Animating connected curves

[hampuseh]

Hello!

I have a tree that consist of multiple curves connected to each other. I'm at the point of having animation on the section of branches. I have made a color attribute going from the tips of each branch and then expanding inwards towards the trunk. 

However, the tree is made up of different sections. So the first section of branches would be the parents to the second section of branches. So the second section would follow the first sections animation, and so on. 

So my question is;

What would be a smart/procedural way of animating a tree made up of curves?

[Jesus Nieto]

Start creating the parents and animate/deform them any way you want. Once you have that, you could use something like @curveu (which you can automatically export from the resample node) to create an @emission_area attribute from where you want your secondary branches to be born from. To create the secondary branches use your @emission_area attribute to scatter some points on the parent. Use a "point deform node" to attach you secondary branches origin points to the moving parent branches. Copy lines, deform/animate and repeat the process with the third and forth branch generations.

[hampuseh]

13 hours ago, Jesus Nieto said:

Start creating the parents and animate/deform them any way you want. Once you have that, you could use something like @curveu (which you can automatically export from the resample node) to create an @emission_area attribute from where you want your secondary branches to be born from. To create the secondary branches use your @emission_area attribute to scatter some points on the parent. Use a "point deform node" to attach you secondary branches origin points to the moving parent branches. Copy lines, deform/animate and repeat the process with the third and forth branch generations.

I see your point and that will be useful in the near future, however my curves are not generated in Houdini, I take existing curve sections from a already existing tree and then "sew" them together and then use a polywire sop to create the geometry.

In the picture below showcases how the curves already look like when I import them to Houdini. I can animate each piece without any problem but I don't have the knowledge of how to parent each section.

 

[berglte]

So what are you exactly trying to animate, deform the tree with wind or something similar?

[hampuseh]

1 hour ago, berglte said:

So what are you exactly trying to animate, deform the tree with wind or something similar?

Yes I want to simulate some sort of wind animation. I am using noise sop to create the animation.

So I start of by animating the Trunk curve, swaying back and forth. I then want the next section of curves to follow the trunks animation like a parent-child relationship. This is where I struggle. 

 

[berglte]

There's a few posts about this sort of stuff here and on SideFX forums. One of them mentioned there's a example file called Bending Tree that comes with Houdini. Looks like it's the effect you're after.
I don't have an example file of my own at hand at the moment. Try reading about Wire Solvers and have a look at Houdinis example file.