as for which method is better… sometimes a cookie is what's needed… but, it sounds like your problem isn't that you're using a cookie, it's that you are not sending it through the simulation correctly.

First, you need to make sure that after your cookies, you've grouped your two different boxes. Let's say box 1 will be put into a group called 1, and box 2 will be a group called 2.

If you use a merge to connect your cookies, your final geometry should look like the two boxes, and when you mmb the merge sop, you'll see that there are 2 groups, 1 and 2.

Now, it depends on what exactly you're doing with your simulation. I'm going to guess that you intend to do a shattering type of effect. If this is the case, don't bring your object into dops as an RBD object, but as an RBD Glue Object. Depending on what you're doing, you may want an RBD Fractured object instead. A RBD object, will not recognize the different groups, which is why you need either a glue or fracture object.

My mistake. I haven't had the opportunity to look at takes (or character animation) yet, I had been under the impression that it did this sort of thing.

The problem would be that you are typing * when you should be typing "

stamp(“../copy1”,rotateshape,0)

when you have the red lines, it means that there is an error. Middle Mouse click on the node, and it will give an error. In this case, it gives “unable to evaluate expression (Syntax error - extra tokens detected in expression etc.)”

This is because instead of telling the stamp function to look for the copy sop, you have attempted to do some multiplication.

He does type the operator in the tutorial. The menu that you see flashing is an autocomplete sort of menu. I'm not sure why it appears sometimes and not others.

SYmek

probbins
You mean Takes, right?

As digitallysane said, I meant animation layers. And from my experience they are actually pretty useful. I can imagine CHOPS doing this but, hey, this is never ending story, we all would like to have it right there ready to use. Someday. Actually I've never tested Houdini's pose library and all this facility. Hope this can concur with XSI stuff.

Have you looked at Takes in Houdini?

I'm pretty sure l-systems themselves are fine in escape, but depending on what you want to do with them you could hit some sort of a snag. It might be an idea to download the apprentice version and give it a shot to see if it all works out fine for what you want to do.

When you create a liquid from an object using the shelf, it will by default place create a liquid material in shops and place it onto your object. You can also find this material in the material palette at the bottom (for volumes)

Which are you talking about, the glass of water or the river?

I believe the river was done with micropolygon rendering with the liquid shader (it's a level-set simulation, not SPH) applied to the Visualization.

The glass of water is the VEX Glass shader with an area light, and an environment light with an HDR image mapped onto it. PBR render with caustics, this one is SPH fluids.

You should try the glass shader from the material palette. IMO, it works a bit better than the VEX glass.

at this time, RBD is not multithreaded.

sorry, I'm not sure I understand

How would the point cache be different than what you are already doing with .obj?

I originally missed the part where you said you were using the beta.

It would be a good idea to keep H9 questions to the specific forum for H9 Beta.

you can export geometry to SOPs and use a rop output from there to render as a .bgeo


you can use either a dop import sop, or an object merge to bring dop geometry into sops.

Rbd objects by default put dop sim information into groups based on the operator names. So, if your rbd object is named “sphere1” you can import into sops with an object merge by having the path set to something similar to
“/obj/dopnet1:sphere1/Geometry”

In Houdini 9, If you use the shelf to turn an object into an rbd, it will automatically place a dop import sop into your network. I'd suggest doing this if for no other reason than to understand what a dop import sop does. (The shelf is actually fairly useful for tasks such as this). I don't remember if dop import sop is in earlier versions.

It's nice to see us “alienating” new users by critiquing their grammar rather than attempting to get them into the software.

In response to the original poster, there's not a whole ton of material out there, but here are some links.

Books:
http://www.amazon.com/Magic-Houdini-William-Michael-Cunningham/dp/1598630822 [amazon.com]
http://www.amazon.com/Houdini-Spot-Craig-Zerouni/dp/0240808622/ref=sr_1_1/105-9526769-0946001?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1184047730&sr=1-1 [amazon.com]

DVDs:
http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/dvds/groups/houdini_g.html [thegnomonworkshop.com]

You may need to adjust the mass of your objects. More mass + same velocity = more force.

I don't really care if it's “true” 64 bit support. Photoshop isn't “true” 64 bit support, but at least it can deal with my 6gb of ram, and my 4 processors.

I checked the cache like you said, but it doesn't seem to allow me to change the numbers for some reason. I tried changing the 1024 to 2048…. but now it's stuck at “1”

It's disappointing to have hardware, that the software isn't utilizing.

No one from SESI can comment on the progress of a x64 build?

I've never used Linux before, and I'm in the middle of a project where I'm utilizing Maya and the various adobe products. I don't really know anything about dual booting… how will that affect my workflow?


I can't imagine it being that much of an extra load to take what's unique to the linux 64 bit build, and add it to the windows build to get a 64bit windows build.

Hi, just wondering how come there's no Houdini for Windows x64. I noticed there's a Linux one, but no Windows yet…

I'm just curious because I can't seem to find a way to let Houdini utilize the strength of my computer… I have a quad processor with 6 gigs of ram.

Seems Houdini is only using one of the processors, and if it tries to use more than a single gig of ram, it crashes with a memory allocation error.