Hi, totally new to Houdini 15, and I've been googling, but couldn't find answers to my question. Possibly because I don't exaclty know how to phrase it to produce relevant results. I'm coming from a Maya background and haven't dabbled much in the procedural world.

I followed this tutorial on melting a pig head
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrD1QLhSNkc [youtube.com]

Obviously I added an effect called “melt” which in itself is a network of nodes and I'm guessing you could set it up yourself if you had the know-how. So is this what is meant by creating an asset?
Like when done, you can just slap it on an object for the effect as in the case of the pig head.

The result is a particle simulation and so far so good. However I wanted to mesh it, making it solid, but coudln't seem to find out how to. I saw a tutorial where they mentioned vdbfromparticlefluid, but I don't have any of that in my menus =/

As a new user, I would not worry about making things into an asset yet.

ObjectMerge is your friend.
Many example files can be re-purpsed simply by merging in another object at the top of the network.
This why you often see example work done with a torus, box or sphere.
Everyone knows that the top node can be replaced with an alternate mesh either through an ObjectMerge or a File import. That is how you can swap the pighead, for example.

Nodes are context sensitive so if you don't see one in the menu then that means it probably won't work in that context.
Try moving up one level or down one level and try the menu again.

Here is a nice website with a lot of example files.
http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/index.php?title=HoudiniGettingStarted [tokeru.com]

Thank you very much. Makes perfect sense.

I found out how to connect the vdbfromparticlefluid.

Now, what steps can I take to make it to look like the pighead mesh with textures is melting and not just a gray mesh?

The most obvious way would be to drive the original mesh with the vdb like a wrap deformer. However, this will probably make it look odd when apparent mesh- and texture stretching occurs in the mesh as the fluid separates.

A better solution would be to simulate a large amount of particles to make it hold its shape as exact as the original mesh and then in some way transfer the surface texture to the vdb mesh.

Would love some suggestions.


Best regards

Here is a thread on maintaining UVs through a VDB conversion.
http://forums.odforce.net/topic/25153-vdb-maintain-uvs/ [forums.odforce.net]

Enivob
Here is a thread on maintaining UVs through a VDB conversion.
http://forums.odforce.net/topic/25153-vdb-maintain-uvs/ [forums.odforce.net]

Thank you very much!