Houdini 20.5 Nodes Geometry nodes

Volume Velocity geometry node

Computes a velocity volume.

On this page
Since 12.0

The Volume Velocity operator adds a procedural velocity field to the input volumes. Three volumes together define a velocity field, one for each of the x, y, and z components. The Volume SOP can be used to create three properly named volumes using the Vector option.

Inputs

Velocity Volumes

The volume primitives to add a velocity field to.

Points

Points to sample velocity values from.

Mask

The velocity will be zeroed out outside this masked area.

Parameters

Group

The volumes to add to. The first three are the x, y, and z components respectively for adding velocity values to.

Add Uniform Velocity

Controls whether a constant velocity will be added or not.

Constant Velocity

A uniform velocity added everywhere in the velocity field.

Vortex

Add Vortex

A vortex field is a velocity field that spins around an axis, like a spinning tornado.

Center

The origin of the spinning vortex.

Direction

The axis around which the velocity field will spin.

Angular Velocity

How fast the velocity field spins. This is how fast the velocity field will be one unit away from the center.

Vortex Radius

Instead of having the vortex affect the entire space, it can be constrained to only operate in a tube around the axis. This is the radius of that tube.

Vortex Ramp

To avoid a sudden change in velocity at the edge of the vortex, this ramp describes a speed multiplier of the vortex from the center to the edge of the vortex.

Curl Noise

Add Curl Noise

Curl noise is a special type of noise that describes a velocity field that doesn’t contract or expand. Particles that move through it will keep a uniform density.

Scale

Strength of the noise field.

Swirl Size

The size of the biggest swirls induced by the noise.

Grain

The relative strength of each successively smaller band of swirls.

Offset

A noise offset, useful for seeding different noises.

Attenuation

The strength of each band is raised to this power, resulting in a contrast like effect within that band.

Turbulence

The number of octaves of swirls to add up. Note that adding swirls that are smaller than your voxel size will no longer have a meaningful effect. Swirl Size / (2^turbulence) should be twice the voxel size. Adding more layers of turbulence increases computation cost while just adding white noise to the field.

Time Dependent

Controls if the velocity is animated over time.

Pulse Length

In this length of time, measured in seconds, the noise will transition into an entirely new arrangement.

Frame Offset

A start frame offset to the time, measured in frames.

Points

Add Point Velocity

Adds point velocity by extrapolating the velocity attribute of the second input’s points.

Points

The subset of points to use as an extrapolation source.

Attribute

Which attribute to copy into the volumes. Should be a three float attribute representing velocities.

Scale

The extrapolated velocity will be multiplied by this scale, making it easy to provide an overall boost to the source velocity.

Extrapolation Distance

How far away from the points to still apply their velocity values. This is a distance measure.

From Object

Add Object Motion

This adds in the frame-to-frame motion of an Object node to the velocity field. This is useful for inheriting the motion of things animated at the object level.

SOP transforms are not included in this. The Extract Transform Object can be used to bring SOP transforms (such as from a disk sequence) into the object level.

Object Path

The object node to extract a transform from.

Scale

The object’s velocity can be boosted by this constant scale.

Frame

When to sample the object’s position. This is the center of the sample time.

Frame Sample

What time interval to extract the objects transform over. This is the total interval. So the object will be evaluated at Frame - (Frame Sample)/2 and at Frame + (Frame Sample)/2, and these two transforms compared to derive the velocity of the object.

Mask

Apply Mask

The third input’s volume can be used to zero out parts of the velocity field. Doing so allows empty areas to be compressed as constant tiles, reducing memory usage and disk space of the resulting fields.

Mask Volumes

The volume to use for masking.

Expansion

A dilation of the volume, through a maximum function, is performed for this distance. This is a distance measure.

Comparison

Voxels that are kept will be those that match this comparison operation.

Cut Off

The value that mask values are compared against to see if they area kept.

See also

Geometry nodes