Hi, Alelordelo,

> Did you manage to get all morphs name exported?

… I assume you are referring to DAZ exports - yes, all morphs/blendshapes that I export from DAZ Studio make their way safely and controllably into Houdini.
The workflow is automated and it's neither nice nor memory-friendly. I am reworking most of this, basically rewriting a whole piece of pipeline - but I am going as vendor independent as possible, since there are way more interesting FBX out there than “only DAZ” :-)

Marc

Anonymous user,

> How can an artist get any momentum … ?

… I don't know. I don't do art and have never understood artists.
I consider Houdini a TOOL, not something that works “magically”.

> There seems to be a huge wave of new users who would really appreciate SideFX and Redshift to work together

You mean the “huge wave” that the render-guys you mention would love you to imagine? Yes … I have heard of that animated crowd. Doesn't look very real to me though.

Let me phrase it slightly different to my previous suggestion:
Houdini is constantly evolving (you may call it “changing”). Scripts that worked one or two major releases before may or may not work today. Being a tool, not a magic wand, you will have to adjust scripts that worked for an older version if they stop working for you today. Getting HELP with that is what this forum is pretty good at. Providing you with a ready-made solution *might* be something you want to hire someone for. Sometimes you get served that here, too. Sometimes you have to work for it.

Sorry, but your attitude makes me regret stepping in. I sincerely apologize for having wasted your time, obviously.

Marc

Moin, anonymous user,

you are mixing a couple of different things here.

First, SideFX is not responsible for an external renderer to be well integrated into their software. That is up to the makers of that external renderer (yes, I don't even mention its name, so bad is my mood about it). There are several ways to show texture files you use in external renderers, just do a google or search on this forum: They may not be pretty/easy to set up, but it definitely is possible.

As for drag and drop: I would like better native UXP myself, unfortunately, Houdini is a Qt application, which tries hard to be as strange as possible (across all platforms). I have seen a script presented that adds some fundamental d&d support: - you may have to adjust it to work under recent Houdini versions.

Material previews in (whatever) Material editor would definitely be a nice thing, but with so many different renderers being available I can understand that this is not a focus for development at all. A “WYSIWYG” material editor for the renderer you mention would be possible to create, but doing so would require enough copies to be sellable - which renders it (pun intended) quite unlikely to happen “just like so”.
A quick search using a search engine brought up at least two videos:




If you stick to Houdini's built-in renderer(s), things are definitely easier, which honestly is the best you can expect from any 3d suite.

Marc

P.S. as for the question about how I manage my materials: I write my own wysiwyg-material-editors when I need them.

This is one of the many reasons why I concluded my years-long “retesting substances” with a “what a waste of time”. Lack of performance on “normal” resolutions (8k and up), lack of painting across seams, problems with 16bit Int/32bit Float support (which seems to be there now but I couldn't get a linear workflow to work for me) …

Werner, you *could* do most of your pipeline with a few scripts: Converting UDIM (offsets) to material (tags/attributes) and back from those to UDIM offsets works nicely with the FBX import pipelines I have been experimenting with. You could even create an HDA that handles the Substance export/import with a single click per direction.

Marc

Hi,

> I could achieve some basic curve/face editing only using the mouse and some keyboard shortcuts like I do in Blender

… well, I don't know about Blender, nothing there works for me, but you CAN do some basic curve/face editing only using the mouse and some keyboard commands in Houdini. Sculpting comes to mind, soft-transform is a great tool for massaging points into place … so many goodies.

If you could, maybe, demo what you want to do in … what's that tool's name … Blender? Then it might be easier to provide suggestions on how you could do similar in Houdini or even do something completely different that achieves the same goal.

Marc

Hi,

I am not clear about what you are trying to do - the problem might be a communication thing. If Blender “works” for you, I would personally recommend using Blender, as it seems counter-productive to use a tool for a job that takes you 30 times longer to achieve a goal. Houdini is all about pipelining, doing one thing in another package doesn't hurt its feelings.
(When I try to do ANYTHING in Blender, it usually takes me minutes to hours to even find the most fundamental functions - and I usually don't get a result that even resembles what I had in mind, so there you go: Use the tool you feel comfortable with instead of wasting precious lifetime on using the WRONG tool.)

If the end result that you are after is what you show in the last picture and what you get in is a number of points, I can imagine several approaches: From VEX-wrangling it all the way through using a fine grid and cutting off those polygons/primitives that are not inside a given area (defined by your “coastline) to using a VDB workaround … so many paths to Rome.

The ”power" to do anything in Houdini, I think, is to understand that it is a TOOL. A tool that can be tweaked to serve the way you need it to - but does not enforce (for the most part, Houdini can be quite persistent sometimes) any specific approach. Without having a clear idea of WHAT you want to do, it can be … frustrating.

Marc

Sometimes bones will drive the wrong joints/weights, here's a video about how to rewire the bones when necessary.



Marc

Hi,

> I'm not sure how to reconcile this statement?

It's a personal thing. If I tell people I can do something, I am confident that I can do it. And that I can give a time frame within which I can do it. And that I will work my ass off to keep that time frame.
If I am unsure, I will tell people that I am unsure. I will ask for some time to figure out if I can learn it, how long it will take me to learn it and how good I will be able to do it.
Or I will say “Sorry, haven't done that before, you need results now - I will learn it, but you need a better one than me right now”. It saves time for everyone, it saves nerves and motivation and it is what I consider “team-play”.

My experience over the last few years with this industry has been that people - and companies - CLAIM they can do a job. Then, when they got hired, they start thinking about HOW to do it. Sometimes they ask for help, more often they don't. They just “friggle” their way through it, things take longer than planned, don't work out as expected, clients get nervous, schedules go up in smoke, everyone's constantly pulling themselves together.
This is not a momentary frustration - I have seen this in the movie/TV industry time after time after time and almost never witnessed it anywhere else (I worked and developed for print, publishing, theatre, veterinarian documentation, schooling and other disciplines. You just DON'T PRETEND that you can do a job and figure out how to do it AFTER you got hired. Period.)

So what's my advice? Be sure that you can do the job or openly say that you need to learn things. As an employer, I'd always welcome both positions equally. If you apply for a job with the hope to LEARN something, SAY SO. Openly admit that you want to LEARN Maya (better than you can, a tiny bit of shine is welcome), that you want to dabble in Nuke, that you always wanted to blow things up in Houdini. Or say that you've blown up so many buildings that you just want to grow some feathers now. For a change.

Tell people your motivation. Say what you can, what you can't and what you want. Guarantee your delivery - which can be “she started out knowing nothing about feathers, but now watch how she blows up flocks of birds like she's done nothing else before!”.

If you have nothing up your sleeves yet - WORK on a “reel”, if that gives you a goal to strive for! I think what others here said makes a lot of sense: “See it as a job”. The only difference I'd make is that I (personally, for the reasons given above) wouldn't file in the reel - but tell a potential client/partner that I worked on a project for so and so long, learned that and that and can now guarantee that I can blow up a single feather (as long as it isn't too complex). Tell WHAT you can do - if necessary, show the IMPORTANT 2-3 seconds of that reel, but say that you KNOW how to do it and that you can do it again.


Marc

Late to the party - but …

I am not a heavy Houdini-user by any measurements except for actual heaviness, of which I have plenty. Houdini, to me, is a tool like many others - it does some things nicely, others badly and most of the time the latter is due to my inadequate use of it and lack of daily exercise (in Houdini, I mean, I value my heaviness). Understanding how 3d tools work seems more important to me than mastering a single one of them - I can always invest the time to learn it properly if a job would require that …

School - German school, not comparable to US schools - has been a waste of time for me. They didn't teach me how to learn, that part I had to grasp on my own expense and it took me a few decades to master it. I am over 50 now and I am learning new tricks every single day.
What I rely on instead of education is: I make mistakes. Lots of them. And I have learned to embrace them, figure out what I did wrong and either find a way to make it work even though it's not supposed to (driving my wife crazy) or how to do something else that looks like I figured it out (driving everyone else crazy). I can be persistent. That includes writing comments in forums.

Most of my support gigs - not only in the movie/TV industry but just as well elsewhere - I get because I LISTEN, think, dig through my collection of mistakes and workarounds and then come up with something that might just do the thing or at least look like it does. The latter, here, works brilliantly in the make-believe-and-fake-the-rest-in-post industry: Understand that the VISUAL outcome is more important than actually fixing a problem seems (so far) to be how this industry “ticks”. They'll just fix the same problem again with the next film doing something else.

I do pipelining. I have zero idea about what “art” is, my taste for movies is partially incompatible with my wife's (who really should get paid to be so receptive of the “art” that I help making possible, to some very, very unobservable extent) and the industry's but I love a good problem. A good problem always looks like someone screwed up, didn't think or pretended to be able to get something done and failed in covering up that she wasn't. I don't care who screwed whom, I love fixing the problem. Even if it's just as far as “looks good”.

School:
Outside of Germany a “degree” or any sheet of paper saying “you're so good, man, we confirm that you have paid a lot of money to receive this receipt that tells you that you have completed a set number of hours sitting in a room or not in order to get this receipt, now leave us alone, we're gonna spend your money for something important” is really only good for proving to your parents that you DID sit all those hours in that room. I know too many people with degrees and without much else - and enough of those who exist the other way around. People that insist on being called “Dr.” to me either are timelords or slightly off in their inner workings.
In my world, being able to DO what you claim to be able to do, is what counts. Personally, I would never ever hire someone based on her “reel”. I don't do reels. I don't look at reels. I have seen stuff I have put into video tutorials being copy&pasted into reels. Why would someone hire someone who has proven to be good at copy&pasting things they were too lazy to figure out for themselves? Reels are a waste of time.
IN MY WORLD. Not in the real world. The real world is about faking it, pretending and trying to cover up that you've got no clue.

TLDR: I have a few decades of experience to offer in software development and about a dozen other disciplines. In all of them, no exception, being able to DELIVER is what counts, not reels (again: I don't do art, period. I solve problems. A “reel” doesn't apply to solving problems - however, the video tutorials I published helped A LOT in making contacts … you could say those are “reels” of a kind.)
When I hear about a problem/issue/pain at a potential client's place, I do research, learn everything I need to learn to at least UNDERSTAND the problem - and come up with at least one or two ideas/approaches how to tackle the problem. I do that at MY cost. It always pays off - and be it with the next client.

With art, I guess a “reel” makes *some* sense (I am open to discuss this ^_^ ), yet, I'd always try to demo what I can ACTUALLY do. Send in a scribble for the show I apply for or, doing an interview, draw someone who's sitting at the table or turn her into a monster-flower (or a flower-monster) or whatever suits the needs. Show that I can deliver, not rely on something that took me months to put together.

Learn. Research. Talk the language (technically) a client talks (including “visual” languages). Understand the problem/task and demo that you can deal with it. Be aware of your limitations and make sure you can “work around them”.
(Personally I'd add: Be honest. But … my experience with this “industry” has been that honesty is, quite often, not appreciated, so I'll go with “work around your limitations”.)

Apologies for the text wall. I'll learn how to be more concise.

Marc

Hi,

I haven't played much with Mantra/DAZ (but will need to do so, soon). The most likely problem is that DAZ models often are exported with the “glass layer” almost point-perfect attached to the “eyeball layer”, while it should have a slight offset (like it does in real life). With the standard DAZ export you basically bounce light back and for between the eyeball and the glass layer (moisture etc).
The simple solution is to add an edit node, select the glass layer things on both eyes and give it a nudge in positive z-direction in local space. That should - most likely - solve your render issues.

I hope this helps.

Marc

If I wanted to reproduce that, what I would do is something along this idea:

- create a paint node that produces a “trace” (e.g. a spline curve of points that you draw over your grid mesh)
- wrangle over the points of that drawn curve and use a secondary “paint mesh” input to attract/repel points on your target mesh based on proximity of the paint-mesh's points to the current point on your drawing-curve
- use different shapes and/or weights (as an additional parameter) on the paint-mesh for effects like “push”, “squeeze”, “fold”.

Should be more or less straight forward to implement. You'd only need to take care of displaying the output mesh instead of the paint mesh (for which you may have to look into attrib-paint “paint on displayed node” to see how that's done in Houdini).

I have done something similar years ago in Modo using Fabric Engine as the “code wrapper” … Modo wasn't Blender back then, so it didn't attract any attention outside my peer-group (the guy in the mirror and myself).


Marc

Next step: Rewrite from scratch (again - I love doing that) to incorporate nuts and bolts figured out along the way and make use of new features.
Going to contact @RobinsonUK and @Johnkke by PM.

Marc

I have my doubts that you can know “everything” about Houdini. I have even stronger doubts about the necessity of knowing “everything” about Houdini. In fact, I consider “knowing everything about Houdini” a complete waste of time because Houdini has grown a lot over the years and is constantly evolving, new workflows replacing or complementing others, features becoming obsolete and the reactivated for some users' preferences of doing nodal spaghetti.

While I think that tutorials can give you a starting point (or, in the best of all cases, motivate you to do something on your own), “learning” is something you cannot buy online. You need to sit down, grab a project that you REALLY WANT TO DO - and then just do it. This is my firm belief and I have yet to find ANYONE to prove me wrong: Learning things from watching others do them only works in movies. And movies are make-believe, fake and a lot of post-work.

At the end of the day, Houdini is a toolset to manipulate points, which are mere datasets. That's it. There's really nothing else to it. If you can deal with points and combine them into polygons, understand Houdini's language of “vertices versus points” and what “attributes” are and why they are attached to different entities … the rest is but luxury.


Marc

“Static” in this context is the “pose” at which your groom is created. That might simply be a frame zero (or 1) or could be a timeshift from the animation, depending on what you are doing.

Marc

Apologies, I thought you “had materials FROM substance”, as in “you converted them to something usable inside Houdini” (e.g. using the texture files, which substances basically are, directly in a principal shader).

I couldn't get the substance stuff to “flow smoothly” for me in Houdini, it turned out to be a waste of time for me, so I have to pass the torch on to someone who uses substances.

With Houdini materials it's probably pretty straight forward, since “displacement” (or bump/height) is really just “move a point in its normal direction by the amount specified in the displacement map” (or use the latter as a multiplication for some global displacement distance).


Marc

Moin, Thx,

several ways to do this. You can use a UV-interpolate approach or an attribvop. I created a video some time ago that I removed from ConspiracyTube, but here's a screenshot from the relevant part:





Marc

Too many open questions to even start thinking about what could be the cause … what OS? What version of Houdini (daily unstable build or release)? What type of interaction? What data is loaded? Do the crashes appear with an empty project? Are any non-default HDAs loaded?

Without a full rundown of the environment even a “yes, it crashes for me, too, sometimes” wouldn't help as it could be completely coincidentally.


Marc

(who's experiencing “random crashes” but not with navigation but with tinkering with things in ways Marc is not supposed to tinker with things.)

Moin, Brad,

too many variables … it might be that nodes are renamed during merging and updating the paths fails somewhere. You should be able to spot that by walking up the hierarchy of the capture node (there's probably an object merge somewhere). It might be that Houdini internally set a switch the wrong way, try switching options back and for (I noticed that object-merge sometimes gets the transform set up wrongly, by inverting it and inverting it back, things behave normally again).

Or you create a simplified test setup, rig a sausage or a cube, and check things with that first. Most of the time it's faster to figure out what's wrong in a “toybox scenario”.

Marc

Moin, Paul,

the bone-way-of-rigging in Houdini uses point weights to deform the mesh. You do have a “basic cage” structure, but the shape of that is limited to a capsule (that you can only deform in parameters of width, length, start/end position, orientation). BUT you can change point weights individually by using a capture override node e.g.

The bone here serves as a visual representation of the underlying capture-capsule (and as “grab-able handles” for animation). You can actually switch off the bone and visualize the capsule itself - or you visualize the point weights.

I know this does not help that much, yet I feel like Michael Goldfarb's rigging series actually is quite good at explaining the fundamentals, you don't really need to watch all of it, just browse over the content and concentrate on what you think you need to learn specifically.


Marc

Hi, Olivier,

you can convert an integer to a string using the “standard” itoa function (https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/vex/functions/itoa.html) - you can set the detail attribute using setdetailattrib:


Note that this only makes sense if you have a single point per geometry … the detail-attribute name here is “point-id”.

I hope this helps,
Marc