I personally think Houdini is damn good for modeling. I love the workflow and the network is a nice luxury to have, even if you're just going to use it as a “construction history”. Yeah, there are some rough edges, for example the whole orientation picking dealy (please just make a keyboard toggle for local/global handles or something), and the bug discussed in this thread. But the nooks and crannies don't bother me, it's just a matter of learning what's available and where it is.
Your mileage may vary yada yada…
btw I'd like to see viewport subdivision surfaces in Houdini…cuz they're sexy, and nicer to work with too I imagine.
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Technical Discussion » Scaling problem
- Siavash Tehrani
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Technical Discussion » Scaling problem
- Siavash Tehrani
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Simon
Except sometimes if you do a non-uniform scale on a poly that isn't aligned to the world axis it adds an rotation that it shouldn't.
I'm certain that's what he's talking about. If you try to do non-uniform scaling when the handle is not aligned to the world axis your geometry goes bonkers (the skewing effect). In my humble opinion it's a big pain in the butt and AFAIK this problem has been around since forever.
Some qualifiers: If your geometry is “aligned” to the world axis and you select and rotate it, and then do a non-uniform scale it works fine.
If you select geometry that is not aligned to the world axis, and you detach your handle and line it up with your model to do a non-uniform scale, then you will find that you run into this problem.
Technical Discussion » Crease SOP
- Siavash Tehrani
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Hi harlequin, not sure if this is possible as a SOP, probably with the HDK. Would be nice to have though. You can just use Polybevel but it requires more clean-up work and SOPs.
Technical Discussion » Problems with Apprentice license
- Siavash Tehrani
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Technical Discussion » Problems with Apprentice license
- Siavash Tehrani
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Hi, I think the license generator might be acting screwy again.
My Apprentice license expired today and I received this error when trying to install the new one:
EDIT———————
OK, I actually looked at the license and it's just the old one from last month, hence the “has already been installed” :roll:
Maybe I just have to wait a bit before it hands out a new one…
My Apprentice license expired today and I received this error when trying to install the new one:
Key 1:
Install Error: License has already been installed
ERROR: Key installation failed
Key 2:
Install Error: License has already been installed
ERROR: Key installation failed
EDIT———————
OK, I actually looked at the license and it's just the old one from last month, hence the “has already been installed” :roll:
Maybe I just have to wait a bit before it hands out a new one…
Technical Discussion » UV pelt question.
- Siavash Tehrani
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Hi harlequin, are you left-clicking after step 4 to complete the UV Pelt? You always right-click to finish off operations (and the tutorial says RMB-click).
To show the green checkerboard texture you need to press ‘d’ in the viewport to bring up the display options. In the Background tab, under Image Source enter the path $HIP/grid.jpg (the grid shader tells you where the texture is). I guess the tutorial assumes previous knowledge of this stuff.
The variable $HIP means that Houdini will look for the texture in whatever directory the current .hip file is located, and conversely when you save an image as $HIP/whatever.pic it will save it in the directory of your current hip.
To show the green checkerboard texture you need to press ‘d’ in the viewport to bring up the display options. In the Background tab, under Image Source enter the path $HIP/grid.jpg (the grid shader tells you where the texture is). I guess the tutorial assumes previous knowledge of this stuff.
The variable $HIP means that Houdini will look for the texture in whatever directory the current .hip file is located, and conversely when you save an image as $HIP/whatever.pic it will save it in the directory of your current hip.
Technical Discussion » Realistic arm tutorial is useless to H7 users.
- Siavash Tehrani
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Harlequin, I'm on 7.0.192 and for me it's like this…
Press ‘s’ for select mode, pick a bone and the regular 3-axis handle pops up. Any bone you select now has the regular 3-axis handle.
Press ‘s’ for select mode, hit Enter, pick a bone and the umbrella handle pops up. Any bone you select now has the umbrella handle.
Press ‘s’ for select mode, pick a bone and the regular 3-axis handle pops up. Any bone you select now has the regular 3-axis handle.
Press ‘s’ for select mode, hit Enter, pick a bone and the umbrella handle pops up. Any bone you select now has the umbrella handle.
Technical Discussion » fresnel question
- Siavash Tehrani
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Hi Bruce, not sure exactly what you need the falloff for but you could try the Edge Falloff VOP.
And the regular shadows in Houdini are raytraced (for example when you pick fastShadow in your light). You'll notice if you disable raytracing in mantra, they will no longer work. Small tip, if you increase the Shading Quality on the surface that you're casting shadows on, they will appear sharper and not so ragged.
And the regular shadows in Houdini are raytraced (for example when you pick fastShadow in your light). You'll notice if you disable raytracing in mantra, they will no longer work. Small tip, if you increase the Shading Quality on the surface that you're casting shadows on, they will appear sharper and not so ragged.
Technical Discussion » Mantra caught signal 11
- Siavash Tehrani
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Hi Jason, I'm using 7.0.192. I tried the Clean SOP, and although it got rid of a few primitives somewhere it did not fix the problem. Thanks though.
And thanks for all the info Simon. Actually I don't think the problem has to do with copying VOP nets across Houdini sessions. The problem, in this situation at least, lies somewhere between H6 and H7. The original model was finished in 6.1 and that file renders just fine. Opening that same file in Houdini 7 (no warning or error messages given) and hitting render is where the problem starts.
Again, if I take off the displacement shaders, and render just the surface shaders it works fine. And if I delete any UVs used by displacement SHOPs it works fine also (of course the image looks jacked up for lack of UVs). I tried recreating the displacement shaders from scratch for the Houdini 7 file, thinking that maybe something carried over from the H6 shaders was screwing me up, but even the simplest of displacement VOP nets doesnt work. The weird thing is that the standard VEX displacements, like v_choppywater, work fine. :?
And thanks for all the info Simon. Actually I don't think the problem has to do with copying VOP nets across Houdini sessions. The problem, in this situation at least, lies somewhere between H6 and H7. The original model was finished in 6.1 and that file renders just fine. Opening that same file in Houdini 7 (no warning or error messages given) and hitting render is where the problem starts.
Again, if I take off the displacement shaders, and render just the surface shaders it works fine. And if I delete any UVs used by displacement SHOPs it works fine also (of course the image looks jacked up for lack of UVs). I tried recreating the displacement shaders from scratch for the Houdini 7 file, thinking that maybe something carried over from the H6 shaders was screwing me up, but even the simplest of displacement VOP nets doesnt work. The weird thing is that the standard VEX displacements, like v_choppywater, work fine. :?
Technical Discussion » Mantra caught signal 11
- Siavash Tehrani
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Yes, sorry, I know that this only happens when using subdivision surface rendering. I was rather wondering why it was doing it and if anything could be done about it. I know others have experienced this as well, it's just the causes have been hard to pin down I think.
Edited by - March 22, 2005 18:15:37
Technical Discussion » Mantra caught signal 11
- Siavash Tehrani
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Hi, I'm getting that thing where mantra quits the render halfway through when rendering as subdivision surfaces. Turning on verbose output mentions this:
mantra: Mantra caught signal 11
From what I gather this can happen when you copy VOP networks from one file to another (or from one version of Houdini to another?). The problem is confined to displacement shaders that use textures (Texture VOP, Color Map, Bump Map VOP). When I set the displacement height to 0 it renders fine. When I replace textures with procedural maps it renders fine. When I delete the uv attributes on my model it renders fine.
Any ideas?
mantra: Mantra caught signal 11
From what I gather this can happen when you copy VOP networks from one file to another (or from one version of Houdini to another?). The problem is confined to displacement shaders that use textures (Texture VOP, Color Map, Bump Map VOP). When I set the displacement height to 0 it renders fine. When I replace textures with procedural maps it renders fine. When I delete the uv attributes on my model it renders fine.
Any ideas?
Technical Discussion » New V 7.0 features
- Siavash Tehrani
- 711 posts
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DavidRindner
I am unable to locate Capture Layers and Capture Blending SOPs. They are not available in SOP menus. Where are they??
Hmmn, I only see CaptureLayerPaint myself.
DavidRindner
How exactly is this done? This does not make sence to me at all. How do you paste a bunch of nodes into shader code. This is description escapes me.
There are RSL contexts in VOPs now, that's what they meant.
Technical Discussion » Mantra: Bump-Vex render issues (help... anyone know.)
- Siavash Tehrani
- 711 posts
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Hmn, no idea, I don't think I've ever seen this before. It doesn't really look like displacement cracking. Is this a scene that you can post (or one like it maybe)?
Technical Discussion » PolyReduce "Stiffen Features"
- Siavash Tehrani
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Technical Discussion » PolyReduce "Stiffen Features"
- Siavash Tehrani
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Hey Craig, like so:
Don't forget the ‘Features’ field in the PolyReduce SOP. Now when you adjust the slider it will devote less or more of total available polygons to keep that part of the geometry at its pre-reduced state.
Don't forget the ‘Features’ field in the PolyReduce SOP. Now when you adjust the slider it will devote less or more of total available polygons to keep that part of the geometry at its pre-reduced state.
Technical Discussion » baking occlusion and colour data into 2d texture files
- Siavash Tehrani
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Hey Johnny, the mantra -u command renders all the surfaces of the specified object in the manner that you laid out the UV's of that object, like a shaded version of the UV viewport. It will render to mplay as usual, and then you can save it out as picnc and fix it up in COPs (otherwise there will be seams when you apply the baked texture). Here is an example scene. Just point the shaders to the location of the textures included in the zip file. The COP network for fixing the seams is also there.
http://www.geocities.com/stehrani3d/3dfiles/Baked_Cornell.zip [geocities.com] (Right Click > Save)
http://www.geocities.com/stehrani3d/3dfiles/Baked_Cornell.zip [geocities.com] (Right Click > Save)
Technical Discussion » Trying to get rid of flicker when rendering specular objects
- Siavash Tehrani
- 711 posts
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Hmm, that's weird. Try turning up the sampling in mantra from the default 3x3 (I think the max is 8x8).
Technical Discussion » Color, P, and Pz channels in i3d VOPs shader?
- Siavash Tehrani
- 711 posts
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Sorry, I don't usually bump my own posts, but I'm working on my reel and this one has been sort of a showstopper. ops:
Please, any hints would be appreciated.
Please, any hints would be appreciated.
Technical Discussion » Color, P, and Pz channels in i3d VOPs shader?
- Siavash Tehrani
- 711 posts
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Hi, I've been having a lot of trouble integrating i3d elements with the rest of my scene. By default they do not composite correctly in a render when you have multiple atmosphere objects, and they do not support color attributes which would come in handy, nor P or Pz deep rasters which is necessary if you want to integrate them with fog in the compositor as I'm trying to do right now. I know it can all be done if you make a custom VEX shader, but my experience with shading languages is limited to VOPs (and then only with surface, displacement, and vex sops), and I've hit a wall trying to make such a shader inside of VOPs.
I feel like I'm a bit out of my depth here and I would appreciate any help.
I feel like I'm a bit out of my depth here and I would appreciate any help.
Technical Discussion » Can't get license to work
- Siavash Tehrani
- 711 posts
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