I would also note that whether houdini is better or not at the interactive organic modeling, once you master the procedural side, it can be faster than any interactive modeling tool like Maya or max, where the procedural can quickly generate an aset that is 90% ready, and the final tuning can be done interactively in oNE of those packages. This is now a lot easier too thanks to the houdini engine plug ins.
Most pipelines we have incorporated houdini in have sped up by at least 80%, and in many cases, the data produced is a true representation of real life due to removal of ambiguity
II do support sidefx efforts in this front though as their new interaction mechanisms are opening new possibilities!
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Houdini Lounge » Why is Houdini so awesome?!?
- grayOlorin
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Technical Discussion » Output Switcher
- grayOlorin
- 1799 posts
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Technical Discussion » 150 FREE HDRI sky maps in 4K res - Support for Houdini Users
- grayOlorin
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Agreed 100%! And hdri default image would be very useful for quick high quality viz of assets (you could even have a shelf tool to rig up an image based lighting setup quickly)
And thank you so much Ágata for your contribution! I will check them out
And thank you so much Ágata for your contribution! I will check them out
Houdini Engine for Maya » Possible for Group Node in Maya as input to Houdini Engine?
- grayOlorin
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A way I have overcome this us to have my asset have a lot of inputs (in houdini, you can have up to 999, although maya chokes at a out 100), and have a script which plugs all the leaf shapes of the selected group to the houdiniAsset node.
The nice thing about this approach is that you can use a for loop sop to import the geo as individual pieces in houdini, add groups to keep them separate, and wrangle them out as separate geos matching the original (bUT still get a huge speed up advantage from consuming all your geo at once)
This would be a great feature though. We could even import each mesh into houdini with a dagpath attribute to mimic the excellent alembic node behaviour
The nice thing about this approach is that you can use a for loop sop to import the geo as individual pieces in houdini, add groups to keep them separate, and wrangle them out as separate geos matching the original (bUT still get a huge speed up advantage from consuming all your geo at once)
This would be a great feature though. We could even import each mesh into houdini with a dagpath attribute to mimic the excellent alembic node behaviour
Houdini Lounge » road intersections in a city asset
- grayOlorin
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Try any of the following approaches in this hip file. Make sure you are using latest build as there are some bugs which have been fixed in recent builds (which would have cause a segfault). The example of the right is what I use
I do wish the node did handle this underneath the hood. I think that would be a valid RFE IMO
Credit to Ondrej for the dissolve trick! (which later led me to the carve trick)
Hope this helps!
I do wish the node did handle this underneath the hood. I think that would be a valid RFE IMO
Credit to Ondrej for the dissolve trick! (which later led me to the carve trick)
Hope this helps!
Houdini Lounge » road intersections in a city asset
- grayOlorin
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have you tried the polyExpand2D sop? I been using it and abusing it for GIS based roads…
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » Can make custom interactive tools in python?
- grayOlorin
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depending on what you want to do, you may be able to just use python. If all that you are doing, for example, is asking the user to draw a curve, then waiting for them to press a button to trigger another action, you should be able to do it all on python. If you want to parse a selection, or trigger selection context actions, you can also look at hou.SceneViewer class
I believe you would use the HDK if you wanted, for example, to make your own screen widgets or things of the sort.. (in addition to maybe access to some additional commands)
I believe you would use the HDK if you wanted, for example, to make your own screen widgets or things of the sort.. (in addition to maybe access to some additional commands)
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » attributecreate and delete SOP
- grayOlorin
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in older tutorials, this would be the case, but it has changed in Houdini 15 (in favor of using the more direct @ syntax when possible)
Technical Discussion » Will SideFx every allow installation on two computers?
- grayOlorin
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I would also note that Indie is pretty much the fully featured Houdini FX minus the ability to render higher than 1080p (if I understand correctly)
Technical Discussion » A better Illustrator file importer
- grayOlorin
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I also recommend using the extrude SOP instead of polyExtrude for imported .ai files, as it is more geared towards building extrusions out of those (i.e. it has an auto hole mechanism that is sensitive to the extrusion, thickness offset, and bridges so that you do not have to use a hole SOP)
Also, the second spine input does insetting, which in general would be more of the results you would want from extruding and beveling those shapes
Also, the second spine input does insetting, which in general would be more of the results you would want from extruding and beveling those shapes
Houdini Lounge » Next Houdini engine integration?
Houdini Learning Materials » how do you add tutorials to the tutorial page in sidefx.com?
- grayOlorin
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I have gotten good feedback on mine as they start at the very beginning level and are more geared toward games and procedural content creation :
https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=42954 [sidefx.com]
Thank you pusat! I will shoot an email to sesi about it
https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=42954 [sidefx.com]
Thank you pusat! I will shoot an email to sesi about it
Houdini Learning Materials » how do you add tutorials to the tutorial page in sidefx.com?
- grayOlorin
- 1799 posts
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I would like to link mine through here, in addition to be able to post supporting files when appropriate. How does one go about doing so?
thank you
thank you
Houdini Lounge » Houdini and Substance Designer
- grayOlorin
- 1799 posts
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I think they would complement each other quite well. Yes, anything you do in substance could be done in Houdini (and more), but you could do everything we do in Houdini and substance in C++, yet there is a strong advantage to a higher level, accessible IDE
Substance designer does make certain things a lot easier and faster
Substance designer does make certain things a lot easier and faster
Houdini Learning Materials » Sharing my tutorials
- grayOlorin
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Hey Daryl, thank you for sharing my videos! I will add scene assembly to my list as well. The example from Maya for scene assembly, is that the Reference Editor workflow?
In Houdini, a lot of that functionality is done via Alembic archives and/or Packed Prims, or in some cases, I have even used digital assets to make “smart assets” which populate a scene in a deterministic fashion.
These workflows are exposed in a few different flavors depending on your domain (surfacing/lighting, rendering pipeline, etc). I am by no means an expert on film render pipelines, but will be happy to share some approaches I have used when assembling multiple components in Houdini for games it is certainly possible to do what you mentioned and more
Here are a few other tutorials I also have on my to do list:
- New texture bake workflow (shader and ROP node)/making your own custom shader that samples from other geo
- LODs pipeline to unreal
- Houdini Engine in Unreal
- Houdini Engine in Maya
- Volumes
- For Loops
- New visualizer nodes
- VEX: using intersect and XYZ Distance to gather data at fragment locations
- Python
In Houdini, a lot of that functionality is done via Alembic archives and/or Packed Prims, or in some cases, I have even used digital assets to make “smart assets” which populate a scene in a deterministic fashion.
These workflows are exposed in a few different flavors depending on your domain (surfacing/lighting, rendering pipeline, etc). I am by no means an expert on film render pipelines, but will be happy to share some approaches I have used when assembling multiple components in Houdini for games it is certainly possible to do what you mentioned and more
Here are a few other tutorials I also have on my to do list:
- New texture bake workflow (shader and ROP node)/making your own custom shader that samples from other geo
- LODs pipeline to unreal
- Houdini Engine in Unreal
- Houdini Engine in Maya
- Volumes
- For Loops
- New visualizer nodes
- VEX: using intersect and XYZ Distance to gather data at fragment locations
- Python
Technical Discussion » Unifying Houdini under one context
- grayOlorin
- 1799 posts
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I would have to at least echo the concerns of tab menus becoming VERY large if all contexts were unified. One nice advantage of the current structure is that it is quite clear if you are working on one context or another (makes discoverability much easier too).
maybe a more appropriate solution is an easier way to bridge contexts? i.e. dops to sops feels seamless, but sops to cops is a bit of a drag (although not impossible)
maybe a more appropriate solution is an easier way to bridge contexts? i.e. dops to sops feels seamless, but sops to cops is a bit of a drag (although not impossible)
Houdini Lounge » Houdini week on my CGI course
- grayOlorin
- 1799 posts
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Houdini Lounge » Houdini Indie
- grayOlorin
- 1799 posts
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if you are interested too, my tutorials cover a bit about Houdini in unreal as well, and are focused on procedural content creation. No tutorials on Houdini engine yet (hope to have some soon!), but the tutorials in there will give you a good idea on how to setup a vanilla pipeline from Houdini to Unreal
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjOCJrhSBGUG9uqJ2rMe6ByLJcTD9Jau7 [youtube.com]
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjOCJrhSBGUG9uqJ2rMe6ByLJcTD9Jau7 [youtube.com]
Technical Discussion » Tutorials about matrices in vop sop
- grayOlorin
- 1799 posts
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Technical Discussion » Tutorials about matrices in vop sop
- grayOlorin
- 1799 posts
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I'll add it to my list of tutorials to make
it is actually not as bad as it sounds once you get used to it. For rotations, I generally use a lot the Align VOP in between two vectors to generate my quaternians (set it to axis instead of matrix), then after that there are a lot of nice quaternian vops for doing those kinds of operations (qrotate, slerp, etc). if you are using quaternians, you also have the advantage that your rotations will never gimble. There is also a quaternion subfolder in the tab menu for convenience
if you are passing a matrix, there are a lot of VOPs which will go back and forth in between full TRS as parameter and as matrix representation. Check out extractxform, makexform, translate, rotate, scale, etc. There is also an xform VOP which you can use to also transform points given TRS values which you may have extracted from a matrix
hope this helps!
it is actually not as bad as it sounds once you get used to it. For rotations, I generally use a lot the Align VOP in between two vectors to generate my quaternians (set it to axis instead of matrix), then after that there are a lot of nice quaternian vops for doing those kinds of operations (qrotate, slerp, etc). if you are using quaternians, you also have the advantage that your rotations will never gimble. There is also a quaternion subfolder in the tab menu for convenience
if you are passing a matrix, there are a lot of VOPs which will go back and forth in between full TRS as parameter and as matrix representation. Check out extractxform, makexform, translate, rotate, scale, etc. There is also an xform VOP which you can use to also transform points given TRS values which you may have extracted from a matrix
hope this helps!
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