Houdini 20.0 Nodes Dynamics nodes

POP Solver 2.0 dynamics node

A POP solver updates particles according to their velocities and forces.

Since 13.0

The POP Solver is a solver designed to update particles for one timestep. It is intended that its green inputs have POP microsolvers wired into them to control the particles and accumulate forces.

It integrates using the following forces:

targetv, airresist

This pair describes a local drag frame for each particle.

force

Specifies a magnitude of force affecting each particle.

targetw, spinresist

This pair describes a spin-drag frame. targetw is in world space.

torque

Specifies the world-space torque to apply to the particle.

For more information see Particle Collisions.

Parameters

Substeps

Time Scale

An overall scale applied to the actual timestep. This parameter can be animated.

Min Substeps

The POP solver will always enforce this minimum number of substeps.

This should rarely need to be changed.

Max Substeps

The POP solver will not break the simulation down to more substeps than this value.

CFL Condition

CFL Condition is a factor used to automatically determine the substep size that the scene requires. The idea is to control the distance that a particle can travel in a given substep.

For example, when CFL Condition is set to 0.5, the solver will set the length of each substep such that no particle travels more than 50% of the size of the smallest particle in a substep.

Quantize to Max Substeps

When turned on, use substeps that divide up the frame by Max Substeps so that the time always lands on a multiple of 1/Max Substeps.

For example, if Max Substeps is set to 4, but the CFL Condition only requires 3 substeps, the solver will divide up the frame into 3 substeps, with the substeps located at multiples of 1/Max Substeps. One combination of the substep lengths could be 0.25, 0.5, and 0.25, with the frame divided up from 0-0.25, 0.25-0.75, and 0.75-1. The solver also takes into account the current state of the particles (particle size and velocity) when dividing the frame into substeps.

This option can be useful for re-using input geometry that has been cached to file at increments of 1/Max Substeps. For example, if your geometry is cached on disk at 4 substeps per frame, then you may want your simulation’s substeps to always land on a multiple of 0.25 so that you don’t have to interpolate the geometry.

Update

Use Implicit Drag

The drag described by targetv and airresist can be turned into an explicit force. This will result in particles not coming to a stop, but instead bouncing around the desired dragged location. Alternatively, you can turn on implicit drag and a more accurate damping will be done that stops the particles.

This will also affect how targetw and spinresist are integrated.

Drag Exponent

The force of drag will be proportional to the difference between the target velocity and the particles velocity. This difference can be linear (drag exponent of 1) or quadratic (drag exponent of 2) or something in between.

A value of two is a more realistic drag model which more quickly slows down extreme velocity differences and has less of an effect on small velocity differences.

This affects the angular velocity drag as well.

Age Particles

The age attribute will be updated for each time step and the particles flagged for deletion if they exceed their life attribute.

External Forces

This controls whether external DOP forces will be added to the force model prior to integrating velocities.

Integrate Velocity

The v attribute will be updated according to targetv, airresist, and force. The w attribute will be updated by the targetw, spinresist, and torque if this is turned on.

Use Mass

Controls if the mass attribute will affect how forces are added to the velocity. If use mass is set, the forces will be divided by the mass to get the acceleration of each particle.

Integrate Positions

The particles will be moved according to their velocity. They will also be re-oriented according to their angular velocity.

Reap Particles

All particles with the dead attribute set to 1 will be deleted.

Reap At Frame End

Dead particles will be removed after all solving is complete. In this mode, you will not see any particles with a dead value of 1. Otherwise, they will be deleted before the Pre-solve. Leaving them in the geometry allows one to tween dying particles to their final location.

Collision Behavior

Enable Collision Detection

Determines if any collision detection is done at all by the POP Solver. If mixing with another system, such as Bullet, you may wish to still use some of the integration options of the POP Solver (such as force) without including the collision component.

Add Hit Attributes

If you wish to do more than just bounce off other DOP collision objects, you can add hit attributes to inspect how the bounce occurred, and perform secondary animations using the result.

The hitnum attribute is often most useful to detect if particles just collided. You can either directly apply additional rules here, or use the POP Collision Behavior to layer more effects on top.

Note

When computing hit attributes, all eligibly objects are collided with. The ispbd, stopped, and collisionignore flags are ignored. The sliding flag is used.

Group to Affect

While attributes are added to all particles that collide, the following collision behaviors will only apply to the particles in this group. For example, if you wish particles to die after their first bounce, use @hittotal>1.

Note

This group is evaluated after collision detection is performed, so hittotal will already include the current hit.

Create Group

All particles that just hit, ie, @hitnum>0, will be added to this group.

Preserve Group

If the group isn’t preserved, it is cleared out first so the only particles in the group will be those that just hit. If it is preserved, the group will accumulate all particles that ever hit.

Color Hits

Particles that are just hit will have their Cd attribute set to this value. This is useful for quick visualization of hits.

Compute Hit Total

Adds to the integer hittotal attribute any hits that occurred due to this collision detection.

Move to Hit

Often if you want to trigger an effect off a particle’s collision, such as birthing more particles, you want the particle at its hit location, not where it ended up at the end of the frame. This will move the particle back to its hit location. This consists of @P = v@hitpos;.

Response

Controls what happens to particles that collide.

Unchanged

Particles will continue to behave as they are already defined. This will usually cause them to bounce.

Die

Particles that hit will set the dead attribute to 1, causing them to be deleted during the reaping pass.

Stop

This sets the stopped attribute to 1. Particles that stop will no longer integrate their velocity, position, orientation, or angular velocity. They can still be moved directly. For example, by the Look At POP in instantaneous mode.

These particles will no longer collide.

Stick

Particles that hit will have the stuck attribute set to 1. The pospath, posprim, and posuv attributes will be setup to point to the hit location, causing the integrator to keep moving the particles to their stuck location every frame. Usually you also want to turn on Move to Hit with this.

Slide

Particles that hit will have the sliding attribute set to 1. The pospath, posprim, and posuv attributes will be setup to point to the hit location, causing the integrator to try to slide the particles along the surface.

Tip

You can also use the Cling attribute on the POP Property node to set how much the particles will cling to the object they are sliding on.

Note

Once the particles are in a sliding state, they will no longer collide with other objects.

Add Impact Data

Enables the addition of Impact data onto the particles. Normally these are not added to save memory, and particle collision attributes are more easily created by turning on the Add Hit Attributes parameter.

Enable Collision Feedback

Enables the addition of Feedback impacts onto colliding objects, which are required for two-way interaction.

Sleeping

Enable Auto Sleep

When turned on, particles that remain near-stationary for a sufficient time will be put to sleep by setting their stopped attribute to 1.

Start Asleep

On the first frame, all particles will be marked asleep.

Velocity Threshold

How slowly particles need to be moving before they are eligible for sleeping. The amount of time they remain below this speed is accumulated in the deactivation_time attribute. If they exceed this speed, the deactivation_time is reset to zero.

Sleep Delay

How many seconds particles need to remain at or below the velocity threshold before they are put to sleep. See the POP Awaken for methods to wake the particles back up again.

Sleeping Color

Particles that are asleep will be colored this color.

Note

Awake particles will be left with their current color, so this will not cause particles that became awake to be recolored unless you have another Color POP active.

Bindings

Geometry

The name of the simulation data to apply the POP node to. This commonly is Geometry, but POP Networks can be designed to apply to different geometry if desired.

Evaluation Node Path

For nodes with local expressions, this controls where ch() style expressions in VEX are evaluated with respect to. By making this ., you can ensure relative references work. It is important to promote this if you are embedding a node inside an HDA if you are also exporting the local expressions.

Distribution

Tracker Address

What machine will run the simtracker.py process for synchronization. If this is blank, there will be no attempt at synchronization or data transfer.

Tracker Port

The port specified when starting the simtracker.py process for communication.

Job Name

The job name to describe this synchronization or data exchange event. By using different job names one can have machines part of separate data-exchange and synchronization events.

Slice/Peer

The slice number that this machine should report itself as. Each machine connecting under the job name should have its own unique slice number. Sometimes this can be inferred from the operation so this parameter will be absent.

Number of Slice/Number of Peers

Total number of machines that have to synchronize. Sometimes this can be determined from the operation, so this parameter will be absent.

Dynamics nodes