Volume
dynamics node
Creates a volumetric representation of a piece of geometry that can be used for collision detection.
See also: Cloth/Volume Collider, Volume/Volume Collider, Wire/Volume Collider
The Volumetric Representation DOP creates a signed distanced field from a piece of geometry. A signed distance field (SDF) is a function over space which evaluates to the distance to the surface of the object.
If the point is outside the object, the distance is positive, if inside, it is negative. This allows fast inside/outside testing at the expense of initial precomputation and memory usage.
This data must be attached to a piece of geometry data for Houdini to use it for collision detection. Houdini uses the parent geometry data to create the SDF.
Parameters
Data Options
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Mode |
This controls how the SDF is built. The Ray Intersect mode will create a voxel representation of the signed distance field by shooting rays at the underlying geometry. The Meta Ball mode will use the metaball field to determine if a voxel is inside or outside rather than sending rays. The Implicit modes do not create a voxel representation, but instead define the SDF implicitly. This means they are faster and more accurate - provided the underlying geometry matches the given type. |
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Divisions |
Defines the resolution of the grid used to compute the SDF. The SDF is computed within a bounding box slightly larger than the geometry. The minimum feature size of the geometry should thus be larger than the grid spacing or detail will be lost. |
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Laser Scan |
In laser scan mode the SDF is built by sending rays along the primary axes. Only the closest and farthest intersections are used. The space between these two points is classified as inside, and the rest outside. The laser scan mode will work even with geometry which has poorly defined normals, has a self-intersecting surface, or isn’t watertight. The disadvantage is that interior features can’t be represented as they are not detected. When laser scanning is turned off, the SDF is still built by sending rays along the primary axes. All intersections are found, however. Each pair of intersections is tested to see if the segment is inside or outside. This relies on the normal of the geometry being well defined (ie: manifold, no self-intersections), and the geometry being watertight. Complicated shapes with holes can be accurately represented, however. |
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Fix Signs |
Numerical imprecision can result in incorrect sign choices even with the best made geometry. This option will cause the SDF to be post-processed to look for inconsistent signs. These are then made consistent, usually plugging leaks and filling holes. Turning off this option will reduce the time required to construct an SDF but should only be done for cases where the generated SDF is known to be problem free. |
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Force Bounds |
The Fix Signs method alone will smooth out, and usually eliminate, sign inversions. However, it is possible for regions with inverted signs to stabilize at the boundary of the SDF. This option will make Fix Signs less likely to stabilize incorrectly by forcing all voxels on the boundary to be marked as exterior. |
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Invert Sign |
This option will reverse the sense of inside and outside. If one wants a hollow box, one method is to build one box inside the other and not use Laser Scanning. A more robust method is to just specify the inner box and use sign inversion. This treats everything outside of the box as inside, allowing the more robust Laser Scanning method to be used. |
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Offset |
The offset parameter allows the volume to be expanded with a positive value, or shrunk with a negative value. If the volume is expanded, an object can be treated as if it were slightly bigger during collisions. |
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Tolerance |
This specifies the tolerance used for ray intersections when computing the SDF. This value is multiplied by the size of the geometry and is scale invariant. |
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Sign Sweep Threshold |
After the fix signs process is complete there can still be inconsistent areas in the SDF. Large blocks can become stabilized and stick out of the SDF. A second sign sweep pass can be performed to try to eliminate these blocks. The sign sweep threshold governs how big of a jump has to occur for a sign transition to be considered inconsistent. If the values of the sdf change by more than this threshold times the width of the cell, it is considered an invalid sign transition. The original geometry is then ray intersected to determine inside/outside and the result used to determine which sign is correct. The correct sign is then propagated forward through the model. |
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Max Sign Sweep Count |
The sign sweeps are repeated until no signs are flipped (ie, all transitions are within the threshold) or this maximum is reached. Too low of a sign sweep threshold may prevent the process from converging. Otherwise, it tends to converge very quickly. |
Guide Options
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Show Guide Geometry |
Turn on this parameter to present a visual representation of the SDF in the viewport. This can be very useful to help find collision problems, as often they may be the result of an insufficiently detailed SDF. |
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Color |
Use this parameter to select the color of the volume in the viewport. |
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Parameter Operations |
Each data option parameter has an associated menu which specifies how that parameter operates.
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Default Operation |
For any parameters with their Operation menu set to Use Default, this parameter controls what operation is used. This parameter has the same menu options and meanings as the Parameter Operations menus, but without the Use Default choice. |
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Data Sharing |
Controls the way in which the data created by this node is shared among multiple objects in the simulation. Data sharing can greatly reduce the memory footprint of a simulation, but at the expense of requiring all objects to have exactly the same data associated with them.
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Activation |
Determines if this node should do anything on a given timestep and for a particular object. If this parameter is an expression, it is evaluated for each object (even if data sharing is turned on). If it evaluates to a non-zero value, then the data is attached to that object. If it evaluates to zero, no data is attached, and data previously attached by this node is removed. |
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Group |
When an object connector is attached to the first input of this node, this parameter can be used to choose a subset of those objects to be affected by this node. |
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Data Name |
Indicates the name that should be used to attach the data to an object or other piece of data. If the Data Name contains a “/” (or several), that indicates traversing inside subdata. For example, if the Fan Force DOP has the default Data Name “Forces/Fan”. This attaches the data with the name “Fan” to an existing piece of data named “Forces”. If no data named “Forces” exists, a simple piece of container data is created to hold the “Fan” subdata. Different pieces of data have different requirements on what names should be used for them. Except in very rare situations, the default value should be used. Some exceptions are described with particular pieces of data or with solvers that make use of some particular type of data. |
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Unique Data Name |
Turning on this parameter modifies the Data Name parameter value to ensure that the data created by this node is attached with a unique name so it will not overwrite any existing data. With this parameter turned off, attaching two pieces of data with the same name will cause the second one to replace the first. There are situations where each type of behavior is desirable. If an object needs to have several Fan Forces blowing on it, it is much easier to use the Unique Data Name feature to ensure that each fan does not overwrite a previous fan rather than trying to change the Data Name of each fan individually to avoid conflicts. On the other hand, if an object is known to have RBD State data already attached to it, leaving this option turned off will allow some new RBD State data to overwrite the existing data. |
Inputs
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First Input |
This optional input can be used to control which simulation objects are modified by this node. Any objects connected through this input and which match the Group parameter field will be modified. If this input is not connected, this node can be used in conjunction with an Apply Data node, or can be used as an input to another data node. |
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All Other Inputs |
If this node has more input connectors, other data nodes can be attached to act as modifiers for the data created by this node. The specific types of subdata that are meaningful vary from node to node. Click
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Outputs
Local variables
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channelname |
This DOP node defines a local variable for each channel and parameter on the Data Options page, with the same name as the channel. So for example, the node may have channels for Position (positionx, positiony, positionz) and a parameter for an object name (objectname). Then there will also be local variables with the names positionx, positiony, positionz, and objectname. These variables will evaluate to the previous value for that parameter. This previous value is always stored as part of the data attached to the object being processed. This is essentially a shortcut for a dopfield expression like: dopfield($DOPNET, $OBJID, dataName, "Options", 0, channelname) If the data does not already exist, then a value of zero or an empty string will be returned. |
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DATACT |
This value is the simulation time (see variable ST) at which the current data was created. This value may not be the same as the current simulation time if this node is modifying existing data, rather than creating new data. |
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DATACF |
This value is the simulation frame (see variable SF) at which the current data was created. This value may not be the same as the current simulation frame if this node is modifying existing data, rather than creating new data. |
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RELNAME |
This value will be set only when data is being attached to a relationship (such as when Constraint Anchor DOP is connected to the second, third, of fourth inputs of a Constraint DOP). In this case, this value is set to the name of the relationship the data to which the data is being attached. |
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RELOBJIDS |
This value will be set only when data is being attached to a relationship (such as when Constraint Anchor DOP is connected to the second, third, of fourth inputs of a Constraint DOP). In this case, this value is set to a string that is a space separated list of the object identifiers for all the Affected Objects of the relationship to which the data is being attached. |
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RELOBJNAMES |
This value will be set only when data is being attached to a relationship (such as when Constraint Anchor DOP is connected to the second, third, of fourth inputs of a Constraint DOP). In this case, this value is set to a string that is a space separated list of the names of all the Affected Objects of the relationship to which the data is being attached. |
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RELAFFOBJIDS |
This value will be set only when data is being attached to a relationship (such as when Constraint Anchor DOP is connected to the second, third, of fourth inputs of a Constraint DOP). In this case, this value is set to a string that is a space separated list of the object identifiers for all the Affector Objects of the relationship to which the data is being attached. |
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RELAFFOBJNAMES |
This value will be set only when data is being attached to a relationship (such as when Constraint Anchor DOP is connected to the second, third, of fourth inputs of a Constraint DOP). In this case, this value is set to a string that is a space separated list of the names of all the Affector Objects of the relationship to which the data is being attached. |
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ST |
This value is the simulation time for which the node is being evaluated. This value may not be equal to the current Houdini time represented by the variable T, depending on the settings of the DOP Network Offset Time and Time Scale parameters. This value is guaranteed to have a value of zero at the start of a simulation, so when testing for the first timestep of a simulation, it is best to use a test like |
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SF |
This value is the simulation frame (or more accurately, the simulation time step number) for which the node is being evaluated. This value may not be equal to the current Houdini frame number represented by the variable F, depending on the settings of the DOP Network parameters. Instead, this value is equal to the simulation time (ST) divided by the simulation timestep size (TIMESTEP). |
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TIMESTEP |
This value is the size of a simulation timestep. This value is useful to scale values that are expressed in units per second, but are applied on each timestep. |
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SFPS |
This value is the inverse of the TIMESTEP value. It is the number of timesteps per second of simulation time. |
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SNOBJ |
This is the number of objects in the simulation. For nodes that create objects such as the Empty Object node, this value will increase for each object that is evaluated. A good way to guarantee unique object names is to use an expression like |
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NOBJ |
This value is the number of objects that will be evaluated by the current node during this timestep. This value will often be different from SNOBJ, as many nodes do not process all the objects in a simulation. This value may return 0 if the node does not process each object sequentially (such as the Group DOP). |
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OBJ |
This value is the index of the specific object being processed by the node. This value will always run from zero to NOBJ-1 in a given timestep. This value does not identify the current object within the simulation like OBJID or OBJNAME, just the object’s position in the current order of processing. This value is useful for generating a random number for each object, or simply splitting the objects into two or more groups to be processed in different ways. This value will be -1 if the node does not process objects sequentially (such as the Group DOP). |
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OBJID |
This is the unique object identifier for the object being processed. Every object is assigned an integer value that is unique among all objects in the simulation for all time. Even if an object is deleted, its identifier is never reused. The object identifier can always be used to uniquely identify a given object. This makes this variable very useful in situations where each object needs to be treated differently. It can be used to produce a unique random number for each object, for example. This value is also the best way to look up information on an object using the dopfield expression function. This value will be -1 if the node does not process objects sequentially (such as the Group DOP). |
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ALLOBJIDS |
This string contains a space separated list of the unique object identifiers for every object being processed by the current node. |
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ALLOBJNAMES |
This string contains a space separated list of the names of every object being processed by the current node. |
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OBJCT |
This value is the simulation time (see variable ST) at which the current object was created. Therefore, to check if an object was created on the current timestep, the expression |
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OBJCF |
This value is the simulation frame (see variable SF) at which the current object was created. This value is equivalent to using the dopsttoframe expression on the OBJCT variable. This value will be zero if the node does not process objects sequentially (such as the Group DOP). |
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OBJNAME |
This is a string value containing the name of the object being processed. Object names are not guaranteed to be unique within a simulation. However, if you name your objects carefully so that they are unique, the object name can be a much easier way to identify an object than the unique object identifier, OBJID. The object name can also be used to treat a number of similar objects (with the same name) as a virtual group. If there are 20 objects named “myobject”, specifying |
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DOPNET |
This is a string value containing the full path of the current DOP Network. This value is most useful in DOP subnet digital assets where you want to know the path to the DOP Network that contains the node. |
Most dynamics nodes have local variables with the same names as the node’s parameters. For example, in a Position node, you could write the expression:
$positionx + 0.1
…to make the object move 0.1 units along the X axis at each timestep.