Vertices Number

[Arthur Spooner]

Interesting.

 

You don't need Houdini verts to create geometry of any type, say a coffee mug for example ? 

 

What are Houdini verts useful for ?

[Guest tar]

Vertices are automatically created with point creation. 

 

Read through this, same Maya to Houdini disease

Why is houdini generating so many vertices on my sphere?

https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=43365&highlight=too+many+vertices 

Edited April 1, 2016 by tar

[Arthur Spooner]

I will read those threads, one more question for the time being;

 

How do you create an empty primitive ?

 

Also how do you know what shape you are creating, when creating primitives with VEX or with one of the nodes you can use to create geometry ?   

 

Can you for example make a coffee cup using the blast node or VEX, if so, how do you know to make it round, and with a handle ?

[Guest tar]

A primitive in Houdini is many things i.e. mesh, implicit sphere, polygon, polygon soup, nurbs, bezier, vdb, or volume.  Polygon requires 3 points, bezier/nurb requires 2 points, a vdb container use vdbSOP, for volume use VolumeSOP.

 

You use the viewport. Don't use Vex.

 

You model a coffee cup in the viewport using traditional poly modelling tools. It's a strange question as Vex is not for modelling, the blast node removes polygons.

[Arthur Spooner]

What is VEX for if you can't use it in modeling ?

 

Procedural modeling you don't use traditional poly modeling tools, correct;  I assume VEX comes into effect when doing procedural modeling ?

 

The link you posted previously on verts and points in Houdini, helped

Edited April 1, 2016 by Arthur Spooner

[Arthur Spooner]

In Mestela post #27, you could model a geometric shape with points, then turn those points into polygons, I assume you could do it blind folded if you wanted to make a coffee cup or you could use a coffee cup 3d object as reference.

[jrockstad]

Procedural modeling you don't use traditional poly modeling tools, correct

 

Not necessarily. Procedural really just means that something is being generated or modified according to some set of rules or relationships that you have defined. Procedural workflows are at the heart of Houdini, including it's poly modeling toolset. It is true that certain poly modeling operations are quite prone to breaking or creating bad geometry if you expect them to work in a completely procedural fashion, but there is certainly nothing preventing you from using procedural techniques in a modeling context and in fact it is often quite useful to do so. 

 

If you come from a Maya background, it's worth noting that Maya is largely procedurally based as well, it just tends to obfuscate this fact while in Houdini it's front and center. This is the reason why in Maya you often have to delete your history to keep things from breaking - all of those bevel, extrude, and other modeling operations are really creating nodes similar to Houdini's, defining relationships between the geometry and the operations you want to perform on it. 

[Arthur Spooner]

If you come from a Maya background, it's worth noting that Maya is largely procedurally based as well, it just tends to obfuscate this fact while in Houdini it's front and center. This is the reason why in Maya you often have to delete your history to keep things from breaking - all of those bevel, extrude, and other modeling operations are really creating nodes similar to Houdini's, defining relationships between the geometry and the operations you want to perform on it. 

 

 

I understand.

 

In other words you typically use traditional model tools in Houdini but mix procedural modeling tools if the need arises.

 

In post #27 mestela creates a series of points and from those points creates a polygon, suppose I want to model a coffee mug identical to the method described in that post.  Two question arise, first question, I assume I could import a coffee mug created in another 3D package and place a series of points on the coffee mug then, connect the dots, or I could simply model the coffee mug with no reference and connect the dots, although this method sounds a little difficult without a reference, unless there is something I'm not aware of in Houdini that would aid ? Although you must create an empty primitive ?