capturing geometry tutorials

[KrisStaber]

i am getting into houdni rigging and after a day of pain and suffering i think i slowly start to see the light when it comes to capturing geometry

but a lot is still not 100% clear and a bit weired

i am sure a good tutorial would help there

but i couldnt really find anything

questions:

there seem to be a lot of different capturing methods in houdini and they dont seem to update the color on the mesh same way

there is the capture regions one

the painting weights - that one often seem to lock itsself up

the moving the slider on the bones with points selected

and probably a couple of other ones

can i use them all at once ?

how do you usually envelope a high quality character to a bit mor advanced rig ?

why do the painting weights one often lock up

i then have the brush and all but i cant paint

thanks

[michael]

you can use all of them together....

my best guess about the capturepaint locking up is that you're painting with 'live' geometry....

place a null SOP just above your deform SOP and then lock it (red flag)

that should help.

[KrisStaber]

i will have to try that

but i have a lot of deformer bones in different levels

i have a weired behaviour on a few bones

others work

any ideas

seems like the bone is in some other space

skin_problem.mov

[KrisStaber]

isnt there a capturing method where i can grab the mesh and the bones, and then tell it to find X amount of closest bones for every single vertex ?

so that every vertex grabs say two bones that are closest to it, and therefore every vertex / meshpoint is captured ?

[Jason]

isnt there a capturing method where i can grab the mesh and the bones, and then tell it to find X amount of closest bones for every single vertex ?

so that every vertex grabs say two bones that are closest to it, and therefore every vertex / meshpoint is captured ?

Proximity Capture is what you want, yes?

[KrisStaber]

Proximity Capture is what you want, yes?

sort of

but i would like it from the other end

that proximity capture starts from every bone and just calculates a distance (sliders in the lower left) and captures the geometry according to that distance

i would like to have it start from every vertex / point and grab a predefined ammount of bones that are closest in distance to that vertex

this way every point in the mesh will be captured and you have some sort of usable result to work from.

with houdinis capture proximity its very problematic when you compare the spine (big distance to bone) to fingers (small distance)

i am sure there is a straight forward workflow in capturing geometry in houdini

i just havent found it yet :-/

[Jason]

that proximity capture starts from every bone and just calculates a distance (sliders in the lower left) and captures the geometry according to that distance

i would like to have it start from every vertex / point and grab a predefined ammount of bones that are closest in distance to that vertex

this way every point in the mesh will be captured and you have some sort of usable result to work from.

I'm sure in the algorithm it must do it from the point's perspective, searching for the closest bones. The CaptureProximity does support a "Max Influences" (default of 2) parameter too, so I'm not sure what else you might need?

i am sure there is a straight forward workflow in capturing geometry in houdini

The CaptureRegion style I've find useful in the past, and really easy to use - and the Metaball Capture is excellent for getting better weighting for muscled characters - or even cartoony ones. And you can do this very interactively, at least with the CaptureRegion pills.

[KrisStaber]

yeah you are right jason

now that i slowly get the hang of the DOs and DONTs of geometry capture i find everything i need

and more

some of the tools are just awesome

and i am sure i am only scratching the surface