

[kgoossens]

Here is another example

 

WaveShape-01.hip

[FromHell]

Here is a tutorial on how to achieve this in 3ds max. http://www.itsartmag.com/features/rigging-waves-in-3ds-max/

 

I think using cloth simulation or chops in houdini is to exagerated