Cloud rig disappears after frame one? [Solved]

[Damien]

Hey guys! This forum has been immensely useful on my journey of using and learning Houdini, and for once I am finally trying to apply my new knowledge and make a present for someone special to me and today is the last day I get to work on it, for this last part I need to have some clouds moving around on screen (I'm creating a surrealistic cloudscape with some floating cloud objects) but I have an issue!

Okay so the issue is, I can create a normal geometry object inside of Houdini from the shelf tools (Such as a normal box) and apply a cloud rig to it, then key frame it in one position at frame 1 and then at frame 10 at another location moving the box_object1 node then it animates fine and the cloud floats from point 1 to point 2 between frames 1 & 10.

However in the very same scene if I import a custom geometry (In this case a fairly low detailed heart nothing insane just a 3D Heart shape) and create a cloud rig from it it looks GORGEOUS but if I scrub forward in the timeline it disappears! the gizmo is still there but it is not, so trying to set a keyframe at frame 1 then going to frame 10 to set another doesn't work because the object is invisible. I am still moving the heart object thing like I was the box, what's the difference here? Is this possible at all? I really need to be able to do this to finish the present on time and I have been trying to solve this myself the last 2 days alone and am just so frustrated I figured I would turn over to you guys, thoughts?

What I need to be able to do: Animate custom cloud geometry (Created with cloud rig) across the scene.

Issue: The cloud object disappears after I move the timeline anywhere past frame 1 so I can't even animate it because I can't see it

I feel there is some insanely obvious easy answer to this problem I am not quite getting or some concept I don't understand but I am still fairly new to Houdini so I apologize if so.

 

Thank you SO SO SO much for ANY basic help you give in this situation because I am on such a tight deadline I am thinking for the first time in my life renting freaking rendering farm time just to get this thing out in time, but first I need to be able to move my custom clouds! I have tried SOOO much other software trying to do this and this is the only one I get close to it on. Thank you!

- Damien

P.S. I can attach a project file if I have too but I figured this might be simple enough to might not need one, but if you do I will gladly!

Edited February 15, 2017 by Damien

[Martin47]

if you are creating a cloud system from the shelf tool, it will merge the original geometry into a new one via object merge node, so the transformation will be stored in the original geometry, try to change the transform parameter to "none", from the drop down menu of the object merge node.

[Damien]

18 minutes ago, Martin47 said:

if you are creating a cloud system from the shelf tool, it will merge the original geometry into a new one via object merge node, so the transformation will be stored in the original geometry, try to change the transform parameter to "none", from the drop down menu of the object merge node.

Hey! Thanks so much for the reply that actually helped with moving it but I was wondering if you had any insight on why it still disappears when I scrub the timeline forward a frame.

-- Actually while writing this and writing the error down for you I get on the cloud object nodes after sliding the scrubber forward a frame I figured out what is wrong.. It's because I wasn't running Houdini as Admin... If you knew how many days of straight horrific work I have been working on trying to get th is present done in time and being stuck on these clouds you would realize how horrible I feel figuring this out lol, I wish I had posted here sooner, thank you so much for your post and it helped lead me to the issue and solved another issue as well, thank you!