Proximity

Capture geometry by proximity

To bind surfaces to bones, you specify a 3D volume around the bone, inside which the bone will “capture” surfaces. You will control the capture regions using manipulators that define the volume in which the capturing will occur.

Tip

The skeleton and skin surfaces should overlap in 3D. Switch to the capture pose if you need to use a specific pose for capturing geometry.

To... Do this

Bind geometry to bones

  1. Click the the Capture Geometry tool on the Character shelf.

  2. Select the surfaces you want to capture, then click to finish the selection.

  3. Select the root object of the character/bone chain you want to bind the geometry to, then click to finish the selection.

    In shaded mode, the geometry changes to the color of its capturing bone. Geometry that is not captured is white.

  4. If part of a surface is mistakenly captured or not captured, edit the capture region of the bones (see below).

  5. Once the surfaces are successfully captured, you can use the Pose tool to pose the skeleton and the surfaces should deform to follow the skeleton.

Edit the capture region of bones

  1. Click the Edit Capture Regions tool on the Character shelf.

  2. Select the bones you want to capture geometry for, then press Enter to confirm the selection.

  3. Manipulators appear on the bones showing each bone’s capture region (the volume around the bone which inside which geometry will be bound to the bone). Drag the handles to change the size of the capture region. Hold ⇧ Shift and drag a capture region handle to edit all the handles on a bone at once.

Behind the scenes

If you go into the Geometry object containing the captured surfaces, you will see Houdini has added a Capture node and a Deform node to the existing chain. These nodes use the bone movements to deform the geometry.