FYI, I have reported this as a bug months ago and it's been logged, (I'm on Linux). I do hope it will get some attention some day.
Dragging and dropping works only about 50% of the time, and there is no rhyme nor reason to it. This stopped working reliably in H11, and it's quelle drag.
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Technical Discussion » Can't Add Shader to the Shop
- mrCatfish
- 731 posts
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Technical Discussion » Houdini to Nuke work flow?
- mrCatfish
- 731 posts
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We've struggled with this too. Using plain vanilla FBX, here is what you have to ensure to get vaguely reliable cameras:
* You MUST specify a “take” in the FBX export dialog or Nuke won't like it.
* Specify “export frame range”
* Cam Transform and Rotation should have at least two keyframes, even if it's a still camera
* Any nested transforms (subnets, etc) should be extracted using chops to make a clean cam
* If there are any other issues, be sure the rotation order ends up the same in Nuke and Houdini
We have also tried this and it does work and increases functionality. It has not been thoroughly tested though:
http://www.nukepedia.com/gizmos/python-scripts/import-export/fromhoudini2nuke/ [nukepedia.com]
* You MUST specify a “take” in the FBX export dialog or Nuke won't like it.
* Specify “export frame range”
* Cam Transform and Rotation should have at least two keyframes, even if it's a still camera
* Any nested transforms (subnets, etc) should be extracted using chops to make a clean cam
* If there are any other issues, be sure the rotation order ends up the same in Nuke and Houdini
We have also tried this and it does work and increases functionality. It has not been thoroughly tested though:
http://www.nukepedia.com/gizmos/python-scripts/import-export/fromhoudini2nuke/ [nukepedia.com]
Technical Discussion » manually created ... what does that stand for? SOLVED!!!
- mrCatfish
- 731 posts
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Yeah, we came across this a while back and it baffled us for days. As a toggle to the “n” hotkey, it's far from obvious.
Technical Discussion » Parameter Warnings and Remapping Parameter Names
- mrCatfish
- 731 posts
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Technical Discussion » images do not display in houdini!!!!
- mrCatfish
- 731 posts
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No they don't have to be pic or rat, but they get internally converted to pic or rat so you might as well do it yourself and save the overhead of the conversion on every render.
If you try to load your jpeg in mplay, and it fails, Houdini itself won't be able to use it.
To convert to rat, just do this:
icp file.jpeg file.rat
If you try to load your jpeg in mplay, and it fails, Houdini itself won't be able to use it.
To convert to rat, just do this:
icp file.jpeg file.rat
Technical Discussion » RFE: Delayed Load Procedural to support velocity blur
- mrCatfish
- 731 posts
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Technical Discussion » instance problem
- mrCatfish
- 731 posts
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Do you really need to capture these bees in a skeleton? I'd just put the pivot for the wings at the edge of the wing, then use stamping to get variation in the frequency, and bypass the whole capture/deform/switch section of your node network.
I added a “num” stamp var with $PT as the value, and then used this in the rz rot for a wing, bypassing the capture sops. You will have to put the pivot in a good place though. This expression varies the frequency, you can vary the offset instead of course.
sin($F * fit01(rand(stamp(“../copy1”,“num”,0)),10,100))*55
I added a “num” stamp var with $PT as the value, and then used this in the rz rot for a wing, bypassing the capture sops. You will have to put the pivot in a good place though. This expression varies the frequency, you can vary the offset instead of course.
sin($F * fit01(rand(stamp(“../copy1”,“num”,0)),10,100))*55
Technical Discussion » chop : how to re-order channel inside .chan file ?
- mrCatfish
- 731 posts
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claySo your channel names are now chan0-20?
so for the .chan file , i have to set new names for the channel, the problem is i tried couple of combination for the new name but never get them in correct order ? it should be : tx0,tx1,tx2,…,tx7,ty0..ty7,tz0..tz7.
If so, try this: append a delete and delete all but 0-7. (chan). Now rename:
chan*
to:
tx
Repeat for ty and tz, and merge.
Sean
Technical Discussion » fluid density fall-off
- mrCatfish
- 731 posts
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You can probably re-map the density using a volume mix SOP to have a sharper falloff to density. Have you seen Mario's masterclass movie on the pyro shader? Even though you're probably not using the pyro shader, it has tonnes of good info in it that really helped me understand what's going on with shading volumes in mantra.
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1496&Itemid=132 [sidefx.com]
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1496&Itemid=132 [sidefx.com]
Houdini Lounge » Fur Render Enhancement
- mrCatfish
- 731 posts
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Swann_Very classy Swann.
Man, if you play with this one year and only thing you could achieve is shity ball with ugly fur as hell, while others could achieve definetelly better results I say you should stay far away from Houdini, it's not application for you. One year and you couldn't come even close to result in link I gave you. I don't care if I ofended you right now but personally I would be ashamed if, as a proffesional artist that you claim you are, I could achieve only this.
Houdini Lounge » Fur Render Enhancement
- mrCatfish
- 731 posts
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A quick word of support for IOR as well, (and he is my co-worker, so I'd be a danged fool to enrage him!).
Everyone on this forum loves Houdini and we want to see it succeed. Part of this is convincing producers and other pencil pushers that Houdini is a viable solution. And this might mean, as much as we hate it, “Okay, you've got a day to show me what Houdini fur looks like.”
After half a day, you have a stubbly ball that looks like My First Fur Render VS Cute Furby Ball, what do you think is going to happen? No one is going to listen to your protests that six months down the line they're going to be sorry.
So yes, reasonable, aesthetically appealing presets are not just frippery for idiots. I have been using Houdini since Alpha, and this is where I often see Houdini fall down. They create some great set of tools, but fail to showcase it in such a way that said tool ever gets their due. And I have sympathy for SESI because I know they're a small company and they don't have 20 demo artists hanging around making presets.
Finally, if someone has a conception that a tool is hard to use, just shouting at them isn't going to help. If someone who is a member of this forum believes this to be true, imagine how those who are not on this forum feel about this same tool.
Everyone on this forum loves Houdini and we want to see it succeed. Part of this is convincing producers and other pencil pushers that Houdini is a viable solution. And this might mean, as much as we hate it, “Okay, you've got a day to show me what Houdini fur looks like.”
After half a day, you have a stubbly ball that looks like My First Fur Render VS Cute Furby Ball, what do you think is going to happen? No one is going to listen to your protests that six months down the line they're going to be sorry.
So yes, reasonable, aesthetically appealing presets are not just frippery for idiots. I have been using Houdini since Alpha, and this is where I often see Houdini fall down. They create some great set of tools, but fail to showcase it in such a way that said tool ever gets their due. And I have sympathy for SESI because I know they're a small company and they don't have 20 demo artists hanging around making presets.
Finally, if someone has a conception that a tool is hard to use, just shouting at them isn't going to help. If someone who is a member of this forum believes this to be true, imagine how those who are not on this forum feel about this same tool.
Technical Discussion » fur groom and subdivision surface problem
- mrCatfish
- 731 posts
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Not too familiar with the fur workflow, but you could try this:
- comb your low-rez cage
- lock it
- pipe it into a point SOP, pipe the node just before your comb into the second input of the point SOP, in the TX/TY/TZ fields put $TX2, $TY2, $TZ2
- now subdivide
This ensures that whatever you have done to the comb comes along, and all you are getting from the second input is the point positions.
- comb your low-rez cage
- lock it
- pipe it into a point SOP, pipe the node just before your comb into the second input of the point SOP, in the TX/TY/TZ fields put $TX2, $TY2, $TZ2
- now subdivide
This ensures that whatever you have done to the comb comes along, and all you are getting from the second input is the point positions.
Technical Discussion » Fetch the value of a variable in a single frame in POP's
- mrCatfish
- 731 posts
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You can suck this attribute's value into CHOPs, then use a LAG filter with zero in lag and overshoot, and “clamp slope” set to 99999999999 and zero. This way the value will clamp at its maximum. Then use a channel chop to suck this back into SOP land.
To test this, lay down a default wave CHOP, and then set up the LAG chop as described above.
To test this, lay down a default wave CHOP, and then set up the LAG chop as described above.
Technical Discussion » Gas Uprez Dop
- mrCatfish
- 731 posts
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I'm using the gas uprez DOP to, er, uprez my lo-rez dops sim. Unfortunately, it is taking forever to cook. Looking at the status bar, I see it starts cooking at frame 1, even though I'm on frame 15. I thought the whole idea was that it loaded the lo-rez sim from disc and just advected noise into the velocity fields and then didn't have to cook the previous frames.
I am sure that it's set to load from file. Loading the lo-rez sim into Houdini with a file sop takes about 10 seconds.
Is this expected behaviour or am I doing something wrong?
I am sure that it's set to load from file. Loading the lo-rez sim into Houdini with a file sop takes about 10 seconds.
Is this expected behaviour or am I doing something wrong?
Technical Discussion » PBR lighting - the Donut vs the Hounut!
- mrCatfish
- 731 posts
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So I think PBR ignoring ambient lights is quite correct. Just up the env light or add other lights and increase diffuse bounces. Think like a photographer. Need more light? Add bounce cards, set up a light, etc.I think the problem, in a production environment when you have let's say 400 talking animals to light and the inside of the mouth is too dark, is that it's pretty fiddly to start putting bounce cards inside mouths, extra lights, etc. We need to be able to access physically bogus hacks, and do it easily.
And when rendering the thing in floating format then changing the exposure will bring out more detail in the shadow areas. Again just like the real world, need more light in the shadows?, expose longer or light more.
Houdini Lounge » Jagged Edges from Shatter
- mrCatfish
- 731 posts
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Houdini Lounge » Questions for the SPY
- mrCatfish
- 731 posts
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gundamYes, these are both in-house utilities. lseq is a variant of seqls, and “rls” is a wrapper on lseq/seqls that takes its output and parses it so you can easily run flipbooks at whatever res you want using whatever flipbooking util you want to use.
Thanks for the a lot of comment .
what is lseq and rls ?
map ) unix lseq
map 0 unix rls
Houdini Lounge » How to cut font object into solid chunks?
- mrCatfish
- 731 posts
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Houdini Lounge » How to cut font object into solid chunks?
- mrCatfish
- 731 posts
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Here is an example using a manual method, the shatter tool and kfracture (which I got off the exchange… nice!!). I have built a very very simple DA to cut up the bottle.
Note that shatter does a bogus job of calculating the groups, (which I'm going to report as a bug). You should delete the groups it makes and re-make them, (as I have shown). Problem is that it invariably includes an infinitely thin edge as a separate group, which causes RBD sims to grind to a halt and be very funky. Note in my example that shatter made 36 prim groups, but when I remade them, there were only 35.
Sean
Note that shatter does a bogus job of calculating the groups, (which I'm going to report as a bug). You should delete the groups it makes and re-make them, (as I have shown). Problem is that it invariably includes an infinitely thin edge as a separate group, which causes RBD sims to grind to a halt and be very funky. Note in my example that shatter made 36 prim groups, but when I remade them, there were only 35.
Sean
Houdini Lounge » Questions for the SPY
- mrCatfish
- 731 posts
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YAY! More spy users! I think using Spy has literally saved me an accumulated 71 days of tedious typing over the past ten years. C'mon people, you aren't Houdini users until you know how to use Spy.
Don't know how to change a row to a column. What do you mean?
As for sequence listing, you'll have to call some kind of standalone sequence listing tool. Search the net for “seqls” or “lseq” there are tonnes out there, (and usually buggy). I wonder what Houdini uses internally and if it's a standalone? I couldn't find anything in $HFS/bin that looked likely.
I have attached my .spyrc file, you can use it as an example:
map 1 unix shake %
map @ jump =/mnt/projects/common
map 2 jump =/mnt/tools
map 3 unix hview %
map 4 jump =$CON_DIR
map 5 jump =$SCN_DIR
map 6 jump =$HREN_DIR
map \^ jump =$SHR_DIR
map 7 jump =$WORK_DIR/houdini/hip
map & jump =$WORK_DIR
map " jump =$SHOT_DIR
map 9 jump =$REN_DIR
map | jump =$PRJ_DIR
#remove spaces from filenames
map } unix mv % `echo % | sed ‘s/ /_/g’`
map + jump =/mnt/tools
map = unix mplayer -quiet % &
map \\ unix extractRenderTimes -f %
map 8 unix ls -ltrhp
map * unix ls -Lltrhp
#map 9 unix ps -ef | grep houdini | grep -v grep ; ps -ef | grep mantra | grep -v grep ; ps -ef | grep maya | grep -v grep ; ps -ef | grep alf | grep -v grep
map ) unix lseq
map 0 unix rls
map i unix import screenGrab.jpg ; shake screenGrab.jpg
map ` unix alfred &
map v unix $HOME/bin/view_doc %
relaxprompt
relaxsearch
color *seanl* red
color *.hip purple
color *HIP* purple
color -dir blue
color core reverse_red
color -tagged reverse_white
color -x green
color README reverse_yellow
color NOTE reverse_yellow
color *.html red
color *.gz red
ignoremask .* 1
#ignoremask *.vex 1
#ignoremask *.slo 1
map . ignoretoggle =1
Don't know how to change a row to a column. What do you mean?
As for sequence listing, you'll have to call some kind of standalone sequence listing tool. Search the net for “seqls” or “lseq” there are tonnes out there, (and usually buggy). I wonder what Houdini uses internally and if it's a standalone? I couldn't find anything in $HFS/bin that looked likely.
I have attached my .spyrc file, you can use it as an example:
map 1 unix shake %
map @ jump =/mnt/projects/common
map 2 jump =/mnt/tools
map 3 unix hview %
map 4 jump =$CON_DIR
map 5 jump =$SCN_DIR
map 6 jump =$HREN_DIR
map \^ jump =$SHR_DIR
map 7 jump =$WORK_DIR/houdini/hip
map & jump =$WORK_DIR
map " jump =$SHOT_DIR
map 9 jump =$REN_DIR
map | jump =$PRJ_DIR
#remove spaces from filenames
map } unix mv % `echo % | sed ‘s/ /_/g’`
map + jump =/mnt/tools
map = unix mplayer -quiet % &
map \\ unix extractRenderTimes -f %
map 8 unix ls -ltrhp
map * unix ls -Lltrhp
#map 9 unix ps -ef | grep houdini | grep -v grep ; ps -ef | grep mantra | grep -v grep ; ps -ef | grep maya | grep -v grep ; ps -ef | grep alf | grep -v grep
map ) unix lseq
map 0 unix rls
map i unix import screenGrab.jpg ; shake screenGrab.jpg
map ` unix alfred &
map v unix $HOME/bin/view_doc %
relaxprompt
relaxsearch
color *seanl* red
color *.hip purple
color *HIP* purple
color -dir blue
color core reverse_red
color -tagged reverse_white
color -x green
color README reverse_yellow
color NOTE reverse_yellow
color *.html red
color *.gz red
ignoremask .* 1
#ignoremask *.vex 1
#ignoremask *.slo 1
map . ignoretoggle =1
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