I can't see anything in here:

https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/hom/hou/IPRViewer.html [www.sidefx.com]

Is this possible with python? My idea was to update the render view background image pre-render based on the camera background image

I usually work with a parameters pane linked to a network view, however the pane is then considered "pinned". This means I can't select multiple nodes in order to change their parameters at once (it only shows the parameters for the last selected node). Is there a way to change this? Preferences for example? I was sure this used to work as I expect..

When developing a material at the top level /mat context I really like being able to drag any vop onto the ipr and see it displayed as a temp material on the object. However once you collapse the shader nodes into a material you're no longer able to do this. Unless i'm mistaken?

I'm thinking about doing this as well, did you find a good method? The guided ocean setup works well for flat oceans but not for extending a flip sim on a beach..

johner
Yes, using the Bake All Displacements to One Layer option on the Export to Texture tab of OceanEvaluate

Hi @johner,

It seems that when baking maps the ocean evaluate writes out the maps directly from the volumes? So are you not able to bake the displacement to geo with custom UVs (not just from a planar project)?

Do you have any examples of using the ocean tools with already deformed geometry? I'm creating a huge wave and want to apply ocean displacement on top, however my problem is:
- if I create my ocean, then bake out my vector displacement, then bend it into a huge wave, the vector displacement is now in the wrong space so the geo displaced at render time won't match my geo in SOPs (which is obviously an issue when doing spray/mist etc)
- I could bend deform my geo first then add the ocean displacement (using wave instancing to orient them correctly on the huge wave), however ocean evaluate doesn't seem to work correctly when using already deformed geo, I think it expects a flat grid.. Especially if there is an overhang in the geo I get some really strange results (i'm guessing because of the wave it samples the 2D volumes..)

Is there a way I can convert the world space vector displacement from the ocean evaluate into a tangent space displacement? That way (I think) if I deform the geo afterwards it will still be in the correct space..?

I need to create a huge wave that is on the verge of breaking. My first approach was to:

1. use ocean tools to create a flat ocean then bend it to create the big wave
The problem with this is that the vector displacement is created before my bend deformed so at render time it displaces in the wrong direction. This wouldn’t be a huge issue but since emitting spray from the crest of the wave the sop geo and render displaced geo need to line up..

2. Bend deform the geo first then orient the waves along the geo using wave instancing.
This should work but the baked displacement map seems to be essentially a vertical projection so the overhanging wave causes problems (I’ve created my uvs before any deformation so that’s not the issue). Maybe it’s the way the maps are generated inside the ocean evaluate using vop2cop and just working with 2d volumes?

- it also just seems to write those volumes out rather than baking it back to the uvs - so it doesn’t respect your input uvs..

I know this is a relatively common effect (making huge waves) so what would be the best approach?

edward
The BlendPose CHOP has an SVD linear solver, set the Interpolant to Hyperplane.

EDIT: The solver is probably about the same as numpy though.

I know this is an old post but I don't understand what the inputs should be for the blendPose chop, can you explain how to use it?

Is there a way to constrain cloth to a wire object and have mutual feedback?

The cloth attach constraint seems to work with RBD objects but the cloth solver errors if you try and constrain it to a wire object.. I can use a constraint network to constrain them together but there doesn't seem to be any feedback on the cloth from the wire.

I'm guessing since they are solved in different solvers you would have to fake the interaction somehow..

I've attached a test scene - one where I set up a constraint network and one where I took the example scene of constraining cloth to RBDs and tried to get it to work with a wire object (i'm guessing for that example scene there isn't actually any feedback on the RBDs from the cloth either..)

Just wondering if there’s an updated ETA of the upcoming rigging tutorials? Very much looking forward to them!

Take a grid and extrude it with a negative distance with output back. The (intrinsic) normals are now pointing inwards.. Is this the intended behaviour? I find it quite frustrating as I need to put a reverse node after every extrude with a negative distance…

I'm getting some unbalanced forces when using grains, its the same problem as described in the grains masterclass around 32:50. As Jeff says the solution is to disable constraint averaging and then insure all the internal forces add up to 1. I've done this but I still have an imbalance.. I wanted to check which forces are meant to add up to 1, in the video it implies that Internal Collisions + Clumping + Explicit Constraints = 1. However in the help document it mentions that Friction with Particles should be included as well.

So should I set Friction with Particles, Internal Collisions, Clumping and Explicit Constraints to 0.25?

What is the recommended method for installing Houdini builds across a network? We use Deadline so I had thought a good method could be to execute a batch script as a ‘maintenance job’ (which runs once for every machine) to do the install. I'm close but I can't get round Windows User Access Control (UAC) which requires the user to click accept (and I want it to be unattended/silent). This is the batch script I was using:

start /w S:\3D_globalSettings\houdini\builds\houdini-16.0.705-win64-vc14.exe /S /LicenseServer=Yes /DesktopIcon=Yes /FileAssociations=Yes /HoudiniServer=Yes /EngineUnity=No /EngineMaya=Yes /EngineUnreal=No /HQueueServer=No /HQueueClient=No /IndustryFileAssociations=Yes /LicenseServer=Yes /ForceLicenseServer=Yes /MainApp=Yes /Registry=Yes


Are there any alternatives for doing this? I don't really want to disable UAC as i've read that can be quite a big security risk so i'd like to find another workaround..

Hey Christopher,

Thanks for your response. I'm not entirely sure what a Windows Service would be.. Is there any (Houdini) documentation on this?
What is the recommended workflow for deploying software and build updates across computers on a Windows network?

Cheers,
Mike

Thanks for the script. I've got this working by running this through Thinkbox Deadline, however it still pops up with a dialog saying “Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your device?”. I'd like to be install Houdini without the need for user input (so I could do it over night for example). Do you know of a way round this? Is it a permissions issue?

aRtye
It's a precision error - just try offsetting the cylinder a tiny amount and you'll find it works.

Yes I found that, but I agree I think it's a bug. Especially when Maya's booleans works in the same case..

I guess the best option would be to combine both of your solutions so that you can still animate the goal objects, i'll look into it today!

Nice! Thats very cool and pretty simple! Thanks a lot

Hi Matthias,

Thank you very much for the file, thats really interesting, I didn't even know about that constraints option! Cheers

Hi Henry,

Thanks for your reply. I had a go at your suggestions but I can't seem counteracting the pre-transforms, any chance you could take a quick look?

Whats the best way to do a simple collision of a rig with an object, e.g. putting a hand on a table and having the fingers collide properly.

I was putting together a quick attempt but couldn't get it to work: