If you want to use a constant birth rate instead of impulse you could do
Impulse Act. = 0
Const. Act = 1
Const. Birth Rate = (100-$NPART)*($FPS)
If you want to vary the amount of particles so its not always 100 you could set Const. Birth Rate to (100-$NPART)*($FPS)*rand($F), which will generate different amounts of particles each frame, but it will keep your total particles from going above 100.
J. Price
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Technical Discussion » limiting particle numbers
- J. Price
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Technical Discussion » limiting particle numbers
- J. Price
- 9 posts
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This might be simplifying too much but what about
Impulse Activation = 1
Impulse Birth Rate = 100 - $NPART
Const. Activation = 0
J. Price
Impulse Activation = 1
Impulse Birth Rate = 100 - $NPART
Const. Activation = 0
J. Price
Houdini Lounge » Change Log
- J. Price
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Since Side Effects is always working hard on Houdini and releasing new builds is there a change log available? Or an area with release notes? I'm always up for bug fixes, but its nice to see what is fixed. I've seen messages about a “journal” but I have a feeling that is for people with support contracts. Anything us Apprentice users can nibble at?
Thanks,
J. Price
Thanks,
J. Price
Technical Discussion » Re-centering handle pivot based on selection.
- J. Price
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I'm a little confused by help docs and the hot key manager. :?
After you detach a handle and move it about how do you re-center it to the currently selected geo? The geometry.pdf guide (page 18, or under section 6.2) states “… the Handle’s centre point (the pivot), can be translated by selecting it with ‘ and dragging. You can type ’O' to move the Handle back to the centre of the selection …” Hitting O doesn't move it back, and it isn't even bound to anything that deals with the handles. No biggie. Under the hotkey manager under the context of there is a action titled “Move Pivot to Selection Origin” which sounds like what I'm looking for. So I bind it to Ctrl-V because its not bound to anything else in houdini. I try hitting Ctrl-V with a detached translate handle and nothing happens. It just sits there. :shock:
Am I missing something along the way? One work around is by right clicking on the handle and selecting “Handle follows group”. This seems to move it back but the orientation is off, at which point I can re-align to the world or the c-plane. But I would still like a hot key to realign to the center selection :roll:
jim price
After you detach a handle and move it about how do you re-center it to the currently selected geo? The geometry.pdf guide (page 18, or under section 6.2) states “… the Handle’s centre point (the pivot), can be translated by selecting it with ‘ and dragging. You can type ’O' to move the Handle back to the centre of the selection …” Hitting O doesn't move it back, and it isn't even bound to anything that deals with the handles. No biggie. Under the hotkey manager under the context of there is a action titled “Move Pivot to Selection Origin” which sounds like what I'm looking for. So I bind it to Ctrl-V because its not bound to anything else in houdini. I try hitting Ctrl-V with a detached translate handle and nothing happens. It just sits there. :shock:
Am I missing something along the way? One work around is by right clicking on the handle and selecting “Handle follows group”. This seems to move it back but the orientation is off, at which point I can re-align to the world or the c-plane. But I would still like a hot key to realign to the center selection :roll:
jim price
Houdini Lounge » $HFS/demo
- J. Price
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Sidefx posted the user guide files on their community site. They should contain all the files you need. http://www.sidefx.com/community/index.html [sidefx.com]
J. Price
J. Price
Technical Discussion » Reflective VOP misbehaving. (Apprentice on Windoze)
- J. Price
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I was looking at the VEX code that the VOP creates last night and I have a little question. If the only thing you hook to the color parameter of the output VOP is a reflective OP, shouldn't the resulting color be black? (Since the background env. is black?) :?
So where is the bug occuring? In the current version of houdini? Or the version that was used to make the demo? Or do I have the completely wrong end the stick altogether? :roll:
Thanks,
J. Price
So where is the bug occuring? In the current version of houdini? Or the version that was used to make the demo? Or do I have the completely wrong end the stick altogether? :roll:
Thanks,
J. Price
Technical Discussion » Reflective VOP misbehaving. (Apprentice on Windoze)
- J. Price
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I was following along with the “Vex Builder - Creating a New Sop Part 2” tutorial video. I followed the video pretty closely up to the part where the host connects a Reflective VOP to the surface color of the Output node. (At about 5 minutes into the video). The render in the tutorial scene looked as you would expect, however my render was just black. :shock: (It still had an alpha of the object though). So I figured I goofed somewhere so started on a really simple scene. Couple of different objects all with a “reflective -> color output” shop on them. Nothing, still black. :?:
So I tried hooking up a print VOP to the color out of the reflective VOP, hit render and watched it dump nothing but (0,0,0)'s out. Did anyone else run into this when doing the tutorials? Or is it just me? :?
Thanks,
J. Price
ps…besides the occasional quirk here and there I love Houdini, two beers up for SideFX.
So I tried hooking up a print VOP to the color out of the reflective VOP, hit render and watched it dump nothing but (0,0,0)'s out. Did anyone else run into this when doing the tutorials? Or is it just me? :?
Thanks,
J. Price
ps…besides the occasional quirk here and there I love Houdini, two beers up for SideFX.
Technical Discussion » Houdini_Path env. variable.
- J. Price
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Sorry, I'm having these problems without the HOUDINI_PATH set (anywhere). I was in a hurry when I posted the topic so I didn't make that part clear, sorry. When I said I set HOUDINI_PATH = @ and other stuff, those were my failed attempts at trying to get it work correctly. My problem is with how Houdini handles the default path.
Quickie example.
two directories in Ctemp
hip and bgeo.
Ctemp/hip <- Hip files here
Ctemp/bgeo <- geometry here.
if $HIP = Ctemp/hip
and $HIP is part of the HOUDINI_PATH
will “../bgeo/model.bgeo” in a file op work?
The training_rollercoaster.hip file is setup this way. I also believe it should work. But it doesn't unless I change it to $HIP/../bgeo/model.bgeo
So is the training_rollercoaster demo files incorrect or something else?
J. Price
Quickie example.
two directories in Ctemp
hip and bgeo.
Ctemp/hip <- Hip files here
Ctemp/bgeo <- geometry here.
if $HIP = Ctemp/hip
and $HIP is part of the HOUDINI_PATH
will “../bgeo/model.bgeo” in a file op work?
The training_rollercoaster.hip file is setup this way. I also believe it should work. But it doesn't unless I change it to $HIP/../bgeo/model.bgeo
So is the training_rollercoaster demo files incorrect or something else?
J. Price
Technical Discussion » Houdini_Path env. variable.
- J. Price
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I've got a couple questions regarding the HOUDINI_PATH variable. (In the apprentice version with Windows 2000).
First, is HOUDINI_PATH a user definable variable? When I'm in Houdini if I set HOUDINI_PATH = @ in the Alias/Variables menu, then try to open a file like final_rollercoaster.hip. I get a ton of error messages saying Houdini can't find itself anymore. From the scripting help file I was under the impression that @ is a special character that equals the internal value of HOUDINI_PATH, like $HIP:$HFS etc. Is there a proper way to set HOUDINI_PATH that I'm missing?
Second question concerning HOUDINI_PATH. I'll use final_rollercoaster.hip as an example. When I load up the file my $HIP variable gets set to “DlearningData/training_rollercoaster/training_files/hip”. Which is fine. But under the coaster_car SOP there are “errors”. Certain pieces of geometry can't be found. For the seat, the file op tries to open a file using “../geo/seat.bgeo”. The file is actually there but Houdini can't find it. If I change the file name to “$HIP/../geo/seat.bgeo” it works fine and dandy. My question is should “../geo/seat.bgeo” work? Is my HOUDINI_PATH is not working as expected? I don't have HOUDINI_PATH as a systemwide env. variable because I thought that Houdini had a default value of "$HIP:$HOME/houdiniXX:$HSITE…..etc..etc….
Any ideas?
J. Price
First, is HOUDINI_PATH a user definable variable? When I'm in Houdini if I set HOUDINI_PATH = @ in the Alias/Variables menu, then try to open a file like final_rollercoaster.hip. I get a ton of error messages saying Houdini can't find itself anymore. From the scripting help file I was under the impression that @ is a special character that equals the internal value of HOUDINI_PATH, like $HIP:$HFS etc. Is there a proper way to set HOUDINI_PATH that I'm missing?
Second question concerning HOUDINI_PATH. I'll use final_rollercoaster.hip as an example. When I load up the file my $HIP variable gets set to “DlearningData/training_rollercoaster/training_files/hip”. Which is fine. But under the coaster_car SOP there are “errors”. Certain pieces of geometry can't be found. For the seat, the file op tries to open a file using “../geo/seat.bgeo”. The file is actually there but Houdini can't find it. If I change the file name to “$HIP/../geo/seat.bgeo” it works fine and dandy. My question is should “../geo/seat.bgeo” work? Is my HOUDINI_PATH is not working as expected? I don't have HOUDINI_PATH as a systemwide env. variable because I thought that Houdini had a default value of "$HIP:$HOME/houdiniXX:$HSITE…..etc..etc….
Any ideas?
J. Price
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