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Technical Discussion » Very basic question about shadow mat
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In modo, blender, and cinema 4d - when the environment is rendered with a shadow matte on a ground plane, it renders as if objects had a shadow on the environment. There is no extra step of post processing composite needed.
Technical Discussion » Very basic question about shadow mat
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I haven't tried using a shadow material before in Houdini with Mantra, but I can't get the equivalent of a shadow catcher in Modo, Blender, or C4D. What setting am I missing? In actual render, the png lacks the environmental light behind the floor/grid material but the grid comes in as a partial transparency.
The only workaround I can use is to do two renders, with objects hidden in the second render. Then in the first render, do not render environment. Finally, put them together in Davinci resolve (or photoshop). Is there an easier way?
The only workaround I can use is to do two renders, with objects hidden in the second render. Then in the first render, do not render environment. Finally, put them together in Davinci resolve (or photoshop). Is there an easier way?
Edited by Island - June 20, 2020 15:01:13
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » New to Houdini
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C4D would be much easier to learn. It has limitations especially for fluids, smoke, and particles. What kind of FX are you planning to do? C4D mograph is pretty easy. I much prefer Houdini, but ease of use when getting started would not be accurate.
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » Anyone else running on a 2019 Mac Pro with mixed results?
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For me, the advantages are other OSX programs, driver stability, easier to troubleshoot, and overall better stability and support and hardware that holds up better. If I were just working in Houdini, I would not pick a Mac. I use parallels for a few programs that are not available on OSX. I had a lot of nightmares with various windows builds at home and at work.
Edited by Island - June 18, 2020 19:50:19
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » Anyone else running on a 2019 Mac Pro with mixed results?
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I have lots of crashes on Mac Pro 2019, 16 core both with W5700x and previously with 580x cards. Support said that no current graphics card for the Mac Pro 2019 meets their qualifications, which I find odd. With frequent saves (and the nodal structure itself of Houdini), I rarely loose much work. I have full permissions for Houdini in Catalina, so that is not the issue for me. Surprisingly, the crashes are pretty random. Sometimes I have made a change in a complicated simulation but other times it is a simple modeling parameter. Support said they could not replicate it and it was not a graphics card or memory issue from the crash report I sent them. They questioned if I had a bad memory chip, but the diagnostics report no problem (as do third party RAM checking utilities).
Edited by Island - June 17, 2020 20:24:39
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » Laser Light Emitting from Blast Area
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I don't know how Octane works with volume lights, as I don't use it. Geometry and Volume lights are slightly different by default (whether point cloud is turned on and if the original geometry is hidden). You might try to see how this renders in Octane.
A lot of rendering engines use their own lights and materials. Is your issue a specifically octane volume light?
A lot of rendering engines use their own lights and materials. Is your issue a specifically octane volume light?
Edited by Island - June 12, 2020 16:18:39
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » Laser Light Emitting from Blast Area
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Masking a few frames and making a light in Nuke, Sapphire, or AE is easier, but you can create a laser light effect in Houdini in a few ways that I can think of. All have some problems.
One is to create a line in Houdini with a poly wire, and have an emissive color.
Another other way is to create a spot light with a very small angle and raise the intensity very high. That will give you the light off the fragments properly, but the light itself will not display. You can fix this with adding a volume, but be aware that any other lights will now have to deal with this volume. In a real explosion, there is lots of dust/smoke and the laser would reflect off this, so you would have to create the equivalent in Houdini.
You can just scatter points on a line and adjust the scale.
Lastly, you could try to do this with a particle emitter and directional force without gravity. This will allow the light to change direction when hitting a fragment. You have the option to have collisions generate secondary particles, which might be useful if you want sparks coming up from laser collision with the fragments.
Attached is a file that shows these methods, if you really want to go that way for a couple of frames.
One is to create a line in Houdini with a poly wire, and have an emissive color.
Another other way is to create a spot light with a very small angle and raise the intensity very high. That will give you the light off the fragments properly, but the light itself will not display. You can fix this with adding a volume, but be aware that any other lights will now have to deal with this volume. In a real explosion, there is lots of dust/smoke and the laser would reflect off this, so you would have to create the equivalent in Houdini.
You can just scatter points on a line and adjust the scale.
Lastly, you could try to do this with a particle emitter and directional force without gravity. This will allow the light to change direction when hitting a fragment. You have the option to have collisions generate secondary particles, which might be useful if you want sparks coming up from laser collision with the fragments.
Attached is a file that shows these methods, if you really want to go that way for a couple of frames.
Image Not Found
Edited by Island - June 11, 2020 13:35:13
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » how to make the chunks falling into the space?
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Upload your hip file. Without knowing how you are fracturing, what forces, and what colliders, it would be hard to give advice.
Edited by Island - June 9, 2020 21:21:16
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » Laser Light Emitting from Blast Area
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Work in Progress » Tools for Editing Multiple Curve Point at same time
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If you construct your curve by an add node with positions linked to nulls, you can parent some or all of the nodes to a separate null and move the parent Null. You can then check “keep position when parenting” and delete the connection. I have used this technique to change curve points position or curve rotation.
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » Height Maps Displace with No UVs
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You can add noise to the displacement of a shader and it will work without uv maps, but I'm pretty sure you can't add a image to the normal, bump, or displacement and expect it to work without a map.
Houdini Lounge » I would like to have my normals point outwards
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The circlepointnormal file above uses PolyFrame.
I wonder whether you might do better just changing the settings in the fluid to create a better splat, though. Here is a splat that took 30 seconds to create using just a cylinder and the “Flip fluid from object” with a ground plane collider - with the only tweak being a drop in the particle separation.
To get a different look, play with gravity direction in autodopnet, with viscosity in flipfluidobject node within the autodopnet, and with particlefluidsurfaces node in tube_object_fluid (with smoothing turned on).
I wonder whether you might do better just changing the settings in the fluid to create a better splat, though. Here is a splat that took 30 seconds to create using just a cylinder and the “Flip fluid from object” with a ground plane collider - with the only tweak being a drop in the particle separation.
To get a different look, play with gravity direction in autodopnet, with viscosity in flipfluidobject node within the autodopnet, and with particlefluidsurfaces node in tube_object_fluid (with smoothing turned on).
Edited by Island - May 29, 2020 21:36:59
Houdini Lounge » I would like to have my normals point outwards
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Leaving out a copy transform (since it looks like you just want the force direction for your “splat”), All methods outlined will give the same result for a circle. However, if you make your splat a curve, you will need to decide if you want the force direction the tangent to the curve or from a origin (kemijo's method). I assume you are considering copying these points with a copy transform node and then an attribute transfer? See difference:
Edited by Island - May 28, 2020 15:47:34
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » Apply material to entire model instead of seperate polygons
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Auto-uv is mostly for small stuff you don't really want to properly UV map. Most UV work is done with UV flatten, but you will have to make a whole lot of seams if you are doing it at the end, rather than earlier. You can also use RizomUV or 3Dcoat to approximate an autoUV, but the results won't be as good as putting the UV's in at the proper point.
There was a non production build update to Labs, so you might try to see if that is any better. But here is a comparison of UV flatten vs autoUV. I did not show UVproject which would be actually best for a sphere, but doesn't work well for more complicated models (unlike UV flatten). AutoUV is on the right.
Addendum: the picture labeled UVlayout is really just a UVflatten.
Since you are using volumes to create the model, your other option would be to not UV at all but use a procedural shader. I'm not very good with material builder shader nodes, but there are lots here and on odforce that can help.
There was a non production build update to Labs, so you might try to see if that is any better. But here is a comparison of UV flatten vs autoUV. I did not show UVproject which would be actually best for a sphere, but doesn't work well for more complicated models (unlike UV flatten). AutoUV is on the right.
Addendum: the picture labeled UVlayout is really just a UVflatten.
Since you are using volumes to create the model, your other option would be to not UV at all but use a procedural shader. I'm not very good with material builder shader nodes, but there are lots here and on odforce that can help.
Edited by Island - May 27, 2020 21:52:49
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » Apply material to entire model instead of seperate polygons
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Your best option would be to recreate the steps from https://www.blendernation.com/2018/07/24/how-to-make-mandelbulb-fractals-in-blender-eevee/ [www.blendernation.com] in Houdini. You can add the UV's in Houdini, which would be much easier. It will undoubtedly be faster and easier to fix. Or try this tutorial: https://vimeo.com/176911687 [vimeo.com]
Edited by Island - May 27, 2020 15:01:18
Houdini Lounge » I would like to have my normals point outwards
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You can create a circle of points with the normals facing away from the center of the circle but that will be a problem if you want a polygon face to the circle.
An easier way would be to have faces added which will fix the normal. See attachment (probably there is an easier way with VEX). The way I would approach this would be not to use copy to points at all but use a copy transform node with the object offset from (0,0,0) and have rotation in the copy transform set to something other than 0.
An easier way would be to have faces added which will fix the normal. See attachment (probably there is an easier way with VEX). The way I would approach this would be not to use copy to points at all but use a copy transform node with the object offset from (0,0,0) and have rotation in the copy transform set to something other than 0.
Edited by Island - May 27, 2020 21:04:32
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » Apply material to entire model instead of seperate polygons
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It is hard to know from your file, since you didn't freeze the alembic file you imported. Also auto-uv is not a recommended way of creating UVs.
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » how do I get polygons to rotate/revolve around a tube
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You will save yourself a lot of headaches by just doing your modeling around either (0,0,0) or (0, 1/2 y height, 0). You can do offsets, but it is much easier to either add a transform after the final merge or move the origin in the object view (with pretransform if you are going the latter way, so that you can easily reset to 0,0,0 and keep the transform). See attachments for three ways of doing this (with origin marker not at tube. The reason it is masochistic to model off the origin is that if you decide later to add some more detail with rivets or sweeps or whatever, you will have to add those offset transforms each time you do that.
Edited by Island - May 27, 2020 10:41:03
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » how do I get polygons to rotate/revolve around a tube
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Rotation around something other than (0,0,0) is quite different in Houdini compared with other software and can be confusing coming from C4D, Maya, etc. I have attached a file that shows a flattened cube rotating around a cylinder that is not placed at (0,0,0). As Vusta pointed out, the solution is fairly simple. In the attached file, you see a double transform with one to offset from the center of the tube and the other to rotate around the center of the tube if it is not centered at (0,0,0). You could do this without a double transform by just putting the box center not at the origin, but I personally don't like to do that. However if you start with a tube rather than a box and delete out all but a curved section, it will already start not at the origin and you might omit the transform node used to offset.
If you are doing this at a scene level rather than geometry level, it would be done either by parenting or by constraints.
If you are doing this at a scene level rather than geometry level, it would be done either by parenting or by constraints.
Edited by Island - May 27, 2020 06:25:32
Houdini Indie and Apprentice » how do I get polygons to rotate/revolve around a tube
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The easiest way would be to change the pivot point to the center of the tube. Then you could just keyframe the rotation.
Edited by Island - May 25, 2020 22:58:26
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