I definitely tried changing the cam1 back and forth between auto and cam1, but since there's only 1 camera in the scene I think it defaults to cam1 and I get the same result. It seems to be a really strange issue, or perhaps a bug. I've been using Redshift for a couple years in C4D now, so I'm no stranger to the way the renderer works, and at first I was excited by how well it seems to be integrated into Houdini, until I ran into this issue. I've never seen Redshift, in any app, show one object bigger in the render view than it is in the scene, but show all others the right size. I'm doing a render right now, so I can't post a screenshot proving this, but I'll try it again when my render's over.

Thanks for the reply, but I most certainly would not be posting on here if that were the case. As you can see in the screenshot. I’m using the Redshift Render view which has fixed scale set to 100% at 1280x720, and that custom desktop I made is specifically designed to fit that ratio in that exact space. So, zooming in or out on the render does not fix or change anything. Not only that, but the same thing happens in the Houdini Render View in different versions of Houdini. I feel like it’s got something to do with that volume cache because other geometry shows up correctly, including the source on the original setup I had going. For example, if I were to make a box it would also show up properly. And, as I said before it renders properly in Mantra. Or, perhaps the fact that I set it up in Mantra first caused some bug to show up. Either way, it seems like I should be able to easily convert a Mantra scene to a Redshift scene without having to rebuild and recache everything no?

I'm trying to learn Redshift in Houdini 18.0.499, but I'm having trouble rendering a simple smoke sim that I cached. Does anyone have anyone have any idea why it shows up bigger in the Redshift IPR than in the Scene View? It shows up correctly if I try and render it in Mantra. I tried a bunch of things including starting a new project and re-sourcing just the sim from scratch which is what you see in the screenshot. I also tried opening the scene in Houdini 18.0.460 but I got the same result.

Hi all,

I'm still pretty new to Houdini, but I offered to do my friend a favor by attempting to sim a spaceship crash for his short sci film. It was more of an excuse to learn RBDs in Houdini than anything else, but now that I've invested this much time I really want to make it work.

Anyhow, I started with Steven Knipping's Applied Houdini Rigids III Vehicle Destruction course and once I finished that, I tried replacing the supplied helicopter model with a spaceship that I modeled in C4D using a Kitbash kit, so the geometry shouldn't be an issue. It would appear that I'm very close to getting a workable sim because I got it crashing and denting with the original animation that I set up for the ship. However, I've been running into a bit of a snag if I change the crash animation.

For whatever reason, if I move the ship at all to match any of the tracked alembic cameras I was sent, either by changing the keyframes of the crash itself, or even by simply attaching the entire animation to another null and moving it in the scene, the ship totally blows up. You can see what I mean in the last 3 previews found in VFTV\render of the attached project folder. Maybe I'm missing something very basic, but as far as I can tell this shouldn't be happening, as my understanding is that the hard constraints I'm using on most of the ship aren't supposed to break unless I tell them to in the art directed cuts section of the frac SOP.

Anyway, the first preview in the VFTV\render folder shows that the sim more or less works with the camera matching but without denting, and the second shows the crash with denting but with no camera matching. But, for whatever reason I couldn't get the source tracked cameras working directly in Houdini, so I took them into C4D first, changed the resolution and alembic camera scale, and exported them at .01cm from C4D, and after that they seemed to line up in Houdini once I changed the camera view resolution to match. However, my troubleshooting brain is telling me that I might've messed something up during this process and perhaps the explosion is due to mismatching scene/camera scale issues with the alembic cameras that the tracking artist sent causing the sim to be calculated differently.

I'm not even sure if the C4D camera scale option affects the sim in Houdini and/or C4D, but scene scale certainly does, and if the imported camera scale is messing with scene scale, then maybe that's the problem. That said, I don't think that's the reason, because if I leave the original animation alone it seems to sim fine even with the new cameras. And, I believe I'm matching the scale correctly and using the right conversion which is supposed to be .01cm from C4D to Houdini.

I've also messed around with exporting different camera scales and scene scales out of C4D and importing the alembics back into Houdini using several different methods, all with the same result. But, I realize it might help me to know more about which software each shot was tracked in, so I'm double checking with the guy at Framestore, who did the tracks, regarding the scene scale conversions. I was thinking Syntheyes might be different from Nuke for example.

That said, I would be eternally grateful if anyone was willing to look at the project and let me know what they think the problem could be. My hope is it's something stupid on my part, and not some overly complex issue.

Here's a Dropbox link to a reduced version of the project with all the assets
[www.dropbox.com]

Regards and thanks a lot,

Thanks for the reply Hope! I don't think it was a version issue as the same thing was happening with previous versions. I eventually got it to work by playing with the order of operations where I was adding the Thicken SOP and I think I fixed it. If you've done that course and you're curious, I can upload new files for you. Just let me know.

Hi everyone,

I recently finished Steven Knipping's Applied Houdini Rigids III Vehicle Destruction course [www.appliedhoudini.com] and I'm trying to figure out how to get my own model working in the network instead of the supplied helicopter model. I want to destroy a Spaceship that I made in C4D using a Kitbash kit, so I imagine the geometry isn't the main issue, but it certainly could be.

In this case, the main problem is that some of the pieces don't have thickness. And, instead of adding it in C4D, which is also an option, I thought it would be fun to try and do it procedurally in Houdini using the Game Tools Thicken SOP since the Poly Extrude SOP wasn't really working for me. Anyhow, if I add the thickness using separate loops before the Voronoi Fracture process it seems to work fine.

However, some of the pieces that need thickness don't need to be fractured, so I decided to add it to them at the beginning of the network the same way Steven isolated the tanks on the helicopter for the art directed cuts. For whatever reason, this seems to crash Houdini and it's starting to get annoying. It doesn't happen immediately or super often, but it's happening enough that it's slowing down work and I'm worried about it creating a problem that might end up causing me trouble down the line.

I'm on a pretty hefty Windows tower, using Houdini Indie, and I just upgraded to the latest Production Build, 18.0.499, to troubleshoot the issue but it's still happening. If anyone has the ability to look at the .hiplc file that would be a big help. I'm attaching the scene file, the latest crash file and the crash log. And, here's a Dropbox link to the model [www.dropbox.com], since it's too big to attach.

Thanks a lot,

Wow you really went out of your way to explain that! Thanks a lot!

I should’ve written you back yesterday because I totally figured out what I was after using a variation of your node setup and I have some basic terrain built that’s looking pretty good. I’ll post the network today.

I probably should’ve known that Houdini doesn’t provide anything with anything, but I guess I’m just so used to working with other DCCs like C4D and Maya that I assumed a primitive would have UVs, but of course that’s what the UV node adds.

As far as the for loop question goes, you’d probably have to take a look in that hip file I sent for clarification as the setup was for the base terrain texture on a second attribute vop. I got it working with the legacy for loop node, but I was just curious how to update the network using the newer node with the start and end blocks.

The whole point of this tutorial was to procedurally build a moonscape and drive a rigged lunar rover HDA across it, so it interacted with the ground and emitted smoke and dust. I was hoping to take an astronaut I’d already rigged and animated in C4D and have him walk across the surface emitting similar particles from his steps.

Yesterday, after your feedback, I finally felt like I was getting into the rhythm of that tutorial, but unfortunately I believe the lunar rover asset that was supplied with the tut is too old and the rig no longer works even in Houdini 15, which I also installed to test it. The rover shows up sideways on the curve on the creation plane instead of on all four wheels on the surface, which according to the tutorial is a behavior built into the rig. The point is I wouldn’t even know where to begin to update the asset.

That said, I don’t necessarily need the rover to work as I’m essentially trying to replace it with an astronaut, but I was hoping that running through the steps would give some ideas. However, I’m not quite sure how to get my astronaut to follow the same curve and stay on the surface. I imagine I’ll probably have to send that geo into C4D and update his walk to match the ground and then go back into Houdini to add the FX.

If you have any thoughts on this pipeline they’d be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Thanks a bunch Glitch! The image you posted doesn’t look much like craters, but perhaps that’s just cause you didn’t finish tweaking the settings.

What I don’t understand is shouldn’t a primitive Houdini grid automatically have UVs? And yes, I think the whole point of going about this procedurally is to avoid having to deal with UVs.

In Andreas’ tutorial he uses the softdots S & T parameters on the exact same primitive grid, although I’m not sure if they correspond to the UVs. They might be for the direction of the frequency. Either way, I couldn’t get anything to show up wiring different node setups to the frequency input on the new softdots node. The other inputs also didn't seem to be getting me what I wanted.

All that aside, I’m definitely gonna experiment with height fields next and the rest of Houdini’s terrain building tools. As you said, I think there’s value to understanding the different methods.

Do you have any thoughts on the new for loop setup for that other attribute VOP?

I'm relatively new to Houdini, but not so new to 3D. That said, this would probably be a pretty easy problem for an intermediate user to solve. However, I've hit a bit of a roadblock with my knowledge at the moment.

For a current project, I needed to create a moonscape and I found what looked like a decent tutorial for creating procedural terrain by Andreas Vrhovsek on Pluralsight [app.pluralsight.com]. The only problem is this tutorial is 5 years old and a lot of the nodes have been updated or replaced by newer nodes that alter the workflow.

I figured out how to access legacy nodes via commands in the textport, but I ran into an issue in chapter 4 when using the softdots node to create moon craters. It appears the softdots node was simply changed and the S & T inputs were removed. I'm sure there's a good reason for this, but as far as I understand, these inputs allow for a vector to float node to control the x and z pos of the dots making them into nice circles:





Unfortunately, the only way I could figure out how to achieve a similar result in Houdini 17.5 was to create two softdots nodes and wire the different outputs of the vector to float into their respective UV inputs. However, this creates squarish dots that don't look at all like craters:





I'm sure there's a simple way around this, but unfortunately my limited Houdini knowledge is holding me back. I also imagine the newer methods for creating procedural terrain with the actual terrain nodes might be a better option for doing this and I'm totally down to try them out as well, I just figured it might be good for me to try and troubleshoot through some of the old school methods first. Although, all the troubleshooting is fairly time consuming and I didn't think that a 5 year old tutorial would be that vastly different.

Finally, I used the legacy for loop node in the surface displacement Attribute VOP because I couldn't figure out how to set up the new for loop node with the in and out blocks. I've attached a .hiplc file, and if anyone wants to take a look, I'd love some help optimizing both of these networks.

Thanks

Just wanted to add that this probably seemed to be fixed by updating to the latest build.

Thanks for having a look Michael. I can send you a scene file or HDA tomorrow if you’d like. It may simply have to do with the way my character is set up, like the way I split up the eyes, etc…

I’ve been meaning to test it out with that Tommy character, which seems to be the one used in the documentation. If I can get it to work with him, I was thinking I could go back and modify my character a bit so it’s laid out the same way. Not changing the sculpt, but simply separating objects in a similar fashion, and perhaps that will fix it.

The advanced face auto-rigger seems poised to be a really fantastic time saving tool, but it would be nice if there was more documentation on how to use it. I found the Houdini white paper on the advanced face module to be a little confusing without actually seeing a recording of the process. Are you planning on adding any advanced face autorig tutorials to your rigging training?

Also, I’ve noticed that the viewport and playback speed when animating in Houdini is very slow and I’ve read quite harsh criticism from other character animators regarding the same problem. Some users mentioned some potential workarounds or solutions, for the time being, but being new to Houdini, I didn’t fully understand how to implement all of them and get a better frame rate. Might this question also be addressed in one of your future videos or series?

Thanks again for taking the time to have a look!

Hi everyone,

I purchased a Houdini Indie license specifically to test out the auto-rigging functionality, and so far all the biped modules work just fine, but the problem arises when I try and add an Advanced Face Rig. Has anyone been able to get the advanced face rig to work? I followed the newest SideFX documentation very closely and after having spent several hours troubleshooting, it's still unable to generate the rig. Could this possibly be because the model I'm trying to rig doesn't have symmetry?

The console displays the following:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File “CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.506/houdini/python2.7libs\autorigs\ui\uiCharacterTabs.py”, line 190, in buildRig
success = self.currentWidget().buildRig()
File “CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.506/houdini/python2.7libs\autorigs\ui\uiCharacterTabs.py”, line 343, in buildRig
self.autorigs_asset.buildRig()
File “CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.506/houdini/python2.7libs\autorigs\asset\autoRigsAsset.py”, line 157, in buildRig
self.autorigs_modules.buildModules(settings, geoskin)
File “CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.506/houdini/python2.7libs\autorigs\asset\autoRigsModules.py”, line 101, in buildModules
module.buildRig(i)
File “CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.506/houdini/python2.7libs\autorigs\modules\advancedFace\advancedFaceModule.py”, line 93, in buildRig
self.autorigsbuilder.buildRig()
File “CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.506/houdini/python2.7libs\autorigs\modules\base\autoRigsBaseBuilder.py”, line 64, in buildRig
self.onCaptureCompleted()
File “CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.506/houdini/python2.7libs\autorigs\modules\advancedFace\autoRigsAdvancedFaceBuilder.py”, line 259, in onCaptureCompleted
self.lip_builder.onCaptureCompleted()
File “CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.506/houdini/python2.7libs\autorigs\modules\advancedFace\lip\autoRigsLipBuilder.py”, line 923, in onCaptureCompleted
self.onCaptureCompletedLid(self.upper_group.getPrefix(), self.upper_group.getNode(“fsp”),
File “CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.506/houdini/python2.7libs\autorigs\modules\base\autoRigsBaseBuilder.py”, line 401, in getNode
return self.allnodes
KeyError: ‘fsp’
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.506/houdini/python2.7libs\autorigs\ui\uiCharacterTabs.py”, line 190, in buildRig
success = self.currentWidget().buildRig()
File “CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.506/houdini/python2.7libs\autorigs\ui\uiCharacterTabs.py”, line 343, in buildRig
self.autorigs_asset.buildRig()
File “CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.506/houdini/python2.7libs\autorigs\asset\autoRigsAsset.py”, line 157, in buildRig
self.autorigs_modules.buildModules(settings, geoskin)
File “CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.506/houdini/python2.7libs\autorigs\asset\autoRigsModules.py”, line 101, in buildModules
module.buildRig(i)
File “CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.506/houdini/python2.7libs\autorigs\modules\advancedFace\advancedFaceModule.py”, line 93, in buildRig
self.autorigsbuilder.buildRig()
File “CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.506/houdini/python2.7libs\autorigs\modules\base\autoRigsBaseBuilder.py”, line 64, in buildRig
self.onCaptureCompleted()
File “CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.506/houdini/python2.7libs\autorigs\modules\advancedFace\autoRigsAdvancedFaceBuilder.py”, line 259, in onCaptureCompleted
self.lip_builder.onCaptureCompleted()
File “CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.506/houdini/python2.7libs\autorigs\modules\advancedFace\lip\autoRigsLipBuilder.py”, line 923, in onCaptureCompleted
self.onCaptureCompletedLid(self.upper_group.getPrefix(), self.upper_group.getNode(“fsp”),
File “CPROGRA~1/SIDEEF~1/HOUDIN~1.506/houdini/python2.7libs\autorigs\modules\base\autoRigsBaseBuilder.py”, line 401, in getNode
return self.allnodes
KeyError: ‘fsp’


Here are my system specs:

System Core:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X-99-Designare EX Rev 1.0

CPU: Intel Core i7 6950X 3.00GHz, Ten Core 25MB 140W

Ram: Crucial 128GB DDR4-2400 (8x16GB)

Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1080Ti 11GB

Sound Card: Onboard sound


Storage/ Hard Drives:

Primary drive: Samsung 850 Pro 512GB SATA 6Gb/s 2.5inch SSD

Secondary drive: Samsung 850 Pro 512GB SATA 6Gb/s 2.5inch SSD

Internal RAID0 Array: 6x Seagate Barracuda 3TB 7200 rpm SATA III 3.5"


Case / Cooling:

Case: Fractal Design Define R5 Titanium

Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 850W P2 Power Supply

CPU cooling: 2x Noctua NH-U12DX i4

Additional Cooling: Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound Upgrade


Software:

Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

Houdini Indie 17.0.459


Thanks,

I just renewed my Houdini 17 Indie license because I was getting crashes in 16.5 and now I'm getting even more crashes on 17 making the software borderline unusable. I posted on the SideFX forum already, but it seems the post was never approved by a moderator, so I'm posting the topic again.

I come from a Maya/C4D background and was curious to test out the new rigging/auto-rigging tools in Houdini 16.5/17. I was able to make it through most of Michael Goldfarb's basic rigging series using Houdini 16.5 on the SideFX learning paths, but around Christmas 2018 I started getting crashes all the time seemingly caused by very basic operations like deleting bones or changing the viewport. Since my current license was almost expired, I decided to wait until the new year to update to Houdini 17 and see if that solved it, but no luck.

First I did a bit of research and read that these types of crashes are often related to the GPU's relationship to audio drivers, more often that not, the Realtek drivers. And, I read that someone fixed their random crash problem by deleting all the Realtek drivers/software from their system. I did this both manually and by using a software called DDU, suggested by the guys who built my system, but the Realtek stuff keeps reinstalling itself.

If anyone still thinks Realtek might be the problem, does anyone know how to uninstall it without it reinstalling itself. Of course I'm also very interested to know if anyone has any other ideas. As I said, I'm not doing anything too crazy with the software and I have a pretty robust system and Graphics Card. Here are my system specs:

System Core:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-X-99-Designare EX Rev 1.0

CPU: Intel Core i7 6950X 3.00GHz, Ten Core 25MB 140W

Ram: Crucial 128GB DDR4-2400 (8x16GB)

Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1080Ti 11GB

Sound Card: Onboard sound


Storage/ Hard Drives:

Primary drive: Samsung 850 Pro 512GB SATA 6Gb/s 2.5inch SSD

Secondary drive: Samsung 850 Pro 512GB SATA 6Gb/s 2.5inch SSD

Internal RAID0 Array: 6x Seagate Barracuda 3TB 7200 rpm SATA III 3.5"


Case / Cooling:

Case: Fractal Design Define R5 Titanium

Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 850W P2 Power Supply

CPU cooling: 2x Noctua NH-U12DX i4

Additional Cooling: Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound Upgrade


Software:

Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

Houdini Indie 17.0.459


Thanks,