Hi,

I created and Animated a character in Maya and imported the geometry and the animation as a FBX file into Houdini.

Now, I want to make a “fluid character” by turning the charcter's geometry into a SDF and setting that as a source for the fluid. I know how to do that with geometry created and animated in Houdini, but I do not know how to do that with an imported FBX file.

Normally, I would create a dopnet, first. Inside of the dopnet I'd create a fluidobjet. Now back on object level I create another null node (e.g. call it “source”), inside of that source I put my geometry node, connect it with an Isooffset node andthen connect the isooffset with another null node. Then, I will have this null node set up as the fluid's SDF SOP Path.

I do not know how to get the FBX file into the “source” node, and on object level I cannot create an isooffset node where I maybe could pipe in the FBX import.

Does anybody know what to do here?

Hi,

not sure exactly what you are trying to do but if you are using an FBX with transforms I would normally build myself a network using fetch nodes which read the transforms. Then all I do is read the geometry the fbx is using off disk.

Attached a simple file of some geometry turned into a volume fluid. Again not sure if this is what your after. But please post up a scene showing what you want to do.

r

this is volume fluid

eeek thats what happens when you go out and drink 10 pints and attempt 3d when you get home :shock: :shock:

thanks for the answers. I wanted to create something like this in the scene attached, but instead of a tepot I want my character out of the FBX animation as source for the fluid.

You mentioned a “fetch” node, so I looked that up in the help, but I only found some CHOPs stuff that didn't look very useful for my case.

Hi ,
I don't see how this is a major problem. Do you have a FBX file ? for me to look at. The fluids bit is not the issue.

r

just add Object Merge SOP instead of the platonic1 in your sourceGeometry object
and specify path to file SOP that imports your character
and change transform node to IntoThisObject

the geometry imported from fbx is just regular geometry you can use as any geometry created in houdini
it's just deep inside various subnets created by fbx importer

Thank you, again!

Unfortunately, I didn't come very much closer to what I wanted to achieve.
I followed tamte's guide, so I created an “object merge” SOP and specified it's path to the FBX file. The file was imported using the File -> Import dialogue in the H10 interface, which created an FBX node on root level. This doesn't seem to be a SOP at all, but I specified that path as the SOP path in the object merge, what caused a warning (i think this yellow/black stuff on a node means a warning). Not knowing better what to do, I ignored the warning hoping that wouldn't do any harm.

I do not have a file SOP anywhere that imports that FBX, either as this wasn't created by the default importer. So I created a new file node, but this couldn't be linked with an FBX file.

I understand how things are supposed to work for my scene, but I don't get putting the pright plugs in their places, yet.

So I have attached the FBX as well as my scene file. If you were so kind to look up and explained to me, what I did wrong was very kind of you!

You have not included the vertex cache file , so your file will not work. Other tips would be

A) bake into keyframes all your constraints then get rid of them
B) Have your Maya rig read the geometry off disk

r

the node created is subnetwork OBJ node, just a container for other obj nodes
dive inside and there you can see other nodes, many of them can be again subnet Obj nodes, so you can keep diving inside until you find geometry Object node(s) which has file SOP inside
press W with your cursor over network view to get a tree view where you can easily find what you want

if you uncheck Import Null Object as Subnets in the FBX import dialog window, you should have endire hierarchy of objects just inside your FBX subnet
then you can specify path to any of the objects in Object Merge sop
for example path to your body object will be:
/obj/RolfoAnimated_007_fk_fbx/rolfo_asset_ref1_rolfo_Rig_rolfo_body_geo

..maybe I forgot to mention- the animation starts at frame 100.