1. in shop level ( i'm previewing shader on viewer), i can preview both surface and displacement shader simultaneously.
but if i created the shop network inside sop level, i cannot do something like this. how to fix this?

2. in a node parameter (example : group node) i try to ‘save as permanent default’. but it always give me an error :

couldn't sae presets “new preset” to $HOME/houdini8.0/presets/Sop/group.idx
check file permissions,

i'm sure i've checked this path over and over….and it's there correctly with the right read/write permission. still i cannot write to this file. why?

anyone can help?

1. Is a bug I reported in Houdini 7 (

2. Very strange.. is that Windows?

Can a displacement map be used to change the actual geometry of a model? Please advise.

Inasmuch as it physically displaces the points of the data, yes. Do you mean in another way?

Cheers,

J.C.

I'm new to any other “deformation/displacement” possibilities (just getting started) but if there are other alternatives please let me know what they are and how they would work (via Houdini or anything else).

My goal is to quickly change a model's form into the shape of something else (similar not too drastic), like a “pugg” nose into a straight nose or vice versa. Or a small ear to a slightly bigger ear (to reiterate) and afterwards have the actual geometry change to fit the new displaced data.

(Sorry for the redundancy).

So again, yes, it sounds like this would work according to your answer. But how is this achieved within Houdini? Can a container be used that does this for me (compare the model to be changed (displaced) to the “displacer” model (style used))?

thanks again

There's never any absolutes, but I probably wouldn't use disp maps to change a long nose to a pug nose - I'd build the two models from the same basic shapes and blend between them using the blend SOP. It's just that a nose is fairly complicated and twists around in space what with nostrils and such - it's not just an extruded grid.

That aside, you could write a shader in VOPs that blends between two image map inputs and use that as a displacement, should you want to do that.

Cheers,

J.C.

So in Houdini it seems I don't have to worry about the fact that the 2 objects don't have the same geometry. Houdini will handle the deformations with ease, correct?

No, it's essentially blending between positions - you need to have the same data(surface type, number of points, etc.).

Cheers,

J.C.