Gradient group transfer

[netherknight]

Hi all, 

I'm looking into a way to apply a "feather" effect to a group transfer. I this case I would like to have a grid of points where the edges are selected with a gradient to apply a higher level of detail. (See image) 

My thoughts sofar was to create a box around my grid and use group transfer with a distance threshold. However, this cuts off rather abruptly causing less of a gradient and more of a border. 
I've made a .hip file (attached) where I've attempted a rudimentary "bleeding effect" What I did for those who don't want to check the .hip is selected the border, then over a series of nodes selected a higher random number of points with a smaller distance threshold. This works though it is very messy/inefficient and isn't very user friendly. 

My question is how to approach this in a more procedural manner? 

And a follow-up question would be how to apply such a gradient grouping based on other objects, for example, a camera. Though this is less needed and more of a pondering. 

Any help would be appreciated.

-Thomas 

Gradientgroupselect.hip

[konstantin magnus]

Hi Thomas,

you can feather groups with the distance from geometry-node along with group expressions like:

fit01(rand(@elemnum), -chf('border'), 1) > @dist * 1.0 / chf('radius')

 

feather_groups.hipnc

[netherknight]

That sounds great! However, I believe this is a feature in 18.0. Which of course won't work in 17.5.

Is there a way of getting this to work in 17.5 without having to upgrade? 

 

Edit: it doesn't have to be as elegant as the distance from geometry-node but something we can use before we've made the switch to 18

 

Edited September 7, 2020 by netherknight

[Librarian]

@netherknight
You have here solution
Hope it Helps
http://www.esoastudio.com/houdinibasicnotes

[konstantin magnus]

1 hour ago, netherknight said:

I believe this is a feature in 18.0. Which of course won't work in 17.5.

I heard it was called 'falloff' before. Alternatively you could also look into a VEX function called pcfind(): https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/vex/functions/pcfind.html