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Straightforward Way to Animate?


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Can someone direct me to the straight, simple, thorough, comprehensive set of steps for boning, rigging, animating and re-using the animation I might produce for a simple character in Houdini Escape? The environment is most alien to me. Where's the Dope Sheet? Where's the non-linear animation timeline? Where's the "real-time blending" functionality mentioned in the ad? How do you learn and search with the online Help facility when clicking on the little magnifying glass icon brings up a dialog that says, "Search this page for:"? Is there another search function hiding somewhere?

Is there a set of documents that chronicle the modeling, boning, rigging, simple animation of a basic character, anywhere? How does one use CHOPS, if they are used to more traditional animation timeline techniques? In the ad literature for Houdini Escape there is this very interesting rabbit and rig shown. Where is the documentation for this rabbit and his rig? I also have watched every one of 3D Buzz's tutorials for Houdini and still do not have a basic understanding of how to choreograph a character animation using Houdini. Does any such documentation exist? I don't mind the fact that Houdini uses an alien paradigm, but if the aliens don't explain themselves, no chance for us earthlings to understand.

Thanks,

Greg Smith

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phew.. ok.. where to start...

How do you learn and search with the online Help facility when clicking on the little magnifying glass icon brings up a dialog that says, "Search this page for:"? Is there another search function hiding somewhere?

ok, i think you will find a lot of your answers after this: in the houdini help, there is a stow away bar on the left. in the center of that bar is a section that will turn purple when your mouse is over. click on it and you will see an amazing amount of information and help.

Where's the Dope Sheet? Where's the non-linear animation timeline?

Open the channel editor. Alt+Shift+f or go to Windows->Channel Editor. Up in the left hand corner, there is a drop down menu that is defaulted to 'Graph'. Click on that and you can do a table or dope sheet.

Is there a set of documents that chronicle the modeling, boning, rigging, simple animation of a basic character, anywhere? How does one use CHOPS, if they are used to more traditional animation timeline techniques?

i think the help will put you in the right direction here. see answer above for how to use the help.

In the ad literature for Houdini Escape there is this very interesting rabbit and rig shown. Where is the documentation for this rabbit and his rig?

you can download the rabbit rig over at the exchange:

http://www.sidefx.com/exchange

i think that covers most of it.. let us know if you need anything else, but i would seriously take some time and dive into that help file. as well as the training material on SESI's site.

hth,

dave

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Dave:

I tried the "help" facility again and found "stow away" bars, alright . . . and they do turn purple when my mouse is over them . . . but clicking simply hides the open "bars", it doesn't reveal any new items. The "find" magnifying glass still has the prefix, "find on this page", so any search appears to look for information only on the current page. The available help topics posted in the window area are not very specific and do not help me to learn anything about CHOPS.

Why would the makers of Houdini choose to make their help system so obscure? I'm sure the functionality must be there somewhere, but many minutes of trial and error clicking do not seem to uncover the goods.

Looking through what information I was able to uncover through the "help" system, I found reference to some animation topics, specifically, "Morph", which initially sounded promising, . . . but clicking on the purple topic does nothing and reveals no information. Maybe they are still working on it.

I really would like to learn this program but it doesn't lend itself to a direct way to find the needed information, and, believe me, I would rather use whatever documentation is available than pester people to death on the forums.

Thanks again,

Greg Smith

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It seems there are 2 kinds of help windows in Houdini: one opens when addressing "help" through the "Help menu". This is the one I have been trying to use. However, when simply clicking on the "?" icon in any "Pane" a more comprehensive set of windows pushes its way into the interface, . . . complete with a universal "search" function. Well, now I'm happy, as I have a means to find information on any available topic. So, just click the little question mark icon in any of Houdini's "panes" and the real help system becomes available. And, it appears to be a very good one, at that.

Thanks again for your assistance,

Greg Smith

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the same help should come up through either ways (operator help cards or help menu->help contents). don't know why the one under the help menu isn't working for you. odd.

anyways. check out the stuff on chops in there. some great stuff. but also don't forget the video tutorials as well as the legacy material over at side fx:

legacy material (chops will be under both animation and characters):

http://www.sidefx.com/community/learn/index.html

video tuts (there's chops stuff under animation):

http://sidefx.vislab.usyd.edu.au/houdini_video/index.html

but yea, i have mixed feelings about the new help system. half of me says it's somewhat of a poor design (i even had to ask on the forums to find out about the purple stow away bar), but the other half says that this should of been somewhat obvious to me considering houdini has stow away bars all over the dang place. so either way. i somewhat miss the pdf's but i do enjoy the help being contained as one like it is. i do like how it is all integrated now, but i know arctor (i think it was him alteast) made a good point of not having the help "on the go" anymore. it was nice that the pdfs could be read from anywhere, regardless of houdini existing or not.

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