show trajectory

[6ril]

Hi all,

I need a little help here, can't find out how to display the trajectory (path) of a transform I'm using to animate a simple circle. I need to animate it inside my geo node, so I can't use the motion path tool available a the scene level.

Is there a way to display this trajectory ?

thanks in advance,

[Sepu]

You could use the trail sop then

[6ril]

Heu Sepu,

I've tried it, but it's not as convenient as a simple visible path with points on keyframes.

I was wondering if there was a "proper" way ?

If there isn't, I'll deal with the trail trick : /

It should be there !! come on SideFx !

 

thanks for answering quickly Sepu

[madebygeoff]

Unfortunately Houdini at the moment seems caught between the old system of object-based animation, where you can see motion paths, and sop-based animation, where you can't.

For the moment I think you're stuck with either the trail SOP or using a spine path to drive the motion path or abusing the new rig pose SOP. You could do a single point joint in KineFX and animate that using the rig pose to see the motion path and attach your circle to the single joint.

 

[6ril]

Thanks Geoff,

I'll into those tricks when needed, I'm almost done with that circle.

This post was more to learn if I couldn't find the feature or if the feature was missing.

thanks again

[Sepu]

Another trick is to use to motion clip from kinefx. Pack your geo so Assemble  > motionclip > motionclipextractkeyposes then lower the key poses threshold and that should give your key poses or close to it, then merge that with the trail sop 

[madebygeoff]

^^ That's a cool use of the motion clip. The nice thing about that is that then you can actually use all kinds of things to make procedural changes to the animation path. Kind of obviates the need for CHOPs in a lot of situations, which I have to admit, has always kind of baffled me.

But based on your comments above, I'd try the rig pose trick for more manual animation. It does exactly what you're looking for and has a few handy animation tricks: you can add/delete and move keyframes as well as adjust the curve all from within the viewport. It makes animation in SOPs more similar to what you'd be used to in another app. If you mix it with the trail SOP or the motion clip trick above, you've got a mix of motion paths and onion skinning as reference... or you could turn on onion skinning in the "misc" tab of the geo node. It will still show up when you dive back into SOPs.

Unfortunately right now you still have to copy your geo back to the animated point/joint, but that's not the end of the world.

[AslakKS]

You can also use kinefx with rig pose, there you can enable the motionpath too.

kinefx_motionPath_v01.hiplc