Houdini 20.0 Nodes Geometry nodes

Labs SciFi Panels geometry node

Example HDA from the Rebirth Project to generate Sci Fi Panneling

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This node was designed specifically for our GDC Demo with Quixel, but there was enough interest on how it was done that we decided to release it as is for reverse engineering purposes.

It makes heavy usage of the Lot Subdivision SOP with some extra beveling and notching added for flavor.

Tips/Hints

  • check that your UVs are not flipped. you can do that by adding a uv quickshade and check whether uv’s are flipped, if they are, add a uv transform of scale -1 on x and make sure they are correct. If they are flipped the node will fail.

  • everything really starts with your uv, Make sure its good (not 1000 small pieces), and make sure there is spacing between islands. A default uvlayout is not good enough on more complicated things, increase the island spacing within the uvlayout sop to get it working.

  • sometimes the island spacing is just not enough, and you need to add a uv transform and scale the uv’s. Be careful here, do small numbers, ad large values here take considerable time to calculate. something like 3 or 5 was sufficient in our tests.

  • make sure, that based on your object scale, the minimum lot size parameter is actually achievable

Parameters

Global Settings

UV Generation

Select between input UVs and auto-generated UVs

Use Input UVs: Uses incoming vertex UVs

Auto Generate UVs: Overrides incoming UVs with a Flatten

Pattern Rotation

Angle of the cutting pattern

Border Thickness

Padding around the panels (Part of the Sci Fi Look)

Global Seed

Randomization Control

Thickness

Depth of the notch cut

Panel Deletion Chance

Percentage (0-100) of chance that a panel will be deleted. 100 means all panels will be gone, 0 means no panel will be deleted

Deletion Seed

Randomization control of the deletion for fine tuning

Enable Random Vertex Colors

Add Vertex Colors to Panels

Seed

Randomization control for vertex colors

Vertex Colors

Distribution of the color ratio

Lot Division

Irregularity

Smaller values mean the cuts will be halfway along a primitive, higher values will yield primitives of different sizes.

Minimum Lot Size

Primitives smaller than this size will no longer be considered for cutting

Vertical Bias

Negative numbers will generate horizontal slivers, Positive numbers will generate vertical slivers

Alignment

Method of orientating the cuts. Bounding box is for worldspace cutting, longest edge is relative to the shape.

Cluster Lots

Enables joining of lots into clusters

Number of Clusters

Final Number of Lots after merging them into clusters

Vertical Packing

Strength on a Gradient that clumps lots together towards the top (or bottom)

Padding

Spacing

Padding in between panels

Spacing Variation

Randomization of the padding between panels

Notches

Percentage

Chance for an edge to be booleaned by a sci fi notch shape

Deviation

Slide the notch along the edge (from the center)

Length

Length of the notch

Notches Seed

Randomness for Notch

Corner Bevels

Corner Bevels Chance

Chance to lop off a corner (0-100)

Corner Bevels Depth

Depth of the Corner Cut

Geometry nodes