hey guys, my first post here.

i'm working on this project and the goal is similar to that of time based typography exercises.

i have some matchmoved footage and in it i want text - about 30 words - to fall from the sky and hit the ground matching up to the audio.

i tried doing this a simple way bu making each individual word and then making them RBD objects. problem is that this way they all fall at the same time.

all the font objects get put into the auto dop network. inside the network i can use the RBD Keyframe Activate node, but i can't seem to use it for the individual font obects stored in there.

i am new to Houdini so i apologize if these questions seem simple. but is there any way to time the falling of my individual words without making dop networks for every word ?

Try animating the Creation Frame on each RBD Object DOP, it's near the top. Be sure to set it to some integer(otherwise, if set to frame 32.24 the sim will likely just pass over it since it typically will not sit precisely on that value), and each one will appear, and then simulate, on the set keyframe.

The RBD Keyframe Activate is intended to allow you to switch between keyframed animation and simulation. It's a little trickier to control, but should have worked for you, not sure what went wrong there.

Cheers,

J.C.

P.S. it occurs to me on re-reading - did you create a separate RBD object for each letter? You'll need to do that. If using the shelf it's a little more laborious(but more hands-off) - make a separate object for each one and create an RBD in turn. If you're comfortable enough with Houdini a better way is to create the letters in one object then source them in the DOPs network.