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Technical Discussion » Orange Display w/ Optix Denoiser
- Barrett Meeker
- 54 posts
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Technical Discussion » Orange Display w/ Optix Denoiser
- Barrett Meeker
- 54 posts
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I'm having this problem as well, re-installing hasn't helped. Anyone know anything else to try?
Houdini for Realtime » Ambient Occlusion Maps for material exports ?
- Barrett Meeker
- 54 posts
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As far as I know there doesn't seem to be any way to take a PBR asset with an ambient occlusion map and set it up with that map in Houdini in a way that creates a reference to that map with exporting the asset out of Houdini using FBX or GLTF.
This seems like something that is needed and could be useful for a lot of things, such as setting up assets for Unreal, Unity, GLTF, or the new Marmoset exporter / previewer.
If I'm missing something please let me know, thank you!
This seems like something that is needed and could be useful for a lot of things, such as setting up assets for Unreal, Unity, GLTF, or the new Marmoset exporter / previewer.
If I'm missing something please let me know, thank you!
Houdini Lounge » GLTF 2.0 file format
- Barrett Meeker
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Houdini Lounge » Houdini 17 reactions and thoughts
- Barrett Meeker
- 54 posts
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Those modeling alignment handles are awesome! Exactly the kind of seemingly little thing that will I think make a huge huge difference. ♥
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » Is there a way to learn Houdini "more systematically" or say "more logically"?
- Barrett Meeker
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Over the last two years I've slowly learned Houdini and I've been using it as my main package for about a year. I've used a lot of 3d programs, lightwave from 1995-2002 then 3ds max until 2009, which I never really loved, then XSI which I totally loved (rest in peace) then when XSI was murdered I greaved and searched for something I could ever love again. I could bring myself to give Maya much of a chance because I held XSI's death against her, and omg she is a bit of a mess, reminded me of Max (in a bad way)
I dated Modo and Houdini at the same time (I used protection, and they knew we weren't exclusive) After about 6-8 months I decided Houdini was the way to go.
I mostly model so Houdini wasn't the clear choice but I'm so glad I stuck with it.
I would suggest learning from following tutorials, complex or simple it doesn't matter, just tutorials that interest you. I agree though it can be super frustrating and hard when you are learning houdini and at the same time trying to produce work. You can end up doing things in really painful convoluted ways because you don't know any better. I think one problem it seems, there aren't really a lot of tutorials on the mundane things you tend to have to do more when your producing work.
At some point after following along with tutorials where I felt on the verge of being lost, Houdini just clicked for me and I realized the awesomeness of it's design and how everything is amazingly organized, structured etc. I think it would be the same for many people learning it, confusing, overwhelming, slow and painful at first but then it will click and you will understand almost everything, unfortunately I don't know a quick way to get there. Maybe look for some overview tutorials, maybe SideFX could do sort of a overview / philosophy tutorial to try and get people thinking Houdini quicker.
Yea the viewport stuff maybe isn't the best but I doesn't really bother me. I still feel confused by DOPs and crowd sim stuff, and Hscript vs python, but I have sops nailed, and I just wrote my first little python script node to export points into an array that Unreal engine can read, so fun all the power Houdini gives you.
I dated Modo and Houdini at the same time (I used protection, and they knew we weren't exclusive) After about 6-8 months I decided Houdini was the way to go.
I mostly model so Houdini wasn't the clear choice but I'm so glad I stuck with it.
I would suggest learning from following tutorials, complex or simple it doesn't matter, just tutorials that interest you. I agree though it can be super frustrating and hard when you are learning houdini and at the same time trying to produce work. You can end up doing things in really painful convoluted ways because you don't know any better. I think one problem it seems, there aren't really a lot of tutorials on the mundane things you tend to have to do more when your producing work.
At some point after following along with tutorials where I felt on the verge of being lost, Houdini just clicked for me and I realized the awesomeness of it's design and how everything is amazingly organized, structured etc. I think it would be the same for many people learning it, confusing, overwhelming, slow and painful at first but then it will click and you will understand almost everything, unfortunately I don't know a quick way to get there. Maybe look for some overview tutorials, maybe SideFX could do sort of a overview / philosophy tutorial to try and get people thinking Houdini quicker.
Yea the viewport stuff maybe isn't the best but I doesn't really bother me. I still feel confused by DOPs and crowd sim stuff, and Hscript vs python, but I have sops nailed, and I just wrote my first little python script node to export points into an array that Unreal engine can read, so fun all the power Houdini gives you.
Houdini for Realtime » Houdini Data Interface for UE4's Niagara
- Barrett Meeker
- 54 posts
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This is great! I'd suggest adding built-in support for mapping a rotation (rot) -> MeshOrientation
As well a default N -> MeshOrientation (there isn't a way to convert Particles.Normal to Particles.MeshOrientation right now without editing or making a new module because you seem to need “inputsAreNormalized” checked which isn't exposed in the UE4 Quat module.
I modified the houdini module and bit and works great now for my purposes but always nice to have this kind of thing built in for everyone
Thanks, keep up this awesome work!!!!
As well a default N -> MeshOrientation (there isn't a way to convert Particles.Normal to Particles.MeshOrientation right now without editing or making a new module because you seem to need “inputsAreNormalized” checked which isn't exposed in the UE4 Quat module.
I modified the houdini module and bit and works great now for my purposes but always nice to have this kind of thing built in for everyone
Thanks, keep up this awesome work!!!!
Edited by Barrett Meeker - Sept. 28, 2018 17:23:16
Houdini Lounge » Modeling primarily in Houdini
- Barrett Meeker
- 54 posts
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I've been doing a lot of direct-ish modeling in Houdini. (I'm an ex-XSI & before that 3ds max user) I tried modo but it wasn't procedural enough for me at the time and actually felt more confusing to me than Houdini.
For me the bevel is huge, if SideFX could fix the bevel so it always works (merges edges etc.) that would be huge. There are a lot of other little quality of life fixes they could do as well which would help a lot.
- Bevel (make it merge edges so it always works to the right width)
- make either the edge divide or subdivide tool work for making a round edge more round without loosing the edge group. (aka say you have a 16 edge tube and your extruding it and making a larger end, you'll often want to subdivide it so it's a 32 edge tube on the big side while keeping the 16 on the smaller tube parts. (imagine like a sci-fi canon or something where it's a tube with big tube areas….)
- make extrude work on single points (like extending a curve)
- give Fuse the average position snap + fuse points option in one sop. Right now it seems like if I just consolidate points it will just snap one point to another rather than averaging their position so I have to put down two fuse sops, one to snap close points to their average and another to actually fuse the points, this could just be added as a mode in a single fuse node.
- sweep node, give this an auto-uv option, and give it a built in taper option.
… Overall I love Houdini but I find myself having to use 3x more nodes that it seems like I should because of little missing features that feel like they could have been integrated into nodes. I end up making my own hda nodes but that really really slows down your workflow sometimes to make nice ones. I think these little quality of life improvements might not get headlines but they will really add up and make it so much better. I'll post more as I remember them. Thanks!
For me the bevel is huge, if SideFX could fix the bevel so it always works (merges edges etc.) that would be huge. There are a lot of other little quality of life fixes they could do as well which would help a lot.
- Bevel (make it merge edges so it always works to the right width)
- make either the edge divide or subdivide tool work for making a round edge more round without loosing the edge group. (aka say you have a 16 edge tube and your extruding it and making a larger end, you'll often want to subdivide it so it's a 32 edge tube on the big side while keeping the 16 on the smaller tube parts. (imagine like a sci-fi canon or something where it's a tube with big tube areas….)
- make extrude work on single points (like extending a curve)
- give Fuse the average position snap + fuse points option in one sop. Right now it seems like if I just consolidate points it will just snap one point to another rather than averaging their position so I have to put down two fuse sops, one to snap close points to their average and another to actually fuse the points, this could just be added as a mode in a single fuse node.
- sweep node, give this an auto-uv option, and give it a built in taper option.
… Overall I love Houdini but I find myself having to use 3x more nodes that it seems like I should because of little missing features that feel like they could have been integrated into nodes. I end up making my own hda nodes but that really really slows down your workflow sometimes to make nice ones. I think these little quality of life improvements might not get headlines but they will really add up and make it so much better. I'll post more as I remember them. Thanks!
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » FBX export to Unreal smoothes character normals
- Barrett Meeker
- 54 posts
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I found your post because I was running into the same issue. I ended up solving it so I wanted to share the solution here for future web searchers
I tried a few things so I'm not 100% sure if all these are needed but what I did was added a normal sop that adds normals to vertex then did the capture rigging & deform sop and on the deform sop I unchecked “Deform Normals” Then in Unreal make sure to tell it to import the normals when you import the skeletal mesh FBX.
Hope this helps someone!
I tried a few things so I'm not 100% sure if all these are needed but what I did was added a normal sop that adds normals to vertex then did the capture rigging & deform sop and on the deform sop I unchecked “Deform Normals” Then in Unreal make sure to tell it to import the normals when you import the skeletal mesh FBX.
Hope this helps someone!
Houdini Lounge » GLTF 2.0 file format
- Barrett Meeker
- 54 posts
- Offline
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » How to bake texture colors into vertex colors, preserve them in/after VDB, and merge coplanars after mirroring?
- Barrett Meeker
- 54 posts
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Houdini for Realtime » Game Toolset Button not working under 16.5.378
- Barrett Meeker
- 54 posts
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I had the same problem. I installed manually and it seems to work except I can't find the LOD hierarchy HDA anywhere. That tool is supposed to come with the Game Dev tools right? Anyone know how I can get the LOD HDA? Thanks!
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » How to bake texture colors into vertex colors, preserve them in/after VDB, and merge coplanars after mirroring?
- Barrett Meeker
- 54 posts
- Offline
Just to throw some quick ideas your way -
1. I heard that Vertex node isn't working anymore. I would love a solution to this as well for doing things like baking lighting to vertex colors. I think there is a way but you have to really do a lot of setup yourself and do things like blur a 2d image to average the colors etc. I think it's possible now but seems very complicated to setup.
2. I was able to do some sort of color transfer after the polygon->VDB convert. I forget exactly but it was one of those nodes where you transfer attributes.
Hope that helps a little bit at least.
1. I heard that Vertex node isn't working anymore. I would love a solution to this as well for doing things like baking lighting to vertex colors. I think there is a way but you have to really do a lot of setup yourself and do things like blur a 2d image to average the colors etc. I think it's possible now but seems very complicated to setup.
2. I was able to do some sort of color transfer after the polygon->VDB convert. I forget exactly but it was one of those nodes where you transfer attributes.
Hope that helps a little bit at least.
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » Houdini Indie Update! 4K renders and multiple machine installs!
- Barrett Meeker
- 54 posts
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Yay!! This is awesome! ♥ I kept going on the road and having to transfer from desktop to laptop and back every month or two.
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