Hi all of you
First of all, I'm a film director and a VFX supervisor. I have this project where I should create lots of shots with crowd simulation, basically armies of infantries and horsemen. I'm new to Houdini, and I want to use Houdini to create a simple “but expandable” tool to create ONLY a Previz for the battles to show my team what are the possibilities and to show the DOP and the Stunts how to run and how they should film.
The final VFX will be decided later on.
This tool should include a simple distribution tool like “copy stamp” to create proxies of so what called soldiers with their flags, of course I mean by proxies a very basic definition model, the same goes for horses.
I want to be able to project the small army on a certain terrain. To give a small shading to differences the two armies and the cavalries from the infantries. The only animation I will have then is to move the grid that holds the group of soldiers to stick on the ground, no walking cycles, no collisions.
I tried several things on Houdini, but I guess as an ex- 3dsmax user the logic I had did not work out on Houdini.
I know I can go and create what I want in 3dsmax easily, but to be honest, I WANT to do it on Houdini, as I'm a great supporter to this piece of software that I find genius.
Please help, if there is any certain tutorial you know I will take I would be happy. If someone can help me just to create the basic asset with cylinders and boxes I will be more than thankful, I will share the final asset with better models and animation if I find myself able to.
All my thanx to all of you.

Just drive particles with cards attached over a surface.

r

I tried that, but for some design purposes forward the armies, this solution was not the most intelligent for my idea, I was thinking in designing the armies in groups, like real armies.
thank you

lots of ways to do this….

how about:
a really large grid - you can deform this to look like the terrain
a small grid, with simple models (tubes, boxes etc) copy stamped onto the points of this grid
the small grid is then placed on the large grid with the ray SOP

this will make the small grid conform to the large grid but also allow you to change/make unique the models…then just keep adding small grids for each type - cavalry, infantry etc….

see the attached

HTH

Hey arctor, thank you very much for your example file.
That was exactly the tool I wanted to achieve, I had to admit, I started to search along to do the same thing, but I ended up with millions of nodes.
I will develop the tool and I will posted it later.
Cheers

no problem…glad it helped…

Hello,teacheer:
i see you write it:
I'm a film director and a VFX supervisor. I have this project ```

Could you send the project to me ? I want to study houdini particle from your project.thank you very much !!!

My e-mail:beautyblack521530@hotmail.com thank you .