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Houdini Learning Materials » Halloween Corn Maze Tutorial
- whythisname
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Houdini Learning Materials » Halloween Corn Maze Tutorial
- whythisname
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Cool stuff, pretty a-maze-ing. (sorry I couldn't resist xD)
I'm also looking forward to the next chapter, I really want to get into some procedural texture/material stuff so I'm hoping that next chapter will give me something to go from
I'm also looking forward to the next chapter, I really want to get into some procedural texture/material stuff so I'm hoping that next chapter will give me something to go from
The Orbolt Smart 3D Asset Store » Hot or not? How would you rate it?
- whythisname
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Last time I checked I saw an option on Orbolt beneath each asset to give it a 0-5 star rating and write a comment with it…
The average star rating is also displayed below each asset in the list (just below the prices).
The main problem is that there aren't that many customers yet (at least that's what it looks like to me) and only a very small percentage of those customers can be bothered to write a review (that's always the case, many products in other stores have no user reviews even though they've been sold hundreds of times).
I agree it might be worthwhile to promote reviewing assets though, so people can see what someone thinks who didn't make the asset. I'm not sure if that should be the people from SideFX (they got plenty to do already with approving assets), but on the other hand it is nice to see a review from a respected source and it probably isn't too much work to write a small review while approving an asset (at least I assume it's more work than just hitting “approve” somewhere).
The average star rating is also displayed below each asset in the list (just below the prices).
The main problem is that there aren't that many customers yet (at least that's what it looks like to me) and only a very small percentage of those customers can be bothered to write a review (that's always the case, many products in other stores have no user reviews even though they've been sold hundreds of times).
I agree it might be worthwhile to promote reviewing assets though, so people can see what someone thinks who didn't make the asset. I'm not sure if that should be the people from SideFX (they got plenty to do already with approving assets), but on the other hand it is nice to see a review from a respected source and it probably isn't too much work to write a small review while approving an asset (at least I assume it's more work than just hitting “approve” somewhere).
The Orbolt Smart 3D Asset Store » Wouldn't it be Suite...
- whythisname
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Aren't dependency assets the thing you're looking for then?
If it's not dependency's what you're looking for, I agree it might be worthwhile to look into something like this, but I do feel they might be close to what you need/want.
If it's not dependency's what you're looking for, I agree it might be worthwhile to look into something like this, but I do feel they might be close to what you need/want.
The Orbolt Smart 3D Asset Store » Stats suggestion
- whythisname
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I agree, I would also like to see these features. Maybe also an option to not display “trial” sales, because you don't make any money from those they can't really be considered a sale anyway… At least I don't consider them sales.
The Orbolt Smart 3D Asset Store » What's a protected asset?
- whythisname
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When you upload an asset there are some options to protect the asset, but afaik the only options are to have it all locked, unlocked or have the paid versions unlocked while the free version isn't.
So you can lock the trial and apprentice version, but leave the commercial version open for editing for example. It's a sort of cascade where more expensive versions can be left open while everything below that gets locked.
So you can lock the trial and apprentice version, but leave the commercial version open for editing for example. It's a sort of cascade where more expensive versions can be left open while everything below that gets locked.
Houdini Lounge » Houdini 13 Wishlist.
- whythisname
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I haven't read everything here, but I agree some areas of Houdini could really use some improvements. For me personally that's UVs, but I'm sure there are also other areas. The main issue with UVs is that a lot of the projections are static instead of procedural. Pretty much the only projections that can be used procedurally are the UVUnwrap and UVPelt tools, for all the others the projection is static and you need to wrestle your geometry into place to get a good projection…
Also things like UV packing can only be done with UVUnwrap, and to do it you pretty much need to wrestle your geometry again… and then you still only have a mediocre/unoptimized packing procedure.
Now I don't mind wrestling around with my geometry, but I can't help but feel these things take too much effort (compared to other software) and that it's far from fast, efficient and often still gives only mediocre results compared to what other software can do with the click of a button.
I'd also like to see more options for group selections, in other software it's quite easy to select things like edge loops for example while Houdini has no procedural tools to do such a thing (at least not afaik).
Also things like UV packing can only be done with UVUnwrap, and to do it you pretty much need to wrestle your geometry again… and then you still only have a mediocre/unoptimized packing procedure.
Now I don't mind wrestling around with my geometry, but I can't help but feel these things take too much effort (compared to other software) and that it's far from fast, efficient and often still gives only mediocre results compared to what other software can do with the click of a button.
I'd also like to see more options for group selections, in other software it's quite easy to select things like edge loops for example while Houdini has no procedural tools to do such a thing (at least not afaik).
The Orbolt Smart 3D Asset Store » Pricing guidelines
- whythisname
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Yeah, I think I'll mostly be focusing on tools that fit inside a bigger node network, so a $0-15 price range is kinda what I'm aiming for at the moment. Besides the fact these nodes aren't much use outside a network, they can be used many more situations, so you can also assume more sales than with higher level assets.
I don't know if you can see how many times your asset has been sold, but I assume you can or get a notification or something, so if an asset doesn't sell you can always try lowering the price a bit. If that information isn't available yet I assume it will be in the future.
Edit: You can see how many times an asset got sold in the “Overview” tab on your account So no real amount of money you made, but at least you can see if it sells and you can calculate your profit with that as well.
I don't know if you can see how many times your asset has been sold, but I assume you can or get a notification or something, so if an asset doesn't sell you can always try lowering the price a bit. If that information isn't available yet I assume it will be in the future.
Edit: You can see how many times an asset got sold in the “Overview” tab on your account So no real amount of money you made, but at least you can see if it sells and you can calculate your profit with that as well.
Houdini Lounge » Help! creating a group selection menu...
- whythisname
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Thanks! Now I'm getting somewhere
I was already looking at python as well, however I couldn't cobble something together from the examples I found (probably because I'm not quite familiar with python and the Houdini classes xD).
Anyway, I replaced the first line with this:
geo = hou.pwd().geometry()
Which seems to work as well
I think my tool will work with both primitive groups and point groups though (I'll do some testing to make sure), but I think I'll be able to figure out how to add those as well if I need them.
Edit: Looks like “Blast”-ing point and edge groups makes a bit of a mess xD So I'll stick to primitive groups
Anyway, thanks again I'm sure this will be of great help with any future tools I'll make.
I was already looking at python as well, however I couldn't cobble something together from the examples I found (probably because I'm not quite familiar with python and the Houdini classes xD).
Anyway, I replaced the first line with this:
geo = hou.pwd().geometry()
Which seems to work as well
I think my tool will work with both primitive groups and point groups though (I'll do some testing to make sure), but I think I'll be able to figure out how to add those as well if I need them.
Edit: Looks like “Blast”-ing point and edge groups makes a bit of a mess xD So I'll stick to primitive groups
Anyway, thanks again I'm sure this will be of great help with any future tools I'll make.
The Orbolt Smart 3D Asset Store » Pricing guidelines
- whythisname
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Ok, cool. I see a lot of tools going for ~5,- though, but I guess if you expect to sell quite a few, didn't take much time to make it or simply charge a fairly low hourly rate (because you might do this as a hobby for example) that makes sense.
Houdini Lounge » Help! creating a group selection menu...
- whythisname
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I'm trying to make “the tool”, opening it up won't help me… I've been looking at other tools, but their group selection lists seem to be broken as well. Or in case of the default build in tools, they don't expose how they do it (it's greyed out and there's nothing there).
Also, I'm trying to make a simple (but powerful) otl here… A group selection list isn't a rare thing on Houdini tools, in fact, the majority of tools allows a user to define a group(s) that the tool should operate on.
I'm just going to guess that we have a miscommunication here.
btw, I did try to promote one of the nodes inside my tool (like take a group parameter from one of the nodes inside and put that on the parameter list), but they also don't work (or at least they're not listing any groups…).
Edit: According to the help this is the Hscript that should do the trick:
result = “”
foreach groupname ( pointgroupmask(“.” + opinput(“.”, 0), “*”) )
result = $result + “ $groupname ” + `toupper($groupname)`
end
echo $result
It doesn't do anything for me though.
Also, I'm trying to make a simple (but powerful) otl here… A group selection list isn't a rare thing on Houdini tools, in fact, the majority of tools allows a user to define a group(s) that the tool should operate on.
I'm just going to guess that we have a miscommunication here.
btw, I did try to promote one of the nodes inside my tool (like take a group parameter from one of the nodes inside and put that on the parameter list), but they also don't work (or at least they're not listing any groups…).
Edit: According to the help this is the Hscript that should do the trick:
result = “”
foreach groupname ( pointgroupmask(“.” + opinput(“.”, 0), “*”) )
result = $result + “ $groupname ” + `toupper($groupname)`
end
echo $result
It doesn't do anything for me though.
Houdini Lounge » Help! creating a group selection menu...
- whythisname
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Hi everyone, I've been working on an tool for the Orbolt store and I want to add an option to select a group to use my tool on.
I've figured out that it can just be a string field and that someone can enter a group name and it'll work fine (which is what I have now and what I will use if I can't get this to work…). However most tools in Houdini also have a nice selection menu, on the right of the field, with the groups listed in them. I'd like to have that on my tools as well.
I did figure out I need a “Toggle” menu for that, but that alone isn't enough.
I did find a script in the help file that supposedly needs to go there to make it work, however it doesn't seem to work (I copy/pasted it in my asset and it still doesn't list anything…).
I've been looking in the help file for other help besides those few examples that don't seem to work, but there isn't anything I could find. I usually don't have much trouble with scripting stuff, but most of this just looks like gibberish to me xD
A bit off topic, and I don't want to sound negative (I love Houdini, for the most part ), but I'm kinda surprised that there isn't a preset (in “create parameters”) option for this. I mean, we got 20 options for vectors which are all basically the same, but not a preset for something that's basically on every single surface tool in Houdini… And no easy to find documentation on how to make it either.
Anyway, I would really appreciate help with this and I hope in the future there will be some presets for some of the basic dynamic menus that are often seen on tools (similar to how you now have a simple drop down menu for what an “Operator list” should list).
I've figured out that it can just be a string field and that someone can enter a group name and it'll work fine (which is what I have now and what I will use if I can't get this to work…). However most tools in Houdini also have a nice selection menu, on the right of the field, with the groups listed in them. I'd like to have that on my tools as well.
I did figure out I need a “Toggle” menu for that, but that alone isn't enough.
I did find a script in the help file that supposedly needs to go there to make it work, however it doesn't seem to work (I copy/pasted it in my asset and it still doesn't list anything…).
I've been looking in the help file for other help besides those few examples that don't seem to work, but there isn't anything I could find. I usually don't have much trouble with scripting stuff, but most of this just looks like gibberish to me xD
A bit off topic, and I don't want to sound negative (I love Houdini, for the most part ), but I'm kinda surprised that there isn't a preset (in “create parameters”) option for this. I mean, we got 20 options for vectors which are all basically the same, but not a preset for something that's basically on every single surface tool in Houdini… And no easy to find documentation on how to make it either.
Anyway, I would really appreciate help with this and I hope in the future there will be some presets for some of the basic dynamic menus that are often seen on tools (similar to how you now have a simple drop down menu for what an “Operator list” should list).
The Orbolt Smart 3D Asset Store » Pricing guidelines
- whythisname
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Hi everyone, I'm quite new to selling assets online I was just wondering if some of you would be willing to share some guidelines on how you price your assets?
I think it would be good to have something like this for new users, regardless of my own curiosity.
I think it would be good to have something like this for new users, regardless of my own curiosity.
The Orbolt Smart 3D Asset Store » Where do I find these assets/tools when they download?
- whythisname
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I agree it should be possible to just download the file without opening Houdini immediately. Though it's not the worst thing in the world I guess and it's nice all assets are instantly integrated (ie, no fiddling with unpacking files and moving them to folders).
A shopping cart system would be nice, that way you can also clearly see how much money a list of assets costs combined.
I'm not sure what pbowmar means with “Progress bar are download.”, but I guess you want a progress bar for the download? Not sure why though, Firefox and afaik all other modern browsers have build in progress bars for downloads.
btw, thanks for posting the folder with assets, I assume I can just remove them from there if I want to remove an asset? Maybe an option from Houdini to remove assets would also be nice. I just prefer to remove assets I'm not going to use (because I expected more from the asset for example), just to keep things clean.
A shopping cart system would be nice, that way you can also clearly see how much money a list of assets costs combined.
I'm not sure what pbowmar means with “Progress bar are download.”, but I guess you want a progress bar for the download? Not sure why though, Firefox and afaik all other modern browsers have build in progress bars for downloads.
btw, thanks for posting the folder with assets, I assume I can just remove them from there if I want to remove an asset? Maybe an option from Houdini to remove assets would also be nice. I just prefer to remove assets I'm not going to use (because I expected more from the asset for example), just to keep things clean.
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » Point numbers in UV view?
- whythisname
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Hi everyone, I was just wandering if there is a way to view point numbers and other such data from the UV view? It's almost impossible to see how the UVs are orientated unless you apply a texture and look at it in perspective view to see how it turns out.
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » Orbolt and Apprentice authoring --selling?
- whythisname
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I was wondering the same and it's really awesome you guys allow this I'll definitely be trying out Orbolt now that I know this. It might also be worthwhile to mention this in the Orbolt FAQ or something, it really isn't clear if you're allowed to sell anything from an apprentice license there.
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » UVPelt error
- whythisname
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Hi everyone,
So I have this setup in which I loop over a bunch of groups (geometry that I cut up with a voronoi) and I'm trying to apply a pelt to each piece so I can get some nice seamless non-overlapping UVs.
However I keep getting an error saying this:
- No boundary edges are connected to the hint primitive.
Now I'm guessing the problem is that the hint primitive needs to be one of the primitives on the edge of the cut made by the voronoi, but how can I find such a face?
Since I'm also doing a polyextrude on the geometry I already tried reading out a face from the “side” group (which forms the outer edge of each piece), however I can't find a good expression to do that (I tried the primlist expression, however that gives an error since it returns a list and not just a single primitive number).
I also tried using a simple Sort to X, Y or Z, but that doesn't work (I guess because not every group has the outer edge to one of those directions, which makes sense).
So yeah, basically I need something to find a good hint primitive that the pelt can use, I think.
The strange thing though is that it seems to work fine every now and then, but I guess those times it's just luck that every 0 primitive is on the edge. Also because the geometry is cut up it isn't exactly the neatest when it comes to numbering (and the fact it's a fairly big model loaded in from another program doesn't help either).
So I have this setup in which I loop over a bunch of groups (geometry that I cut up with a voronoi) and I'm trying to apply a pelt to each piece so I can get some nice seamless non-overlapping UVs.
However I keep getting an error saying this:
- No boundary edges are connected to the hint primitive.
Now I'm guessing the problem is that the hint primitive needs to be one of the primitives on the edge of the cut made by the voronoi, but how can I find such a face?
Since I'm also doing a polyextrude on the geometry I already tried reading out a face from the “side” group (which forms the outer edge of each piece), however I can't find a good expression to do that (I tried the primlist expression, however that gives an error since it returns a list and not just a single primitive number).
I also tried using a simple Sort to X, Y or Z, but that doesn't work (I guess because not every group has the outer edge to one of those directions, which makes sense).
So yeah, basically I need something to find a good hint primitive that the pelt can use, I think.
The strange thing though is that it seems to work fine every now and then, but I guess those times it's just luck that every 0 primitive is on the edge. Also because the geometry is cut up it isn't exactly the neatest when it comes to numbering (and the fact it's a fairly big model loaded in from another program doesn't help either).
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » UV packing?
- whythisname
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hehe, thanks. It's still cooking now, but I think I got it solved.
Basically what I do now is project the UVs and just transfer the UVs to 3D space using a simple point node that reads out the UV values and places them into X and Y (leaving Z at 0 since UVs have no depth anyway). This basically creates the UVs in 3D space and then if you apply a UVUnwrap you'll get neatly packed UVs from all the flattened geometry. Then it's simply a vertex node to transfer UVs from the flattened to the 3D geometry and you're done.
The only thing you have to take into account though is that this method only works if the geometry is cut along the UV seams. With my geometry that's the case, so it works fine for me, but if you got a large single piece of geometry you need to cut it up and make sure each separate piece of the geometry is equal to a piece of the UV. Though I guess if you cut up a piece of geometry with a UVUnwrap you don't really need this anyway.
I'll try to make a simple piece of testing geometry and upload the file with the solution. atm I have a large piece of geometry loaded in from an external obj so that isn't that handy to share with you guys xD
Thanks for the tip on the UVUnwrap though and especially about swapping around the UVs to 3D space
Basically what I do now is project the UVs and just transfer the UVs to 3D space using a simple point node that reads out the UV values and places them into X and Y (leaving Z at 0 since UVs have no depth anyway). This basically creates the UVs in 3D space and then if you apply a UVUnwrap you'll get neatly packed UVs from all the flattened geometry. Then it's simply a vertex node to transfer UVs from the flattened to the 3D geometry and you're done.
The only thing you have to take into account though is that this method only works if the geometry is cut along the UV seams. With my geometry that's the case, so it works fine for me, but if you got a large single piece of geometry you need to cut it up and make sure each separate piece of the geometry is equal to a piece of the UV. Though I guess if you cut up a piece of geometry with a UVUnwrap you don't really need this anyway.
I'll try to make a simple piece of testing geometry and upload the file with the solution. atm I have a large piece of geometry loaded in from an external obj so that isn't that handy to share with you guys xD
Thanks for the tip on the UVUnwrap though and especially about swapping around the UVs to 3D space
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » UV packing?
- whythisname
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Hi everyone,
I'm pretty new to the forums here (my second post xD).
Anyway I'm working on a project and for that I had to cut a pretty big piece of geometry into smaller parts. I decided to use a Voronoi fracture to do that and it generates results I'm happy with.
However each piece needs UVs, I managed to do that with a foreach loop and some UVProject/Pelt nodes however the UVs of all the pieces are overlapping. Now I tried to use the UVTranslate in the loop to move the UVs of each piece, however I can't really constrain each piece to the 0-1 space at the time of projecting the UVs because I want to keep the resolution fairly consistent for all pieces (which means large pieces get more space in the UVs and small pieces get less space). But because I can't constrain the UVs to the 0-1 space I also don't know how far to move subsequent projections in the loop.
So basically I have a ton of UVs all overlapping and with very different sizes (most extend to outside the 0-1 space though since the geometry is very large).
Now 3D max and Maya both have a tool(s) to pack UVs at the click of a button, however Houdini doesn't seem to have such a tool and I really don't have a clue where I would start making such a tool.
And doing UV packing in max or maya isn't really an option and I'd just like to have a tool within Houdini to take care of this because I'm bound to use this more often than just for this project.
Maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way, but some pointers on doing procedural UVs and specifically packing those UVs so nothing overlaps is something I'd greatly appreciate.
Edit: Well I did figure out a possible way to measure the bounding box of the UVs, so I probably can implement a UVTranslate so nothing overlaps. However it'll probably then place all the UVs in a long strip, instead of neatly packing them. So yeah, pointers are still welcome.
I'm pretty new to the forums here (my second post xD).
Anyway I'm working on a project and for that I had to cut a pretty big piece of geometry into smaller parts. I decided to use a Voronoi fracture to do that and it generates results I'm happy with.
However each piece needs UVs, I managed to do that with a foreach loop and some UVProject/Pelt nodes however the UVs of all the pieces are overlapping. Now I tried to use the UVTranslate in the loop to move the UVs of each piece, however I can't really constrain each piece to the 0-1 space at the time of projecting the UVs because I want to keep the resolution fairly consistent for all pieces (which means large pieces get more space in the UVs and small pieces get less space). But because I can't constrain the UVs to the 0-1 space I also don't know how far to move subsequent projections in the loop.
So basically I have a ton of UVs all overlapping and with very different sizes (most extend to outside the 0-1 space though since the geometry is very large).
Now 3D max and Maya both have a tool(s) to pack UVs at the click of a button, however Houdini doesn't seem to have such a tool and I really don't have a clue where I would start making such a tool.
And doing UV packing in max or maya isn't really an option and I'd just like to have a tool within Houdini to take care of this because I'm bound to use this more often than just for this project.
Maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way, but some pointers on doing procedural UVs and specifically packing those UVs so nothing overlaps is something I'd greatly appreciate.
Edit: Well I did figure out a possible way to measure the bounding box of the UVs, so I probably can implement a UVTranslate so nothing overlaps. However it'll probably then place all the UVs in a long strip, instead of neatly packing them. So yeah, pointers are still welcome.
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » Detailed cracks with Voronoi
- whythisname
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I skimmed through your post and I think you might want to look at the cluster option of Voronoi fractures. Basically what it does is it combines multiple fractured pieces back together. So what you want to do then is make more fracture points and then use the cluster to combine some of those back into 1 piece, that way you get more detailed fractures.
I dunno if there are other less resource intensive ways though. I'm not that experienced yet with Voronoi's and stuff.
I dunno if there are other less resource intensive ways though. I'm not that experienced yet with Voronoi's and stuff.
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