Indeed thats the issue-ya really have to know…

I hereby request a “remove old keys” button somewhere in
the Administrative Tools probably in License Administrator would do it.

This sucks.
I feel like I can never run Houdini on this machine again!
With ever other 3d software I start fresh with an Unistall.
But Houdini sets a boobie-trap. Houdini and this machine are broken.
grrr!

Is there a bug with build 9.1.179?

This machine has had Houdini run before-but now it can't.
-64 bit
-I can't install new licenses because lines Key2 and Key3 say License has already been installed.
-yet i cannot run houdini
-I tried to unistall all traces of houdini installs-but apparently this did not destroy the previous license information.

How do I clean this machine and re-install like a VIRGIN install?
I want to wipe out all traces of license servers and start again.

As best I can tell I can only get extremely limited use out of the sand object.
-it only supports a sphereical shape absolutly-nothing else.

-it has a preferred size (compared to fluids) one fifth as large.

-it does not support Souce from Objects -so it will only emit a single ‘glob’
of sand. Even if retrofitted from a fluid setup which had this working.

-Sand Configure Object doesn't make a lot of useful sense to me.

Can I have it spawned from and arbitrary source geometry?
Can I have it emit continuously?
Or have I simply reached its limits?

BTW all tested in gold v9.1-all available docs have been checked.

stevenong
There's a Sand Solver & there are examples in the Help.

Cheers!
steven

I've found the objects/solvers only because I see them mentioned here.
But the help seems to miss both real documentation and examples for any of it. Do you have a example name?
I just get a passing mention Gas Sand Forces.

From here it all looks rather incomplete-can anyone proove it really works with a simple example?

I have a popnet which doesn't seem to like result of an Object Merge node
if the ‘Transform Object’ points to imported collada (transformation animation and model data). It will emit from the mesh at the correct scale and initial orientation. But won't use the animation too (stays at 0,0,0).

I've tried exporting the collada object to and animated geo via another object merge (which seemed to work in itself). But if this result too is used as a merge object still no result.

Now I can rivit another object to my collada data/mesh and use this instead. But hope for something more direct.

The docs talk about using this node to extract DOP data-but not animation data. But this-to me seems to be a typical thing to want to do-any thoughts on whats wrong? Should i use another method?

ral

I have not found many examples using Fluids for fire in Houdini.
The fire container and burst into Flame tools seem the simply have fire and smoke at the same time. They overlap. The only way to ‘see’ the fire (at render) is the make the smoke less dense (basic flame/basic smoke density). So they might as well be seperate and comp….

So why have them together at all? So I am thinking there must be more to it then this?! To get a sense the smoke is spawned from the flame?
And control the transition of this? Any examples of this level of control?

-thanks
ral

The obvious choice is to define a negative frame (say -100) in the
'Creation Frame' parameter under the Smoke Object.
(with Creation Frame Specifies Simulation Frame ‘on’ too).

This works for positive values (to delay the fluid generation) but fails for negative values (to have a big smoke colume 100 frames old at frame 1).

Is this possibler?

Or even Initial States?-so define frame 150 as my ‘new frame 1’ or initial
frame?
ral

Could easily be a user error in application or display or both.

But I am having a hard time getting any visible effect of the rotation node in POPs. I even did the old ‘Random Rotation’ tutorial archived at www.soulvector.com.

I just never see anything that looks like a rotating particle?!
Would love a simple example if somebody cares to provide one.

-thanks
-ral

From compositing I see a ‘corner ramp’ but no simple ‘color camp’ operation?
Has this changed or the functionaly moved to another node.
-am I blind?

-ral

I may need my hand held a bit.

I've been going through one of the old legacy tutorials (making a contrail).
During the middle of section 8 (8.17) the tutorial drives a popnet source
op's Attribute Inherit Velocity parameter by the end result of an fcurve massage by CHOPs via an Export op.

Changes in the UI-and a bit of convolution in the tutorial make this a little confusing in 8.1.
I think the CHOPs is exporting-but establishing the connection to inherit velocity is a little baffleing.

-any thoughts?
-do i need to explain better?

-ral

Yes in my case minimising Houdini does work. Its just a workflow thing-I probably will not always think to do that. Now that I know what the issue really is its not a big deal (but I would turn off that keyboard input lock command if I could).

My switcher requires two presses of scroll lock (until there is a beep)
then I can do the monitor switch (this also toggles Houdini's input lock ‘on’ and ‘off’ again)-but occasionaly the switcher sticks or if I do it too quickly I might hit scroll lock 3 or some odd number of times and thats when I was getting confused by Houdini being keyboard locked.

It would be nice if there was a user preference to disable this though…
Its not a functionaly I'd really use (no cats allowed in my studio).

-ral

Mystery solved.

Its unfortunet that Houdini uses the scroll-lock key to lock the UI for keyboard input. I happen to have two machines and 1 monitor set and use a switcher to go back-and-forth between them.
As it happens the keyboard command to hop back and forth is scroll-lock ‘1’ (or ‘2’) depending on which machine I work.
I don't think there is any flexibility for the switcher-what about Houdini?
Can I turn that feature off?

-ral

Indeed I think it amounts to something like that.
hserver is indeed being called.
Which explains why the texture that comes with the wispy smoke tutorial doesn't have an issue (installed inside Houdini's factory location).
Although our networks drives are mounted as drive letters?!

Seems like something that should get fixed for production pipelines on windows…

Thanks for the pbowmar
-ral

The red particles in the rocket tutorial is defined by the step ‘Color Code the Groups’ during the create the collisions section. This was for visualization in playback-but I used the ‘bypass flag’ on the ‘color1’ node for rendering.

Since there is a second part to this lesson (not available yet-but I hope soon) which will add a distinct shader to the collide particles-thats what I chose to do for now.

-ral

Ok I've narrowed this down to a texture map refresh issue.
Houdini is not rendering ‘red’ exactly its rendering the shader (which happens to be reddish)-but not seeing the Texture Map parameter
when ‘number of processors’ is checked and is more than 1.
If 1 or unchecked altogether-then the texture map is persisted to mantra.

re-caching the particles doesn't help either.


-ral

Thanks Bernard
I saw that too and fixed it. But its wasn't that scene I was getting my ‘red renders’ from.
It was from the end result of the ‘wispy smoke’ tutorial but using my own texture sequence on it. I'm not sure I can repro now.

-still checking that.

ral

I should be using an Eval version of Master.

I'll try and simplify a scene and see if i can repro on a sphere.
It will probably be next week though…

Rendering on a single processor worked fine though.

-ral

I found the cause.
Its from setting the number of processors to ‘2’ in the render command.
If its default ‘1’ I am good.

Unless its a license protection it seems like a bug…

-ral

This is probably dumb.

I did the ‘Wispy Smoke’ tutorial (from the online docs) but am using my own image sequence (looped) to map the particle driven geometry.

If I do an interactive render-what I call a (tab>Render draw a marquis)
I see the results I expect from cam1. But only with the ‘Default’ driver. But if I render a sequence the result renders distinctly ‘red’. I would also say the alphas don't match what I expect. I now see I get the same (red) result in the interactive render if I change ‘Default’ driver for ‘out/mantra1’ in the interactive render control as well.

BTW for rendering in the viewport - if I do the View:Mantra from the driver icon in the lower left of the viewport-I in fact see the result I expect (a grayish smoke).

BTW2 I am using the new beta .633 on windows xp.

BTW3 - the previous version of my scene isn't showing this rpoblem at all… hmmm

Any idea what sillyness I've come across?
It wouldn't be a license protection thing would it?

-ral(newbie)