Hi. I was wondering how to set the members of a group by dragging and selecting in the viewport. This has got to be easy but I can't seem to get it to work. Thanks for the help.

Hi, sorry for the crazy title. I'm trying to prep an object to be used in an RBD fract. obj or glue obj. DOP. I've found 2 different paradigms for doing this. One uses a VOP that inputs global pos. into position of a voronoise op which outputs the near2 value into the output op. This jitters the geo really nicely but distorts the edges of the grid/box, etc.
I'm trying to have the voronoise VOP only affect inner points of my grid so the border stays nice and clean. I created a group sop and set the voro vop to use only that group. Works great except it moves the points around so much that the points omitted from my group are left in the center. Any suggestions on how to proceed? Should I translate the omitted points outward? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I also tried using a neat trick from 3D world (last issue) that creates pieces of geo from a grid using a point sop, paint sop, divide sop, connectivity and partition sops. Works great but how can I apply to this to a box or other object (rather than a grid)? Should I be partitioning each side of the box first and then running the above procedure on each one?

Sorry for the long rambling post.

Hi, I'm kind of new to houdini and want to create a point group but would find it easier to select my points by hand rather than using ranges, expressions, etc. Anyone know the commands to do this. I'm sure it's quite easy too. Thanks.

Anyone using Houdini with an Intel Core Duo? I've been getting lots of errors such as
'UT_NetPacket::read: No such file or directory
mantra: Network Error Missing data in read – possible remote crash'
everytime I try to use 2 processors in the MAntra options dialog. WHen I check the rmeote hosts check box and have localhost as the text All the erors go away except I still only get ~50% cpu usage. So to clarify my question: 1- does Houdini effectively utilize both cores of a CoreDuo setup and 2- anyone know what I should be doing to see greater cpu usage during renders with Mantra? Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

Anyone come across this error when rendering with Mantra?

'UT_NetPacket::read: No such file or directory
mantra: Network Error Missing data in read – possible remote crash'

Any idea what it means or how to reslove it? Thanks.

Hi. I'm trying to render out a sequence of frames but, no matter what file format I use, I don't have an alpha channel when I try to composite the footage. Can anyone suggest what settings I'm missing or how to go about creating alpha channels for my renders?
Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

Hi. I'm trying to create a spritecard with nice transparent edges. I've got a concentric ramp hooked up to the mask input of a file cop (holding my image). I have everything set to alpha in the file cop and the alpha of the ramp looks good but when I check the alpha of the file cop it is completely opaque (white). Any ideas what I might be doing wrong? Thanks.

Thanks. The quantization settings were what I was looking for.

Hi. I'm having trouble figuring out how to increase the number of colors in my renders. My renders look as though they are only displaying a dozen colours and therefore lack any kind of accuracy or aesthetic appeal. Any idea how to adjust color/bit depth? I tried lowering dithering, didn't help. Thanks in advance.

If you read this, thanks. Worked perfectly.

Hi. I've created an effect I like, using a particle SOP, and want to render it with sprite cards. I know how to set this up using POPs. Any idea how I can get my particles from SOPs into POPs? Or perhaps there is another way to accomplish this? Thanks.

Hi. Pretty new to Houdini. I'm trying to create a circular ramp in COPs to use as a sprite shader for a particle effect. I can make the ramp colors okay but each sprite card is square and I'm having trouble having the edges be transparent enough. I'd like my sprites to have rounded edges. How do I set this up? Any suggestions on settings or tuts that cover this sort of thing would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

anyone know how to input color data from an image into a point SOP so that I can color the points of my object based on the image? Thanks