1st Annual Houdini Hacker Contest

[jjstanley]

I've had a couple different ideas I wanted to do but just too busy! I'm really interested to see everyone elses project though.

[mark]

same, i really wanted to enter but with applying for a new job, exams and a busy time at work November was more stressful than the silly season thanks for the competition and good luck to the entrants!

[Visual Cortex Lab]

.... news?... who's the winner?... can we check the posted jobs? i cant wait to see some cool stuff

[Wolfwood]

.... news?... who's the winner?... can we check the posted jobs? i cant wait to see some cool stuff

23242[/snapback]

Shortly. I promise.

Busy Work + XMas + Some of the judges are being rolled off of their current job == Slow

Hehe I was a retard for thinking I could everything judged and written up in a week.

:banned:

[Visual Cortex Lab]

Shortly.  I promise. 

Busy Work + XMas + Some of the judges are being rolled off of their current job == Slow 

Hehe I was a retard for thinking I could everything judged and written up in a week.

:banned:

23247[/snapback]

ehehehe .. ... take your time... just know people here cant wait to see results!!!! (wont push you uh? )

cheers

[Visual Cortex Lab]

... none more than me is still wanting to see the results?

cheers.

[Visual Cortex Lab]

.... ok it must be just me.

[Marc]

no, me too..

[Mario Marengo]

Santa stole the prizes, and we've been keeping Wolfwood busy... we bad.

[Mario Marengo]

Santa stole the prizes, and we've been keeping Wolfwood busy... we bad.

23805[/snapback]

P.S: just kidding (don't want anyone to get depressed).... I just saw all the submissions (and know who the winners are), so I believe a posting of the results is imminent... hang in there

[Visual Cortex Lab]

P.S: just kidding (don't want anyone to get depressed).... I just saw all the submissions (and know who the winners are), so I believe a posting of the results is imminent... hang in there

23825[/snapback]

doh.. do i missed the thread were winner were posted?

[meshsmooth]

is this still alive?

or did it die with the crash?

[michael]

I will personally find jim on Monday and force him to reveal the winners...or just have lunch...Jim?

[keltuzar]

hmm maybe the houdini book he has is too hard to part with....

[Wolfwood]

Great news!

I kicked my wife out of the country for two weeks and went off and hid at the library.....

:coffee1:

[Wolfwood]

Results (finally)

Apologizing and stuff (you can skip this...really)

First things first, I'd like to apologize for taking so long in posting the results. Between the holidays, family, work and beer I've been stupid busy for the last month or so. (And on top of that I tried to put as much effort picking apart the files as you guys did building them.) Once again sorry for taking so long, ( I've also learned how to avoid all the distractions of life...its called a library with no internet connection. ) So enough rambling, results time.

Results

Damn fine job to everyone who entered. Going through the hips was a ton of fun. Learned some neat tricks and even found a bug with nvidia drivers. (*cough* Ed *cough*)

2005's Houdini Hacker is: Frank Firsching

Originally the rules said, there would be a first, second and third place. But since I loved all the entries and I was having a hard time picking the "runner-ups" I decided that everyone should win. Frank will get the book and DVD, and everyone else can pick which they want. (You SESI guys will have to share though).

Note: If you guys already have the book/DVD and want something else of roughly the same value just let me know. (I'll be emailing everyone shortly.)

The Entries (in alphabetical order)

Andz

Andz created a procedural city using the Copy SOP in all its glory, complete with roofs and balconies. This is a great example of Houdini's proceduralism. In 42 nodes Andz created a city with parameters to control its creation. The network is nice and clean, (which is great when a client calls 5 minutes before you were going to go home and asks for changes).

Hip-

andz_citymaker.hipnc.gz

Video-

andz_citymaker.avi

Files

        andz_citymaker.hipnc (v. 8.0.410)

        andz_citymaker.avi  (Divx 5)

        readme.txt          (Microsoft Windows)

Directions

        1 - Go to Output;

        2 - Check path for images to be rendered;

        3 - Hit Render on Mantra1;

        Obs: First frame takes about 5 minutes to calculate all the geometry,

subsequent frames takes few seconds on a Duron 1800+

Instrucions on procedural modeling

        Just go to SOPs inside Geometry Object, play with spare channels on the "Distribution Grid" and the amount of frames on the animation, that everything else is connected. Only the camera is keyframed. Building's chaotic distribution is set by the isosurf parameters.

        The animation also looks great using a Spring OP at the end of the chain.

Crunch

Crunch has lots of free time on his hands so he had three entries. The first two I've already posted, (the calculator and the screws). So I'll just post the third here. Crunch used a very special hack in this submission, humor. I won't spoil it so just follow the directions and "Enjoy".

Hip-

42-entry3.hip.gz

Uncompress the .hip file.

Load up the .hip file into Houdini.

Ensure play mode is set to "Play Once"

Hit scroll lock

Hit play.

If your machine is not fast enough for realtime, please turn realtime

off.  It makes it easier to read.

This entry is NOT:

    - Particularly artistic

    - Particularly procedural

    - No technical hacks

    - No "Whoa, how did they do that factor"

In fact, as an animation, I'm not too happy with it.  But I think

you'll enjoy the 30 minutes it took me to put it together.

By my count, there are 32 OPs.

P.S.  I'm beginning to think that 42 is a whole heck of a lot of

operators to play with.

Enjoy,

Edward

Edward created a procedural fern using a delayed OpenGL viewer refreshing trick. Each camera has a Clear Viewport parameter which controls how often the viewport buffer is cleared. By setting it to a value of less than one you can get some neat effects, which Edward used to his advantage. To create the fern he used POPs to generate the points which in turn get placed in a fern shape. (He'll have to explain how he derived the expression )

Note: On some video cards you need to turn Double Buffering off for this to work. If you hit play and it takes forever to do anything then you are one of the unlucky ones.

Hip-

fern.hip.gz

FERN by edward

==============

Instructions

------------

1. Load Houdini with fern.hip

2. Set the play mode on the playbar to Play Once.

3. Hit play.

Technical Notes

---------------

1. The hip file was hexpand'ed and the .application file modified so that the

  viewer is set up appropriately as soon as the hip file is loaded.

2. You need to start playback from frame 1 each time because we're looking

  through the special camera which only clears the viewport at that frame.

FrankFirsching (This year's champ)

This one was my favorite. Its a wire man that dances based on the waveform a input audio track. But there is more to it than that. In order to help keep the node count under 42, Frank Copy Stamps cregions on to the character which act as like a sort of meta-skeleton. Very clever. Be sure to check out /obj/AbstractMan/chops/map2Bones. Stop reading and go check it out.

Hip-

dancingMan.hipnc.gz

Video-

dancingMan.avi

Audio- (These are big, if you have some audio sitting around, use them instead)

Sample1

Sample2

The animation provided uses the xvid codec and a mp3 audio track. To reproduce

this animation, simply render matra1-ROP.

Since rendering the animation takes so long, you can also hit play in Houdini

and see a realtime wireframe character (The computer should be sufficiently

fast. It's working on my Pentium M 2GHz using Linux. I also noticed, that

Windows is much slower with realtime performance). This realtime feedback is

especially usefull, if you want to test the proceduralism and change the audio

track. Unfortunately one node was lacking to turn the character into an otl. So

you have to change the sound file in the chop

/obj/AbstractMan/chops/Song.

This is also the CHOP, that should have the audio flag set (sometimes Houdini

forgets to play the audio). Unfortunately Houdini also seems to have some

problems with computing the dependency of CHOPS. This is often noticable, if you

change the sound file. The most obvious error is, that the waveform in the

timeline doesn't update. But sometimes this also affects the animation :-(

Forcing a recook of some chops most often helps.

JLait

This one will be a hit for all the Math gurus. Jeff implemented Conway's Game of Life using a combination of DOPs and VEX. (As an added bonus it has a ugly cook dependency hack in /obj/the_game_of_life_18_nodes/Back_from_dops.

`ifs(0, ch("../gridres1")+ch("../gridres2"), "")`

Hip-

life.hip.gz

The Game Of Life in under 42 nodes.

You can adjust the size of the playingfield with the spare channels on

the object.

Uses DOPs for the feedback effect

Grasshopper

Grasshopper submitted two entries.

The first one, he took Crunch's idea of a calculator, and took it to the extreme. A working calculator using only 3 nodes. And object, chop and sop...(and a few environment variables.) Instead of having different objects for each button, there is only one object and to determine which button was pushed the mouse chop is used. There is a whole ton of hackery going on in a tiny number of nodes.

Hip-

calc.tar.gz

USAGE

To use it open a textport and type "reset.cmd".  Then follow the

on-screen instructions.

DESCRIPTION

I liked Crunch's Houdini calculator so as an exercise in minimalism I

wanted to see what were the fewest number of nodes I needed to get a

working calculator.  I managed to get it down to just four!

The font SOP is carefully arranged so that it can display the calculator

keypad and the calculated sum.  Its object node has a select script

that is triggered whenever any part of the calculator is clicked.

A mouse chop allows the position of the cursor at the time of the

selection to be used in a script so that it can determine where the

calculator was clicked.

The reset.cmd script will ensure that one viewport is correctly set

up for the demo.  The calculator will be centered correctly in the

viewport and the calibration process which is needed for correct

use of the mouse CHOP will be started.  The calibration process is

very simple.  The user must click in the centre of two 'x'

characters.

As the mouse coordinates are relative to the desktop - not the houdini

session - moving the houdini window or resizing the viewport pane will

invalidate the mouse coordinates.  Calibration will need to be

started again by running "reset.cmd" once more.

The calculator algorithm is adapted from Crunch's rules with the following

improvements:

  1) Negative numbers can be entered if the '-' symbol is selected before

    numerals are entered

  2) Decimals can be entered

  3) The divide operation has been added

  4) Calculations can be chained so it is possible to enter something like

        3 *12 / 3 + 44.5 - -56.4 =

    The sum is tallied everytime a new math symbol is entered.

  5) The last entered math operator is displayed next to the sum

The calculator could be made much more complicated without any nodes

needing to be added as the extra fuctionality is handled by the script.

For every new function the font SOP needs to have a new keypad character

added.  The button.cmd script also needs to be updated to check if the new

character was closest to the cursor when the script was called.  Clearly,

the same 4-node concept could be adapted for any user interface that can

be displayed in a viewport using a single Font SOP.

The enclosed hip has been tested in Houdini 6.6, 7.1 and 8.0

The second of Grasshopper's entries was procedural centipedes. (And I'll also give him the most expensive hacker award...poor poor cpus) Grasshopper gets major plus points for having a extremely well documented network. There is a TON of stuff going on inside this hip file be sure to check it out. This was great work on Grasshopper's part.

Hip-

centipedes_42nodes_h8_jsh.hipnc.gz

Video-

centipedes_42nodes_InterVideoMPEG.mpg

Total number of nodes used = 42

(4 OBJ, 3 ground SOPs, 26 centipedes SOPs, 6 POPs, 2 SHOPs, 1 ROP)

This hip was created in Houdini Apprentice 8.0.  It is unlikely to

work in many earlier versions of Houdini because of its heavy use of

the stamp function.

To render the sequence load the file in Houdini 8 and hit render in

the mantra ROP.  It isn't quick to render!

This hip file creates procedurally animated centipedes that crawl

randomly over a hilly terrain.  Towards the end of the sequence the

centipedes converge to the same place.  When centipedes cross each

other one will climb over the other.  The detection of intersections

and the animation of the climbing is determined procedurally.  Several

centipedes can climb over each other at once.

This demo is designed as a proof-of-concept for creating an effect

similar to the insect-demon in the film Constantine where several

insects crawl over and form the shape of a human.  To complete that

effect curves would need to be wrapped around an animated human form.

As demonstrated here, the centipedes would travel along the curves

and climb over each other when they meet.

Koen

This is another one of my favorites. It has some good use of CHOPs and expressions, but there is one very good hack that Koen used, the visual hack. The first couple of times I watched the video I thought, "Wow, that's some impressive DOPs use going on." However there isn't any dynamics in the hip. Its all done with expressions. In this industry, cheating the look is one of the most important hacks you can do. Kudos to Koen for using it.

Hip-

Kv_Logo_Dominos_V2.8.hipnc.gz

Video-

Kv_Logo_Dominos_V2.8.mov

The resulting animation can be reproduced by flipbooking the only camera in the

scene (cam_playblast_me)

from frame 1 to frame 900.

If I counted correctly (or rather, ran the counting script correctly) it should

contain exactly 42 nodes, not counting the top level containers.

Cheers,

Koen Vroeijenstijn

The animation is a sorensen video 3 quicktime at 320x200

a higher resolution version is available at

http://littlegreenmen.nl/houdini/KV_H42.mov    (14MB)

Once again, great job everyone!

I'm still correcting spelling, formatting and links so don't scold me too much. (its late)

[Wolfwood]

So I FINALLY post and what happens? My webhost goes down....

:cry2:

jailshell-2.05a$
Broadcast message from root (pts/2) (Mon Jan 30 23:50:38 2006):

The system is going down for reboot NOW!

If the links or images aren't showing up, sit tight....the server will be up and happy....shortly.

[mike]

Hi Wolfwood,

many thanks for all the work . hope the the server will be ready soon.

[LEO-oo-]

@Wolfwood

Thanks for the work!

@Frank Firsching

Congratulations! Klasse Arbeit!

@all other

Great job guys - nice stuff!

[Rafal123]

yeahhh.... very, very cool stuff,

congrats for all you guys, good job !!!