eidolon Posted September 23, 2002 Share Posted September 23, 2002 Hi. What is the best way to model something by building individual polygons in Houdini? I'm experimenting with the Add SOP and can create polgons with it but am having a hard time adding a poly to an existing poly. The documents mention specifying an input. How do I do that exactly? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MG Posted September 23, 2002 Share Posted September 23, 2002 You mean "poly by poly" such as in LightWave? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eidolon Posted September 23, 2002 Author Share Posted September 23, 2002 I haven't used Lightwave but here's what I'd like to do: I have a top orthographic projection image reference that I've drawn a mesh on using photoshop. I've placed the image into the viewport background and I'd like to trace out the polygons. I'm not sure if this makes sense but basically it's like you click four times to make one four sided polygon then begin another polygon operation so that the new one shares the same edge as the previous one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MG Posted September 23, 2002 Share Posted September 23, 2002 I haven't used Lightwave but here's what I'd like to do:I have a top orthographic projection image reference that I've drawn a mesh on using photoshop. I've placed the image into the viewport background and I'd like to trace out the polygons. I'm not sure if this makes sense but basically it's like you click four times to make one four sided polygon then begin another polygon operation so that the new one shares the same edge as the previous one. That's the thing I was talking about. It's one of LightWave Modeler's superb features. (Where most LW'ers reffer to). Good news. You can do this in Houdini aswell! (Not totally via the same approach, which is no big deal though). You could, Instead of drawing the vertices and then building the polygons, draw polygons with (closed) polygon curves with snapping on. Later, when you modeled a part, you can fuse all the vertices (or selections of parts) and fuse ("weld/merge") the vertices together within a certain radius. I find this method, frankly, pretty effective! Since this is Houdini we are speaking of, there are definately also other ways in doing this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eidolon Posted September 23, 2002 Author Share Posted September 23, 2002 Excellent. Thank you very much! You've been extremely helpful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MG Posted September 23, 2002 Share Posted September 23, 2002 No problem at all! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaJuice Posted September 23, 2002 Share Posted September 23, 2002 Eidelon, just start with a single polygon and PolyExtrude the edges my friend. Here is a really great tut that shows the process of modeling a girl using this method. Joan of Arc tutorial Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danteA Posted September 23, 2002 Share Posted September 23, 2002 It'd interesting to see if you can use the Trace SOP in anyway for this .... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
plan9 Posted September 24, 2002 Share Posted September 24, 2002 I agree with DaJuice on this, and dante has the right idea as well. only problem i can see with the trace sop is confusion amongst the different surfaces it will create. perhaps you can elaborate on a how you would use the trace sop? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eidolon Posted September 25, 2002 Author Share Posted September 25, 2002 Thanks guys, the combination of creating polys, extruding edges and fusing is working out great. The trace sop looks really interesting. Haven't quite figured it out yet but will keep playing. One other quick newbie question if you dont mind If I'm working on half a model is it possible to "lock" the points along the YZ axis so that when I'm doing edits with soft radius I won't affect those points? Or is there a quick way of lining them back up in case they do get shifted? Right now I'm snapping individual points and was wondering if there was a better way. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danteA Posted September 25, 2002 Share Posted September 25, 2002 Well, I rendered out a grid to a file, I managed to recreate geometry out of it from the image using the Trace SOP. It doesn't produce clean geometry like you would expect but it certainly beats hand snapping. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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