Slimesunday Posted September 12, 2016 Share Posted September 12, 2016 (edited) Whats up everyone? Ive been using C4D for years now and recently decided to start learning Houdini. Ive quickly found out that Houdini is 100% different so to say im a noob would be an understatement. Now to my question. Cinema 4D just dropped the r18 release and introduce a new tool called the push apart effector. For example, you can clone a bunch of objects to a surface and use the tool to ensure that none of the objects are touching. You can use this tool to create a very fake circle packing effect. Ive attached an image so you can see what im talking about; that reptilian eye was created using push apart. It looks cool but I would love some help creating a system that does this in Houdini and does it far more accurately. I recently saw this image by simon holmedal that I know for a fact that it was done in houdini. Its definitely circle packing and its done on a 3d surface. So does anyone have any idea how he created this image using houdini? Ive checked multiple threads regarding circle packing and dart throwing but none of them deal with packing objects onto a 3d surface. Edited September 12, 2016 by Slimesunday Spelling Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mestela Posted September 13, 2016 Share Posted September 13, 2016 this sorta thing? scatter_density_relax_pscale.hip 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slimesunday Posted September 13, 2016 Author Share Posted September 13, 2016 (edited) @mestelaThat definitely looks super cool. So you are using a noise shader to set the scale of the spheres? I know nothing about houdini so thats jut my assumption. Another idea I had was to use the Triangulate 2d and then use Divide Compute dual to mimic the effect of circle packing. The next step would be to copy spheres onto the surface of the polygons and set their radius to the size of the polygons they are copied onto. I have attached an image example of what I mean and the scene file. The problem with this is that i dont know how to tell houdini to do that and that it will only work on a 2d surface. noobpack.hiplc Edited September 13, 2016 by Slimesunday Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mestela Posted September 13, 2016 Share Posted September 13, 2016 Yes, a noise texture. By default a scatter will try to randomly distribute points over a surface. if you enable the option to to make it look for a @density attribute on the surface, it will use that to control the amount of points scattered. Here, i've used a point wrangle to add that attribute, and used noise based on position to drive it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slimesunday Posted September 13, 2016 Author Share Posted September 13, 2016 @mestelaThanks man!! the more I play around with it the more I see how cool this is. Do you know any good references to help me understand simple vex expressions? I will use your set up to make something cool and I will show you the final result when im done. Thanks again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mestela Posted September 13, 2016 Share Posted September 13, 2016 http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/index.php?title=HoudiniVex Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slimesunday Posted September 14, 2016 Author Share Posted September 14, 2016 @mestela Here is the result of experimenting with your asset. Will definitely be effing with this set up more. Do you have a instagram so I can shout you out when I post. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mestela Posted September 14, 2016 Share Posted September 14, 2016 heh nice! no instagram or twitter, i find myself distracted enough with houdini and facebook as-is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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