Xgen alternative

[mosssi]

Hi all

I assume you already see Lee Griggs artworks produced by Xgen. If not this is the link:

 

http://www.leegriggs.com/335056/3779154/home/xgen-rendered-with-arnold-for-maya

 

 

I thinking about a way to reproduce this nice effects and animating them in Houdini but with copy sop its really heavy to work and because I'm not experienced enough in H, I don't know an alternative way to do that. I'm pretty familiar with Xgen and I can do this in Maya but I think Houdini is capable of doing something similar. So what's your opinion?

 

Thanks

[Stalkerx777]

http://forums.odforce.net/topic/20716-unofficial-challenge-boxified-images/

[mosssi]

http://forums.odforce.net/topic/20716-unofficial-challenge-boxified-images/

Thanks Alexey, I Didn't search the artist name so I didn't find the topic. but the copy sop performance is very behind Xgen 

[f1480187]

Copy before animation. Manipulate data using VEX nodes. Actually, you can get rid of Copy SOP completely, but it is fast when used properly.

boxes.hipnc

Edited December 16, 2015 by f1480187

[mosssi]

Copy before animation. Manipulate data using VEX nodes. Actually, you can get rid of Copy SOP completely, but it is fast when used properly.

That's what I'm talking about. Thank you man. you didn't even use packed primitives but its fast enough, I assume the stamp function is the lazy one.

also thanks for the example. 

[Marc]

Stamp would sacrifice speed for controllability. There are multiple ways to do this in Houdini right now, so you'll need to pick the solution that matches what you need to do. Since you're new, I'd avoid stamping for the time being

[mosssi]

Stamp would sacrifice speed for controllability. There are multiple ways to do this in Houdini right now, so you'll need to pick the solution that matches what you need to do. Since you're new, I'd avoid stamping for the time being

Thanks Marc

Just for curiosity, can you please explain briefly about any possible method. I'm sure I can dig into them.

[Solitude]

You can use certain attributes on a set of template points to transform the geometry that you want to copy in the copy sop. I would do a packed box with the botom of the box at 0,0,0, and do a packed prim copied onto the points. The points can have a scale attribute that controls the height. The scale attribute (vector) can controll x,y,z scale. Pscale can then control uniform scale if you want.  To get scale on the points, you can use vops/vex  or attribfrom map... whatever you need.

[mosssi]

You can use certain attributes on a set of template points

Thank you for your attention. yes it seems fast and manageable and probably what I just need for this. but is it true that copy sop only apply scale, pscale and orbit attributes of template points automatically and for other attributes we need stamp function again?

[Solitude]

You can copy any attribute from the template point onto the packed prims, such as color. You can then reference those packed prim attributes in a shader as well. This differs from attributes you've saved on to the geometry itself. The new shaders have an option for using packed prim color as well now.

 

For transforms check this: http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini15.0/copy/instanceattrs

[mosssi]

Thanks Solitude, this is helping me a lot.