heh didnt realize it was already in this thead haha whoops. It didnt pop up when I scrolled through the thread before I posted for me.

The video looks sooooooo good. The only thing that worries me is the new nodes. I hope theres a snap distance to when you want to connect wires into nodes. I like the bit rectangles from before because it let you be rather loose with connections, unlike apps like world machine where you have to be very precise. Those circles look mighty small.

And.. I also hope that if you make custom otls that you can resize nodes so that if you make a lot of connections into a single node each connection can have an adequate amount of spacing so you can easily label each and you can then easily middle click to get info over them, etc. Right now if i make more than 4 it starts to get very crowded.
I also hope for houdini indie that redshift will be supported. I dont know if it is yet, but the second I hear that it is, I'm buying indie.

seen this?

Hey guys.

I am trying to start using python to some degree and I thought I would start by using it inside expressions instead of hscript.

So, I read a bunch of the docs, and tried to make an if statement but completely failed.

Here is what I am trying to do.

I have an arch that is made from an open circle. This arch creates a polygon that is then cookied out of a rectangle.

So it creates an archway. At the end of it I have a polyreduce that triangulates the end result.

Where I want to use the if statement is.. if the arch becomes just 2 points, making a line, I want to switch the cookie node off by bypassing it all together and keeping the original rectangle only.

So. the if statement if written in English, would go like:

( inside the switch input )

if circle division == 1 then
make the value of the switch node = 0
else
make the value of the switch node = 1

There is an example of an if statement in the docs, but my main problem is, how do I make a relative channel reference within python.

I tried it also in Hscript and I cant really get the relative references to work in there either.
I use them all the time to grab values from one node and pipe them into another and then put that all within brackets and do some math to it.. but never inside if statements.. Only if statement I have done that works is within the OTL when turning on or off UI elements based on a local variable.

Back to topic. My current Hscript looks like this.


So, where am I going wrong here, and then… how would it look in python.

I'd love to know

Cheers

( EDIT:
works. so now I am wondering about the python version.

With different shapes for nodes, What I would like to personally see is the ability to create larger nodes overall for things like OTLs. If I create a larger asset where I want to plug other Otls into, then I will need more inputs. I would like to create nodes that are 2-3 times wider so it makes things easier to connect into. currently if I set a lot of connects for a node the inputs just get more and cramped.

normalize was it thanks man.

Hey there guys n gals.

I have a weird case where I am using a for each subnetwork set to primitive and I want to apply operations to each polygon.

Every polygon has a different orientation, but they all have proper primitive, point/vertex normals. So for example, I take 2 points.. make the normals point on an axis just off of X ( as in it is facing more or less in that direction but it is rotated slightly toward Z. I build 2 point edges with them, and then I want to poly extrude along point normal.

This however does not work on 2 point edges, which is unfortunate. Next up I try to use the transform extruded front. This allows me to extrude, but it does not do it along the point normals. So Instead I tried to use the peak function but it displaces by a different numerical values from the transform/extrude values. The peak seems to be normalized to 01, versus the transform/extrude nodes are not.



I went into point vop because I feel like what I want to do should be possible, but as soon as it comes to doing things like matricies and working with them in houdini, I am a bit lost. so I tried a few simpler things that I know how to do, and tried out displace along normal but again it is just like the peak node. I also tried adding values to the point vector positions on a single axis but it does not respect normal direction.


What I need to do is to transform points along normal by the same value numbers that the extrude and transform nodes use because for some parts of the file I am using plain transforms, and extrudes and I need to keep consistency. For some reason this is harder than I thought it would be.

Hey Vux.

These modelling tools look really nice. However I have a question, how procedural are they in nature? Are they completely viewport dependant tools? or are they built in a way where I can trigger and manipulate in procedural ways. I am really looking forward to trying your tools and even buying your toolkit if you sell it, but Houdini becoming a regular modeller would be a step backward I feel ( if that is the intention ).

Personally I have been trying to do a lot more modelling in houdini but the things that are getting in the way are things like the bevel tool not being as complete as it could be ( I will be making some RFEs soon ), and the poly bridge tool even though it works it often requires manual tweaks to get it to work perfect in some situations. This unfortunately breaks its procedurality if the incoming shapes change.

Really looking forward to your toolset though, regardless which way you take the tools.

Hey guys.

I am trying to make a random spot shader which I then use to bake out and import into mari.

The shader basically takes a painted Cd and then feeds that into the dots shop node.

There is more in there like turbulence being used for randomization and such, but now I have come to the point where I have dot size/randomness being controlled via cd, but I also want the dot shape to be distorted after the fact.

If I do a regular turbulence distort based on 2d space ( S,t ) then they will uniformly deform.

I am looking for some method to change the shape of each dot but this method will not do.

Maybe I could use the hex, and drive the shape that way, but then it is still a hex ish type shape and i want to make more of a unique freckle shape type shader.

Anyone got ideas how I could approach this?

Hey there guys.

The other day I was trying to export an obj with vertex colors in hopes that it would work within the unreal engine. It does not work.

Is there no support for vertex color exporting within the obj format? ZBrush seems to do it just fine, but then i am no longer leveraging the procedurality of houdini.

any tips?

at the same time for 10k you could get houdini indie, modo, zbrush, mari, that workstation you want, and still have enough to get yourself a render box. Again there are better ways to use that money than a single machine only.

better monitors? that is usually a decent investment as you will keep those around for a while.

You don't really even need 3k for a very good workstation.

for 10k you could get yourself houdini indie, a workstation and a few machines to render on.

if you are starting out then start smaller, dont just blow money ( unless you are filthy rich and that is pocket change. in which case, you can mail me a check at…

chrism
Yes, you can render 1440 x 1440 sequences with Indie.
There's no resolution cap on single frame renders.

so we can bake/render textures at 4k, 8k if we need?

That's great to hear if that is the case. I was thinking that the limit was for renders, period.

The way it is done in comp is by using an image map to displace pixels. Same could be done in houdini.

Hey.

This should be mega simple but for some reason I cant get to work.

I am trying to select the last point on a primitive to delete everything but.

So I have a delete sop, set it to points, and in it I want to type in a pattern/expression that goes
“$NPT-1”

My thinking is that because there is point#0. if I take the number of points minus one I should get the last point on a curve..

but why wouldn't this work?

Thank you very much

Hey guys quick question.

How do I use the hide or disable paramater properties under certain conditions.

I see that The Disable When and Hide When are there, but how do I use them? I wanted to use a toggle for a property, but also to disable a whole bunch of other properties when this toggle would be on, and to enable others.

Hey there.

I am curious about something here which I have not had the time to test ( and no access to Houdini engine at the moment )

Has anyone got vertex colours to work from Houdini to Maya in terms of colouring the geometry for render time?

Is it a straight forward process? or will it require some heavy lifting?

How about using the packing tools. does that work?

I will ask more later but basically I was thinking of creating some L-systems in houdini and scattering them around in maya and have them render using whatever vertex colours I setup in Houdini. Obviously packing would help with performance.

cheers.

Thanks a ton Looks like I wasnt wrong when experimenting with expressions. I just had to use forIDvalue and not forvalue. That was the only thing that made the difference.

Hey guys.

I have a problem.

For the last while I have been making extensive usage out of the copy sop but I think I will have to make use of the for each sop in a way that I havent yet had the chance to.

So I make use of stamping inside the copy sop all the time, and I find it simple because it separates the variable, the function, and the calling of the variable. It makes sense.

However when I want to create a fit01 expression on a subdivide depth on every for each instance using the stamping function I am finding it confusing as to why it is not working out.

What I am trying to do is make a grid of a few divisions( say, 3x3 ) ( polygons ).

use connectivity/partition to split the primitives up, and assign a colour/group. ( I do this because I can separate by colour, which I can paint, or use Vops/textures )

Then inside the for each I split up every poly based on colour.

On every polygon I want a random subdivision depth, and I am guessing I will have to make use of stamping/ some expression to make it random for each piece )

Any thoughts?

EDIT, I got it working using this expression,

opdigits(stamps(“..”, FORVALUE, “”))

But what I am hoping to get is a random 0,1 value for each poly/group in the depth value of the subdivision node.

Decimation ( something better than the regular poly reduce in terms of detail preservation ) This could be huge for level design.

And I would love to see uv packing. Especially useful for quickly arranging uv sets after a “for each” node.

These two would make it soo much easier to create a set of geo which I could either use out of the box or send out to zbrush for further work. There are times when it is just nice to start in Houdini do some procedural stuff, and then export for further work elsewhere.

as far as the pick axis modes from the post above, I would recommend looking at modo. It has by far the most extensive set of tools to manipulate the axis of any individual or group of elements. These tools would be super with houdini.