Houdini 20.0 Nodes Geometry nodes

Capture Layer Paint geometry node

Lets you paint capture attributes directly onto geometry.

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Since 19.0

Capture Layer Paint is a specialized paint operation for painting capture attributes.

Using Paint Capture Layer

  1. Click the Paint Capture Layer tool on the Characters tab.

  2. Select the geometry to paint and press Enter to confirm your selection.

  3. Click ⌃ Ctrl + MMB the bone to select the capture region.

  4. Drag the brush over the surface to paint it.

Note

You can modify the Radius and Opacity on the operations toolbar.

To paint on deformed geometry, enable the Deform Geometry parameter in the operations toolbar. To view the rig pose, enable the Bone Visualization parameter in the operations toolbar.

Parameters

Capture Type

The type of capture (the attribute) to modify.

Bone

Modify the boneCapture point attribute when painting.

Wire

Modify the wireCapture point attribute when painting.

Display Group

Visualize the unpaintable regions of the geometry in red in the viewport.

Operation

Group

Specifies a subset of points to affect. If this is blank, all points are affected.

Group Type

The type of geometry to use in the group. If the group has only one type of geometry (for example, points), you can just use “Guess from group” and Houdini will figure out the geometry type from the contents of the group.

LMB Operation

Sets what to do when you drag LMB on the surface. You can choose different actions for LMB, ⇧ Shift + LMB, and ⌃ Ctrl + LMB.

MMB Operation

Sets what to do when you drag MMB on the surface. You can choose different actions for MMB, ⇧ Shift + MMB, and ⌃ Ctrl + MMB.

Operation for All

The operation used by Apply To All.

Default Skeleton Root Path

Default prefix applied to capture region paths if none is supplied by the geometry.

Capture Region

The capture region to paint.

Paint Mode

Specifies how the paint is applied. Post Normalize mode will blend the weights on the layer with the input geometry. Interactive Normalize will flatten the weights to the layer and ensure that they are always normalized, so the input weights will be ignored. This allows for locking of capture regions, and supports a different set of operations.

Active Regions

Selects the regions you are editing. All others will be locked. Use the Toggle Active Regions operation to adjust this.

Value

When in Interactive Normalize mode, this is combined with the opacity to influence the effect of the Paint/Scale/Reduce tools.

Maximum Paint Value

The maximum value of a capture weight that can be reached in the layer using the paint operation.

Minimum Reduce Value

The minimum value of a capture weight that can be reached in the layer using the reduce operation.

Apply To All

Applies the operation to all of the selected geometry.

Operations

Capture Paint

This is the default mode which paints the capture weight of the current bone specified by the Capture Region parameter.

When in Interactive Normalize, the amount to add is set by the Value parameter.

Scale

Only available in Interactive Normalize mode. Scales the current capture region’s weight by the given value.

Smooth Final

Smooths the final values of the composited capture weights across all bones.

Smooth Layer

Smooths the capture weight values (across all bones) that are only in this layer (ie. only the weights painted by this node).

Smooth Single Bone

Smooths the capture weight values of the current bone specified by the Capture Region parameter using final composited values.

Smudge

Drags the capture weight values across the surface.

Reduce Capture Weight

Reduces the influence of the current bone specified by the Capture Region parameter.

When in Interactive Normalize, the amount to reduce is set by the Value parameter.

Erase Changes

Erases the changes painted in this node.

Erase Single Bone Changes

Erases the changes painted in this node for the current bone specified by the Capture Region parameter.

Region Selector

Selects a capture region. If no bone is selected, acts like an eye dropper for capture weight values. For the points underneath the brush, it selects the bone with the highest weight and sets that into the Capture Region parameter.

Toggle Locked Regions

Works similarly to the region selector, but which toggles locking of the chosen region.

Reset All Changes

Restores the geometry to its initial state.

Flatten Layers

Updates the layer to contain a snapshot of the current capture weights.

Visualize Attribute

Whether to visualize the capture weights by coloring the geometry.

Visualize Normalized Weights

Indicates the visualized weight values should be normalized.

Visualize Layer

Whether to visualize the weights in the layer or the result after compositing.

Visualize

Whether to visualize weights for the selected capture region or all capture regions.

Visualize Mode

For single bone, how to map the weight to a color.

Brush

Shape

The basic shape of the brush: circle, square, or bitmap.

Bitmap

What bitmap to use. The alpha channel becomes the brush.

Radius

The radius of the brush when painting in the 3d viewport.

UV Radius

The radius of the brush when painting in the 2d viewport.

Radius Pressure

This controls how much effect the pressure of a stylus will have on the radius. A value of 1 means the radius will go from 0 to the amount in Radius. A value of 0 will mean the radius will always be constant, regardless of pressure. A value of 0.5 will mean the radius will be scaled between one half of Radius and Radius.

Depth

If set, this limits how far the brush will paint along its axis. This can be used if connectivity is disabled to limit the effect of the brush. The first parameter is how deep below the surface the brush should penetrate. The second is how high above the surface it should stop. These values can be negative.

Use Relative Depth

If set, depth values are multiplied by the radius size.

Brush Angle

How far to rotate the brush.

Brush Squash

Amount to squash the brush in the y direction before rotation.

Opacity

The amount to affect the stencil mask.

Smooth Opacity

Opacity for Smooth Final, Smooth Layer, and Smooth Single Bone operations.

Opacity Pressure

This controls the how much effect the pressure of a stylus will have on the opacity. It obeys the same scaling as the Radius Pressure.

Brush Splatter

A random noise in the brush’s opacity based upon the position on the brush.

Paper Grain

A random noise on the object’s stencil mask based on the object position.

Soft Edge

Percentage of the brush to be rolled off.

Kernel Function

Which metaball kernel to use for the roll off.

Up Vector Type

How the brush should be oriented on the surface:

Stroke Direction

Oriented in the direction in which the brush moves.

Fixed

Oriented as specified in the Up Vector field.

Up Vector

The fixed up vector to orient brush to.

Symmetry

Reflective

If set, the brush will perform reflective symmetry. Any strokes will be mirrored along the plane of symmetry.

Rotational

If set, the brush will perform rotational symmetry. Any strokes will be rotated around the axis of symmetry.

Axis

This defines the normal of the plane of symmetry for reflection and the axis of symmetry for rotation.

Origin

This defines the origin of the plane of symmetry for reflection and the origin of the axis of symmetry for rotation.

Number of Rotate

This defines the degree of rotational symmetry. A degree of 3 means the stroke will be applied 3 times at 120 degree separation. A value of 5 will perform the stroke 5 times with 72 degrees of separation.

Reflection Dist

This is the distance of the plane of symmetry from the origin of symmetry.

UV Reflective

If set, the brush will reflect when brushing is done in the UV viewport.

UV Origin

The origin of the line of reflection in the UV viewport.

UV Angle

The angle of the line of reflection in the UV viewport. 0 will mirror about the U axis, 90 will mirror about the V axis.

Stroke

Orient Brush To Surface

Switches between the brush being perpendicular to the surface or always oriented along the view direction. If you are having trouble with a shaky brush, try turning this off. Turn this off in order to brush on disconnected points, (point clouds).

Use Connectivity

If set, the tool will only affect points connected to the closest point to the intersection. This is usually a good thing, as it avoids accidentally painting through the geometry (but see the depth parameter), but can prevent smoothly painting across seams. This should usually be turned off in order to brush on disconnected points, (point clouds), since they are not connected to each other.

Use Normals

If set, the tool will only affect points facing in the same direction as the closet point to the intersection. This is usually good to avoid accidentally painting the backfacing parts of geometry, but if you want a pure depth brush can be turned off.

Realtime Mode

Set this to paint geometry as it’s deforming.

Direction

The current direction of the brush. If orient to surface is on, this is the normal direction of the surface hit by the brush. Otherwise, it is the direction from the eye to the surface.

Hit Location

The current location of the brush. This tracks the surface as the brush moves along it.

Hit Primitive

The primitive number of the primitive the current brush is centered at.

Hit UV

The location the current brush is on the current primitive. Note this is a parametric UV location, not the texture UV location.

Hit Pressure

The amount of force the brush is currently applying. This is only meaningful when a tablet interface that supports pressure is used.

Hit Point

The point closest to the current brush’s center.

Event

Controls the current state of the brush. When it is on No-op, the values of the stroke tab are ignored and no updating of the geometry is done. Other values are set automatically as you brush the surface, allowing the SOP to update in response to your actions.

Inputs

Rest Geometry

The skin geometry to paint skinning weights. It’s required to have a boneCapture or wireCapture point attribute.

Capture Pose

The pose that the capture attributes were created with. When the viewport tool is active for this node, the geometry is deformed using the Capture and Animated Pose to show a preview of how it will be deformed with the painted skinning weights.

Animated Pose

The pose intended for deforming the rest geometry with. When the viewport tool is active for this node, the geometry is deformed using the Capture and Animated Pose to show a preview of how it will be deformed with the painted skinning weights.

See also

Geometry nodes