HK Toon

[edward]

That piece of work shouldn't be classified under rendering! It's all done with geometry!

[DaJuice]

What?

[Marc]

I believe edward is referring to the new submission by Hwee Kok.

And I also believe that it should be under rendering, since its a non-photorealistic rendering test. ie the look is achieved via the rendering process..

Cheers

Marc

[Hwee]

It's best not to departmentalize things when you're working with Houdini. For example, to go anywhere with CHOPs you mustn't see it only as a channel-generating tool - in a sense it's a compositor, modeler, graph editor and game engine all rolled into one. Many effects that we normally think of as rendering tasks can be done much faster and easily using geometry. For example, shadow beams in fog can be created by rendering an matte pass of the shadow-casting objects, then trace-SOP the image and extrude the traced outlines.

[sirogi]

For example, shadow beams in fog can be created by rendering an matte pass of the shadow-casting objects, then trace-SOP the image and extrude the traced outlines.

HAAaa....nice one! Goldmine Hwee....

[betty]

hey Hwee

Just like to give you a huge THANKS for posting that file in. i've downloaded a few of your hip files and loved them all....all simple but revealing the power of Houdini in non-obvious ways. Also have gone through your web site houdini pages and they're great as well. ( btw, extra points for also having a section on mirai...fine taste!! )

[pianne]

Hi Hwee,

Could you please fix the avi file of your HK_cloud. Some PPI would like to see your effect.

Thanks so much

[edward]

What I really wanted to say was how I marvelled at Hwee's ingenuity for doing the whole NPR thing as geometry. Why bother rendering that hip file when you can just as easily append some Cache SOPs to cache the geo sequence. After that, you can almost *tumble* in the viewport as the sequence plays for "realtime" 3D NPR.

[Hwee]

The basic idea behind the effect wasn't mine - Sidefx released a demo many years ago (in Prisms days) showing how to draw an outline using the delete/divide combo. And edward, your cache idea wouldn't work because the outline is view-dependent, and baking the geometry would destroy it.

I've put up the cloud avi at http://cade.scope.edu/gifts/cloud.avi. The sequence was rendered with Prman; i3d wasn't used at all. I started it to test i3d and volume rendering in Houdini, but a couple of holes in them forced me to give up and turn to Prman to wrap up the test. IMHO I3d + raymarched volume is great for close, loose clouds but is a real hassle to use when you're dealing with far, dense clouds. I think really good clouds can be made with this observation in mind and using a combination of methods.

Betty, glad you like those little examples:-) And a fellow Mirai fan! That software is so beautifully designed. I hope it picks itself up again.