clustring Clustering without fracturing?

[Farmfield]

14 minutes ago, Solitude said:

Ah, even better. Team work rules.

This forum is awesome in that regard, I never been to a forum that is this "productive". Another thing is, as there's 12 different ways in Houdini to get to a solution, you can weigh pros and cons between solutions and/or combine 2 or more solutions into a 13th solution. So it's amazingly educational in that sense.

@mstarktv - About the time/timing, as I know you're in Texas, I actually checked what time it was for you, - you gotta love Google Now, just be able to ask and get a spoken answer.

Edited July 13, 2016 by Farmfield

[Solitude]

12 hours ago, Farmfield said:

Ian, just gotta ask - in your last file, in the wrangle, aren't you trying to convert a string to a string?

Edit 1: I'm probably wrong, I thought the cells attribute was a string already...

Edit 2: I was wrong, because of course.  

I couldn't find my old file, and it was probably not as good of an example anyways -- so when I rebuilt it, I thought it was a string too for some reason... then realized I was wrong... then remembered that I needed to convert it to a string.     

[Farmfield]

There's always a component of confusion, working in Houdini, first because it's just a lot of stuff to remember - but SESI are also very good at just changing things completely from one version to the next. Like, how do I bevel points in Houdini 15.x? They just rewrote the polybevel SOP and left that out, probably just to mess with us.  

Edited July 13, 2016 by Farmfield

[mstarktv]

I agree with everything you are saying about this forum. But first, today was a busy day so I kept seeing the email notification's but couldn't even find the time to look at the replies. But, yes...this forum. Everyone is so helpful, even if it's the most minute thing. Especially because I'm sure I'm not alone as someone who is trying to move over to Houdini from whatever the hell else.

this is off topic, but it's funny. This is the first time I didn't renew my TP license. Even though, right now I can personally do a ton with it vs what I can do in Houdini - it just doesn't seem worth it. Not only that, my main usage for FX is Dynamics and Fluids(fire/smoke). Just with Dynamics, I was thinking about Houdini handles it solvers. You add the type you want, and boom, done - plug things into it and it's ready to go. Even with TP, you have to add the solver, then the group...etc. My biggest factor was when it came to soft bodies. I would try in TP to use it's bullet implementation and it was always just a horrible experience. I know I'm just scratching the surface, but I feel like for FX Houdini can take the old Apple phrase "It just works." 

Back to the topic at hand. I'm going to take a look at all of the posted files because it is always so interested to see how everyone approaches ideas.

[Farmfield]

Yeah, but it's a two edged sword, how you can set things up in a 1000 ways, as flexible as it makes Houdini, I often come across setups where I truly can't figure out how the person thought, setting it up. Often, when I ask questions here, I'm presented with solutions that just doesn't work with how I think, and that's kinda tricky. In the end, not all solutions will fit your mindset. But the more you learn about how Houdini works, the more you learn what works FOR YOU.

That being said, there are of course solutions where you have to do it a certain way, or it won't work. 

But yeah, check out the files and drop us some feedback. If you build upon it or figure something clever out, update us on that too.

[mstarktv]

7 hours ago, Farmfield said:

Yeah, but it's a two edged sword, how you can set things up in a 1000 ways, as flexible as it makes Houdini, I often come across setups where I truly can't figure out how the person thought, setting it up. Often, when I ask questions here, I'm presented with solutions that just doesn't work with how I think, and that's kinda tricky. In the end, not all solutions will fit your mindset. But the more you learn about how Houdini works, the more you learn what works FOR YOU.

That being said, there are of course solutions where you have to do it a certain way, or it won't work. 

But yeah, check out the files and drop us some feedback. If you build upon it or figure something clever out, update us on that too.

That was my biggest problem when I first kept trying to dive into Houdini at first. Even the intro stuff went from "I'm following you, I'm following you, okay what???" They would just sort of forget that the way it works is not the same as other packages. And then you use the shelf tools and are presented with useless merges and nodes. Once getting past that it makes sense.

But yeah, I think FX is sort of a double edged sword. And I'm working on this fairly simple setup now of mixing different solver types and all of that to actually post a video to Vimeo. It's not complex - but for a new person it is. I still have huge confusion with names and groups and strings, so I'm always checking previous files. But I have to say, most of my time has been spent around manipulating data rather than remembering the correct way to setup a solver.

I will definitely post my file when I'm done. It's more or less just a "Personal Dynamic Practical/Test" to use what I've learned using DOPs and attributes so far.

[Farmfield]

This might sound a bit counterintuitive, but I think in Houdini, even if you are an FX guy, I would recommend getting into all the attribute and wrangle stuff in SOPs, not in DOP's. Because it really works the same in DOPs, but it's so much more involved, directly, it's a bit much to take in. That's why I'm doing these small RnD things all the time, I'm training myself to work around the kinks of my own mindset, working in Houdini. But if I need to do a huge dynamics setup, it's all going to work the same, just in a more complex setup.

Take constraints as an example, they're just lines with attributes, thus, messing with constraints when you set up a sim, that's in SOPs, not DOPs. Even in DOPs, when a constraint is broken, it's removed in SOPs using a SOP solver, etc... Here's a simple setup just to illustrate how you could use this. (edit: and yeah, I set that up deliberately confusing as an illustration, hehe, but it's simple enough to figure out I hope - think 'where does the color come from')

sops.in.dops.in.sops.hiplc

Edited July 14, 2016 by Farmfield

[mstarktv]

I think I'm being confusing when I mention DOP's. Most of my time is spent in SOPs with wrangles and such just to manipulate Dynamic Setups. Mostly my dynamics are pretty straight forward so far. I have tons of VEX code saved in a file just to use because I forget it. In this case, I was just trying to find a good way to do those damn clusters lol.

[Farmfield]

Hehe, exactly my point, you wouldn't have been (at least as much) if you had better understanding of SOPs. Knowing your journey, having done it myself, I can tell you the stuff you need to know to do cool stuff in DOPs, is in SOPs - so you should get a good grip on that first, then move onto RBD, the gas and FLIP solvers, etc... Starting at the other end, it will take you a long time to get what you need to know to control your sims - and that's what dynamics in Houdini is all about, control, directability, etc...

[mstarktv]

I think the first few months that I had my head in Houdini I didn't even attempt anything but manipulating points. The good thing is that math is universal. People are asking me already if I've started using Pyro, and I'm like "NOPE" - foundations first! the DOP thing came about only because I knew enough to pull off a small project with some hiccups. 

I mean, i love all the obvious parts of FX, but it's the subtle things that really grab me. It's why I took to Magma like a moth to a flame. I could take data and tweak it just that much more. No one may notice, but I will. It's why anytime I see a movie with an explosion using a generic blackbody shader I get slightly annoyed. lol, ADD SOME COLOR VARIATION!!!

[Farmfield]

The math is one thing, there I know you have everything in check, I'm thinking more about attributes and how to manipulate them, stuff like how you can promote from point to detail and back just to extract a max value, stuff like that. A good example is in the cluster_geo.FF.v1 scene file where I used a foreach over primitives to set the clustnum of all points in a piece to the clustnum of the first point of the piece. That's what I'm talking about, those very Houdini type solutions.

Well, I know you're gonna get full control over this, just trying to give you some pointers from my own experiences coming from Max to Houdini.

[VFXArabia]

Guys this is really amazing, Thaaaaaaaaaaaanx