Houdini 20.5 Nodes Geometry nodes

Pose Scope geometry node

Assigns channel paths and/or pickscripts to geometry.

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Since 16.0

Overview

The Pose Scope node assigns channel paths and/or pickscripts to a list or group of primitives. The Pose Tool uses this attribute for selection.

Under the hood, the node creates attributes named pose_scope or the name provided (setting the attribute to a list of strings containing either pathnames of channels or pickscripts specified using .json).

Parameters

Attribute Name

Name of the attribute. Default is pose_scope.

Items

The number of primitive groups to add the pose_scope attribute to.

Group

A subset of primitives in the input geometry to add the attribute to. Patterns can be used to specify the Groups.

Channels

The paths of the channels to assign. Click the chooser icon to choose the channels from a list.

Pickscript

Turn this on if you want to add a pickscript to the group

Label

A label for the pickscript.

Language

Which language the script will be in. Can be hscript or python.

Script

Pickscript to be applied.

Using invisible rigs

Inserting a Pose Scope node in your skin geometry network will allow you to set up the pose_scope attribute so that you can pose geometry in the viewport without using handles. You can create groups of geometry, which you can assign channels to using Pose Scope, then click directly in the viewport and drag to pose.

This improves workflow and makes character animation easier by removing clutter from the viewport. Complicated rigs can have hundred of controllers, which can make animating quite difficult. Hiding these controls and using invisible rigs allows you to click and drag parts of the character in the viewport, which makes animating feel more like working with a stop motion puppet.

The following example uses the Simple Female shelf tool.

  1. Click the Simple Female tool on the Characters shelf.

  2. Navigate to the Display tab and turn off Show Controls.

  3. the simplefemale1 node in the network editor, and select Allow Editing of Contents.

  4. Double-click to dive inside the simplefemale1 node and then double-click the geo_skin node to dive inside that network.

    Note

    If you click the File node, you will see that this character already has the pose_scope attribute. However, for the sake of this example we will pretend that she doesn’t.

  5. Insert a Group SOP above the last Deform SOP.

  6. Give the group a name, for example l_hand, click the selection button in the Base Group parameter, select the left hand geometry in the viewport, and press Enter.

  7. Insert a Pose Scope SOP between the Group SOP you just created and the last Deform SOP.

  8. Select the Group you just created (l_hand) from the drop down menu. You can create groups for all body parts.

    Note

    You can create groups directly in the pose scope tool, but the recommended workflow is to create separate group nodes. This will make the parameters easier to read, since you will see the names of groups as opposed to a long string of numbers. You can also list multiple groups in this parameter.

  9. Use the node chooser menu to select channels to apply to the group. For this example, we chose the translate and rotate channels.

  10. Navigate back to the object level, and click the Pose tool in the Toolbox menu to pose your character interactively in the viewport. Selecting the geometry will pop-up a wheel which will allow you to easily switch between the channels you assigned.

    If the group has more than one channel, a pop-up wheel will allow you to easily toggle between the channels. For example, the simple female character has both translate and rotate abilities on her hand.

Note

The selection flag of the skin geometry must be turned off for invisible rigs to work.

Geometry nodes