hey do you guys know any good modeling tutorials? most of the video tutorials on the site seem to be dynamics, camera, rendering, ect but not very many modeling
i'm starting my model of the f-111 and i realized how hard of a time i'm having

bump

also i want to make the jet go through clouds and distort them like a jet would, any ideas?

You'll generally want to use simpler proxy geometry to interact with the clouds.

I believe Jeff Lait made mention at one point that you'll have better results if your collision objects are actually pumps if you want to have nice pushing/eddying type motion.

how do you make it a pump?

I don't want to start a flame war here but houdini isn't exactly focused on modeling so I think generally people using it will come in with modeling experience…. not sure this is the best app to start out modeling in.. if only because other, more widely used software packages have a lot more tutorials available for modeling.

rdane1010
not sure this is the best app to start out modeling in..

Any application that has a modeling tool set is the best app to start out in.
3ds max: Extrude
Maya: Extrude
Houdini: Poly extrude
——

3ds max: Chamfer
Maya: Bevel
Houdini: polybevel
——

3ds max: Weld
Maya: Merge Vertices
Houdini: Fuse

The similarities continue throughout the poly modeling toolset. Any 3ds max or Maya tutorial is quite easily ported over to Houdini. If the new users open a new Houdini file, and add all polygon modeling sop's into a empty network un attached. All they need to do is take some time to look at the nodes settings, then hit the “?” in the top right of the parameter pane. And all the information is there that is needed.

Here is one of my modeling excercises that remains unfinished from 2006. This was taken from a 3d-palace tutorial for the FireFly class ship form Serenity. 3ds max tutorial…..modeled in Houdini 8.2 iirc

http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?/topic/5378-serenity/page__p__36220__hl__serenity__fromsearch__1&#entry36220 [forums.odforce.net]

It really is the users understanding of the tools. If you dive into a 3d app without any research first, it will ultimatly end in fail, or a long time in understanding how things work. I urge all new users wanting to model, to spend some time dropping down sops and studying them first. Once an understanding is achived, them modeling is no different across packages. Maybe a slightly different name for the wanted tool.
Plus if a tool doesnt exist, Houdini allows you to create that tool for yourself, or make a better tool.

Edit: Maybe I might make a small tutorial set on modeling, that SESI can host. That might help a few people get started.

i have a lot of experience modeling and i have the model of the F111 pretty much done and looks pretty good, i just need to add materials and wings, i'm oging to use the method from the topic about the transformer
i'll have renders of the plane posted soon
houdinis not really hard to model in, its just that i have a lot of nodes it kinda slows it down
ill try the low proxy thing

but right now i have so many nodes it slows down save time and opening time so i think i'm going to try to export it as a .geo or something, any suggestions?

Jaredky
i have a lot of experience modeling and i have the model of the F111 pretty much done and looks pretty good, i just need to add materials and wings, i'm oging to use the method from the topic about the transformer
i'll have renders of the plane posted soon
houdinis not really hard to model in, its just that i have a lot of nodes it kinda slows it down
ill try the low proxy thing

but right now i have so many nodes it slows down save time and opening time so i think i'm going to try to export it as a .geo or something, any suggestions?

Lock a SOP near the end of your SOP chain. This will cause Houdini only to cook from the locked SOP down to the display SOP. Loading will be faster too (probably).

I think Cmivfx has a tutorial on procedural modelling

Alex

Jaredky
but right now i have so many nodes it slows down save time and opening time so i think i'm going to try to export it as a .geo or something, any suggestions?

Also if you have a lot of groups and attributes that have been used and no longer needed slows things down.
Add a groupSOP, and disable the checkbox on the create tab “Create New Group”, and move across to the edit tab. In there there is a delete tab and delete the groups you dont need.
As for attributes, drop and attribueSOP down, and under the type of attribut (points/primatives/vertex, ect, ect), there is a delete parameter, add those attributes and they will be deleted.

But as Mark says locking nodes is a good practice for modeling heavy scene's.

that's ok i'm good with my model, my worry is the cammo material
i'm trying to do the file that cpb posted
i got stuck where he had the camo_setup1 file

ok i'm still having problems, it's taking forever to open and save

i wanted to post my project but for some reason IT'S 2 GIG! help
please tell me if theirs anything i can do

Open up Houdini twice, once with your modeling .hip file and another in a new scene. Now copy/paste your object node from one session to the other one.

Then make sure you're using the latest build (at least 10.0.374). You're probably running into the bug described here:
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=16124&highlight=double [sidefx.com]

ya that could be the problem, i saved ALOT so…
i was using 295 also
i'm trying to open it up but it's taking a long time, it's been on the small box loading screen for about 30 mins
i'm downloading 374 now

should i just wait a long time? it is 2 gig

if it's 2 gigs, yes it will take a long time to load.

k, it's been about an hour, hope it doesnt take much longer

If you compress the file into a .zip, what's the size? You could try posting that instead if it's not too big.

wow i'm surprised somehow it got it down to 2.1 mb, but when i tried to open it it got me an error message, i'll try the compression again
i compressed it again, seemed to work
please try something ,his is really important to me it's for my dads birthday (he used to be an F-111 pilot)