Carve Contour Lines In Car Body

[derp_bot]

Hi all,

First off, I should say that I am new to Houdini, coming from a Blender background, so if I ask silly questions, I apologise in advance.

My ultimate goal if to create sci-fi style car bodies using Houdini, akin to what Akira Saito over at Polyphony has managed to achieve, outlined in the talk:

http://cdn2.gran-turismo.com/data/www/pdi_publications/cedec2018_proceduralHardSurfaceDesignWithHoudiniLight.pdf

Its in Japanese, but the images tell a fairly solid story.

Basically, I am looking for a way to sculpt contour lines into a car body.

So to go from a smooth body like this (ignoring the arrows, they are the authors):

 

To a contoured body like these:

 

 

As I mentioned, I am pretty new to Houdini, so any pointers on where to get started would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers

 

 

[konstantin magnus]

Hi Adam,

Akira Saito has probably voronoi-fractured the shell and minimized each surface.

Reminds me of what BMW has concepted with 'GINA' or of a Zeppelin for that matter.

Here is an exemplary workflow:

fracture_smooth.hiplc

Edited February 10, 2019 by konstantin magnus

[derp_bot]

Amazing! This looks like a great place to start.

Thanks Konstantin for the reply!

[Atom]

Nice setup Konstatin, I have taken the result from your file and symmetrically re-fractured it, adding displacement to the newly fractured pieces.

Here is it with another scatter seed and a different UV projection type.

Edited February 11, 2019 by Atom

[Paul Corfield]

There's a SideFX video on vimeo for this project that Akira Saito made. A couple of weeks ago they added English subtitles to it so you should be able to learn a lot about his process from watching this. On the video play bar click on CC to call up the English subtitles.

 

 

[caskal]

On 10/2/2019 at 7:27 AM, konstantin magnus said:

Hi Adam,

Akira Saito has probably voronoi-fractured the shell and minimized each surface.

Reminds me of what BMW has concepted with 'GINA' or of a Zeppelin for that matter.

Here is an exemplary workflow:

fracture_smooth.hiplc

Thanks @konstantin magnus, i was also playing with procedural cars and spent 2 days trying to figure out that step. 

How would you make those panels more acentuated? Tried increasing the smooth but seems to have a limit, any tips on make these panels more prominent? 

Thanks again 

Cheers!

[caskal]

On 10/2/2019 at 7:27 AM, konstantin magnus said:

Hi Adam,

Akira Saito has probably voronoi-fractured the shell and minimized each surface.

Reminds me of what BMW has concepted with 'GINA' or of a Zeppelin for that matter.

Here is an exemplary workflow:

fracture_smooth.hiplc

Thanks @konstantin magnus, i was also playing with procedural cars and spent 2 days trying to figure out that step. 

How would you make those panels more acentuated? Tried increasing the smooth but seems to have a limit, any tips on make these panels more prominent? 

Thanks again 

Cheers!

[konstantin magnus]

19 hours ago, caskal said:

How would you make those panels more acentuated?

You could divide the distance to the borders by the maximum distance for each cell, modify this gradient to make it curved and use this to push the surfaces inwards. 

 

surface_inwards.hiplc

[konstantin magnus]

An even smoother result can also be reached by simply using the deltamush node.

You can multiply the strength of this effect by this:

vector delta = point(1, 'P', @ptnum) - v@P;
v@P += delta * chf('strength');

surface_deltamush.hiplc

Edited March 6, 2019 by konstantin magnus

[caskal]

2 hours ago, konstantin magnus said:

You could divide the distance to the borders by the maximum distance for each cell, modify this gradient to make it curved and use this to push the surfaces inwards. 

 

surface_inwards.hiplc

Damn @konstantin magnus these are the moments I wish I knew more vex, this is beautiful, even with that displace slider.

Trying to get around and understand this:

1. - You group the edges
2. create an interger pt_near and a vector pos_near 
3. Calculate the distance between those?
4. I totally get lost on the distance lol

Will read more about nearpoint function since I saw everywhere, in case I want to visualize stuff like "pt_near", what can I do? tried @Cd = @pt_near with no luck, will check with a visualize node.

 

So in terms of sop land, is like having a point on the center of each cluster and displace that inwards?

P.S: Never heard about the DeltaMush node, reading the help doc on that right now.

Thanks a lot!

[vinyvince]

Great posts here , thanks guys

Here's an algorithm which worth to be mentioned as well

http://www.cs.columbia.edu/cg/developability/