Roto display in Camera view is completely broken. Does not work.
The image display is screwed up when camera is moved, making camera matching nearly impossible. Very basic bug, not good!
V 5.5.36 Master Commercial
Win2K

David Rindner

Hey David,

The bug has been fixed a while ago. Can you please download the latest 5.5 and try that?

Thanks!

Cheers!
steven

Isn't 5.5.36 the last 5.5 build? WHere are the latest dl's for commercial Houdini?

Can you help me with following.

I am doing R&D for car spot. I need to repluse (not bounce) particles (rain)from mesh surface.

I set the SOP net as follows;
I created light mesh that resembles a drape sheet, draped over the card.
Edit SOP (containing the light mesh for repulsion) -> Point SOP
I then used the mesh as template surface for metaball copy.
To metaball array I appenmded Force SOP.

In Particle
Source -> Force (for downward gravity->Attractor (with Force SOP selected, -1 charge, 2 scale) yet neither attraction or replusion of particles from metaball array takes place.

Dave Rindner

Hey Dave,

You can download the latest build from the Download Server or from the Sydney Vislab mirror [vislab.usyd.edu.au].

As for your particle question, I'll try to setup something for you.

Cheers!
steven

Sydney Vislab is for Apprentice. I am using Master Commercial provided by my employer. However, as I understand it, the tech supoourt is in Chinese, and I speak no Chinese (and wkng in Taiwan). That and I am 13 hours ahead of North America.
On SESI FTP the latest production version is 5.5.305. The installed Houdini on my station ( I did not install it) is 5.5.36. So to me I have the latest 5.5 build.
You say camera roto bug is fixed. I beg to differ. It is not. At least not on my Win2K version, with nVidia. Everytime I move the camera, while roto is visible, the image turns to solid color. When I open backround prefs, the quality has some weird number like 1.00009-38 to the e power. When sliding it, the slider ;locks to 9998838 or similar number. If manually typing it in, the number changes upon Enter. So the bug is there.

Dave

Hey Dave,

5.5.36 is the first build for Apprentice and a lot of bugs have been fixed since. Also, the roto bug has been fixed since 5.5.48 so if you can download 5.5.305, you'll notice the bug is gone.

Cheers!
steven

On SESI FTP the latest production version is 5.5.305. The installed Houdini on my station ( I did not install it) is 5.5.36. So to me I have the latest 5.5 build.

I think you're mis-reading the version numbers. You take each number, separated by a period, and simply compare them. You don't evaluate each “place” as a token i.e. 36 is higher than 305 as if you put a period after the 3 like “3.05”. It's “three hundred and five”, which is higher than “thirty five”. This is quite standard for versioning - just use the dots as they are and don't insert any additional ones. 5.5.305 will solve your problem…

Cheers,

J.C.

I see. But the numeration is incorrect. 5.5.36 , to me, reads as, 5.5.360. The correct numeration is 5.5.036. This, I beleive is the standard for builds. V numbers represent, #1 (major version), #2(major revision), #000 (build number). Build numbers less then 100 reprsent alpha and beta versions. So build 5.5.036 sounds like a late beta. Distrubution builds start at 100. Fine revisions are encoded in last two digits, with build tweaks encoded in last digit. So 5.5.230 and 5.5.231 are very nearly same build with few tweaks. While 5.5.235 and 5.5.360 are far apart in terms of development.
So you see the source of my error.

Dave R

Ahh, understood…the ol' leading zero issue.
SESI makes a new build daily… so you can see where that final number can easily rise above 100 - thus the method you mention(<100=beta) wouldn't work terribly well for them.
But yup - now I see what confused things…most importantly the latest build should have solved your problem…

Cheers,

J.C.

No, not really. The camera roto bug is still there. It is also in V6 beta.

My biggest problem right now is that I cannot get motion to render at all with anything. I have reinstalled fresh 5.5.305 and still nothing.

Mantra ROP set to transformation blur,
Particle POP SOP has Transformation Blur.
Popnet ends with RenderPOP set to tubes.

But when rendered, there is no motion blur. So bizzare. It was working. Then stopped after I switched to Velocity Attribute. After switching back to Transformation Blur, still m-blur was not working. Now it does not work anywhere. I don't understabd, and I am disliking Mantra. I have Renderman 11 installed for MTOR, and it works with Maya 4.5, but Houdini issues PRoccess Failed error, and noone knows what to do.
I was under impression that Houdini and PRMAN are tight and seamless but apparently its more complex then that on Win 2K.

Very frustrating when there is no tech suppourt network to call on.



Dave R

Hi David,

As far as prman/MTOR goes, have you ensured that the $RATTREE/bin (for Alfred and other RAT) and $RMANTREE/bin (for prman) is included your environment $PATH? The RMAN ROP won't be able to execute prman commands if it can't fine prman.exe in your $RMANTREE/bin directory.

As far as MANTRA mblur goes, if you have animation with in the SOP network, you'd most likely have to use Deformation Blur. If you have animation at the Obj. level, you'd most likely need to have Transformation Blur. If you want to use Velocity Attribute Blur, you'd have to make sure that you the Velocity attribute in your SOP network for it to render. Essentially, you can convert any sort of vector-type attribute into velocity attribute by using Attribute SOP to rename from { any VECTOR ATTRIBUTE} to v. For example, if you want to use your Point Normal as a way to define motion blur, you can simply use Attribute SOP to rename from N to v. All these mblur type should have the same workings at prman's.

As far as the SOP/Obj. level mblur type that I just mentioned, I'll have to double check to verify what I just said to comfirm the accuracy…

Hope that helped or led you to the right direction.
A.

That's correct - do any animation in the SOP network - you need to use deformation blur. Velocity blur is really just a hack to allow you to mblur particles more accurately - this doesn't necessarily emulate all types of mblur in a more accurate fashion. They all have their uses.
Don't be so hard on mantra, David - you're just going through what anyone goes through when learning a new package…we've all been there. Mblur works fine.
And yup - that sounds like prman isn't in your path…they are indeed very well integrated and we've been using them together for years now. Just sounds like a config issue…

Cheers,

J.C.

DavidRindner
No, not really. The camera roto bug is still there. It is also in V6 beta.
Dave R

Hey Dave,

Is it possible for you to post screen grabs of the roto bug you're talking about? I have not had any problems with roto since it was fixed and I don't really understand what your problem is.

Thanks!

Cheers!
steven