Edit Sop Question

[Bleen]

Hello again. Hope you don't mind my asking...

I've been trying for a while now, but I can't make the edit SOP work. I'm following the 6th VTM from 3DBuzz, and there is this simple hierarchy:

As you can see, scaling the vertices deforms the sphere. so far so good, and I understand how this works.

So I tried to copy this, and the result was:

The sphere is not deforming at all!

I noticed that the edit SOP has two inputs instead of one, so maybe this is the reason? I tried to plug the box to the other input and nothing happened...

I wonder, what happened? How to fix this?

Thanks!

[edward]

The Sphere SOP by default, is created as a "Primitive" type. This means that Houdini only only represents it as a point and x,y,z radius. The Lattice SOP on the other hand works by moving the points of your geometry. So since your sphere has only 1 point, it's not deforming. To make a long story short: change your sphere's primitive type to Polygons (with sufficient divisions) or NURBs.

Judging from the screenshots, it looks like first image was down with a NURBs sphere. The old Edit SOP has only 1 input.

[deecue]

As you can see, scaling the vertices deforms the sphere.

another thing that's good to note for users coming from maya is that vertices in houdini are called points.. houdini has verts as well, but they are real verts.. i.e. shared per point.. (there may be an equivalent to this in maya, so excuse my ignorance if this is the case..) it's just terminology differences for each package, but it's a good thing to know if one of the vids or tuts starts referring to each of them in houdini terms..

[Bleen]

The Sphere SOP by default, is created as a "Primitive" type. This means that Houdini only only represents it as a point and x,y,z radius. The Lattice SOP on the other hand works by moving the points of your geometry. So since your sphere has only 1 point, it's not deforming. To make a long story short: change your sphere's primitive type to Polygons (with sufficient divisions) or NURBs.

Judging from the screenshots, it looks like first image was down with a NURBs sphere. The old Edit SOP has only 1 input.

25975[/snapback]

Thankyouthankyouthankyou! That certinly was the problem!

I hope I can shape up with my Houdini handling, it's still very green

I've ordered the Magic Of Houdini book, hope it'll help

[Mcronin]

I've ordered the Magic Of Houdini book, hope it'll help 

25993[/snapback]

I've only skimmed the book and read a few random sections, but I think it's a great book. It covers the basics of all the contexts of the software and is full of small, practical examples. The one thing you'll have to understand about Houdini particularly where demos and tutorials are concerned is that unlike other software packages Houdini demos and tutorials don't really try to show you something pretty, they show users things that are often simple and general and leave it to you to figure out how it fits into the big picture. For example, most modeling tutorials in Maya take the approach of showing you how to build something step by step with the goal seeming to be to learn how to build this specific finished product. The Houdini modeling tutorial would be something simple, ugly, and completely irrelevant with the goal being to learn how the tools work. So don't be put off by the seemingly simple and ugly projects you see in the book, there's a ton of great information in there from people who are very knowledgable not just about Houdini but computer graphics in general.

[lynbo]

To add to Mcronin's reply

The best way to learn something is to conceptualize,q

and not get caught up in the details. If you can grasp

what the motivation and thinking of something is in broad terms

your mind will fill in the fiddly bits for you.

Its not that 6x2=12 Its that something is multilied by something.

Really basic example I know but it gets the idea across.

Sorry just waxing a little philosophical today.

Lyn