sorry, indeed I overlooked your other proposed solution. And yes, it is plausible.

As a matter of fact, it is a better solution, since it is not as hacky as unlocking the assets to keep the modified versions in .hip files, as I described in the previous post.

Actually, it is a very good solution. I'll just rephrase what you said in Houdini terms. You would make 2 copies of the generic arm definition (animation_rig_biped_arm) and call them animation_rig_biped_arm_left and animation_rig_biped_arm_right. In your biped network, the left_arm node would be an instance of the first copy and right_arm woudl be an instance of the second copy. You could then edit and save your changes within each node, which would update the two new copies (definitions).

Then you would make a copy of the toon_character autorig HDA and would make sure that the type of the left_arm is animation_rig_biped_arm_left (instead of animation_rig_biped_arm). The same for right_arm.

The steps to achieve all that would be roughly:
- make a copy of the toon_character HDA (in the Window > Operator Type Manager)
- make copies of the animation_rig_biped_arm HDA
- instantiate your_toon_character as a node
- right click on the node > Allow Editing of Contents
- dive in and right click on left_arm and choose Change Type
- changs the type to animation_rig_biped_arm_left
- make your changes inside left_arm and then right-click > Save Operator Type
- repeat for the right_arm
- right-click on your toon character node and Save Operator Type.

Now every time you instantiate your_toon_character HDA, the instance will contain your changes.

Tomorrow's build of Houdini (10.0.478) should no longer have this problem.

in this post i'll keep it short: all my writing in this thread was pointless

Not entirely pointless. I have learned a TON about how the whole node and OTL system works. Thank you for taking the time to post about it to me. I may run into something in the future that is not a limitation or bug that requires this information.

ok, I'm glad it was of some help then

Just one last thing, answering preemptively, to download the latest daily build,
see “How do I obtain older or newer versions of Houdini?” on this page:
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1207&Itemid=273#version [sidefx.com]

Good luck!

Thanks for the preemtive strike.

The fix works great!

I love Side FX. I will be praising them every chance I get.

Well, I am not having an error anymore, but I am not getting any geometry out. I get the rig ok, but only a couple of polygons of the mesh show up.

My input mesh is made up totally of triangles and yet the output dump.html file has these kinds of errors:

/obj/Zombie/Biped_auto_rig1/left_leg/proxy_control_thigh/cut_control/switch__display_handles: Primitive 0 has unsupported geometry (ID: 0x1, nVerts: 9). Only triangles can be exported.
/obj/Zombie/Biped_auto_rig1/left_leg/proxy_control_thigh/cut_control/switch__display_handles: Primitive 1 has unsupported geometry (ID: 0x1, nVerts: 9). Only triangles can be exported.
/obj/Zombie/Biped_auto_rig1/left_leg/proxy_control_thigh/cut_control/switch__display_handles: Primitive 2 has unsupported geometry (ID: 0x1, nVerts: 5). Only triangles can be exported.
/obj/Zombie/Biped_auto_rig1/left_leg/proxy_control_thigh/cut_control/switch__display_handles: Primitive 3 has unsupported geometry (ID: 0x1, nVerts: 5). Only triangles can be exported.
/obj/Zombie/Biped_auto_rig1/left_leg/proxy_control_thigh/cut_control/switch__display_handles: Primitive 4 has unsupported geometry (ID: 0x1, nVerts: 5). Only triangles can be exported.
/obj/Zombie/Biped_auto_rig1/left_leg/proxy_control_thigh/cut_control/switch__display_handles: Primitive 5 has unsupported geometry (ID: 0x1, nVerts: 5). Only triangles can be exported.
/obj/Zombie/Biped_auto_rig1/left_leg/proxy_control_thigh/cut_control/switch__display_handles: Primitive 6 has unsupported geometry (ID: 0x1, nVerts: 5). Only triangles can be exported.
/obj/Zombie/Biped_auto_rig1/left_leg/proxy_control_thigh/cut_control/switch__display_handles: Primitive 7 has unsupported geometry (ID: 0x1, nVerts: 5). Only triangles can be exported.
/obj/Zombie/Biped_auto_rig1/left_leg/proxy_control_thigh/cut_control/switch__display_handles: Primitive 8 has unsupported geometry (ID: 0x1, nVerts: 5). Only triangles can be exported.
/obj/Zombie/Biped_auto_rig1/left_leg/proxy_control_thigh/cut_control/switch__display_handles: Primitive 9 has unsupported geometry (ID: 0x1, nVerts: 5). Only triangles can be exported.

Because of that those all get cut and so don't show up. What do I do now?

from the error message, it seems that the controller is not a triangle mesh. So, if you dive into this node:
/obj/Zombie/Biped_auto_rig1/left_leg/proxy_control_thigh/cut_control/switch__display_handles
and right click on it and in Spreadsheet… you should see (when you switch to vertex list in the upper right corner) that primitive 0 has 9 vertices (ie, it runs 0:0.. 0:8). Tip, you can use ‘/’ to find the node in a large network or use table view ‘t’ to list and sort nodes alphabetically (or search in the filter at the bottom).

As for the solution, I guess you could Divide SOP to triangulate the controller.

Would the controller not being a triangle cause the skin mesh that is weighted to also not export? I know for a fact that the skin mesh is all triangles because I created it that way AND because when you look at it in Houdini you can see that it is.

The weird part is that out of several hundred (maybe even a thousand) triangles in the skin mesh, about 20 of them DO end up in the final DTS file.

When I look at the DTS in ShowTool Pro I can see the bone control points (as null things) and then about 20 of the mesh triangles and yet in Houdini I can see that all of the triangles in the mesh animate when I move the control objects.

Ideas?

I decided to try exporting the Toon character now that the original bug I posted is fixed. The Toon character still does not export. Maybe in figuring out why that doesn't export I will be able to figure out why my own doesn't.

With the toon character the problem is that I don't understand where the geometry comes from. I think they key might be that when I dive into the source_geometry node of the toon_character1 node (the main one) I notice that the geo_from_file node is hatched red. I think that means there is an error.

The errors that I get in the output when I try to export to torque are like this:

Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/source_geometry/geo_from_file: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/spine/proxy_lower_back3/object_merge__proxy_geometry: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/spine/proxy_chest2/object_merge__proxy_geometry: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/spine/proxy_hip/object_merge__proxy_geometry: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/left_arm/proxy_upperarm/merge__proxy_geo: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/left_arm/proxy_forearm/merge__proxy_geo: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/right_arm/proxy_upperarm/merge__proxy_geo: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/right_arm/proxy_forearm/merge__proxy_geo: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/left_leg/proxy_thigh/merge__proxy_geo: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/left_leg/proxy_shin/merge__proxy_geo: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/left_leg/proxy_ankle/merge__proxy_geo: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/left_leg/proxy_toe/merge__proxy_geo: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/right_leg/proxy_thigh/merge__proxy_geo: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/right_leg/proxy_shin/merge__proxy_geo: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/right_leg/proxy_ankle/merge__proxy_geo: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/right_leg/proxy_toe/merge__proxy_geo: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/head_and_neck/proxy_neck2/object_merge__proxy_geometry: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/head_and_neck/proxy_head/object_merge__proxy_geometry: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/head_and_neck/proxy_jaw/object_merge__proxy_geometry: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/left_hand/proxy_thumb2/merge__proxy_geo: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/left_hand/proxy_index2/merge__proxy_geo: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/left_hand/proxy_middle2/merge__proxy_geo: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/left_hand/proxy_pinky2/merge__proxy_geo: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/left_hand/proxy_palm/merge__proxy_geo: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/right_hand/proxy_thumb2/merge__proxy_geo: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/right_hand/proxy_index2/merge__proxy_geo: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/right_hand/proxy_middle2/merge__proxy_geo: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/right_hand/proxy_pinky2/merge__proxy_geo: Failed to get geometry
Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/right_hand/proxy_palm/merge__proxy_geo: Failed to get geometry

Even though I built all the Auto Rig and Toon character stuff I've been hesitant to weigh in on this thread since I know absolutely nothing about the Torque exporter.

From the last few posts it looks like the exporter is trying to export useless geometry. In the case of the proxy cut controls, those are only for the purpose of cutting up geometry and shouldn't be exported. Though I'm not sure why you'd want to export the actual Auto Rig asset since it doesn't really provide anything you'd want to use in animating something. It just builds an actual animatable rig.

The latest errors make sense in the fact that there is actually no proxy geometry for the Toon character. It makes sense that it would error trying to get geometry from there, which begs the question, why is Houdini trying to export geometry from objects that are not displayed? Same with the control problems above. I would have assumed that it wouldn't try and export something that isn't displayed.

I wish I could be more help but I'm afraid I wouldn't know how to even try to export something using Torque.

graham: I am actually very glad you are weighing in at this time because I do think that this is a problem of me not understanding what is what. I am new :-).

The more I learn about Houdini and the auto rig stuff, the more I realize that ere is truly a ton of stuff in there that is not actually in the final output that is needed.

To recap, I have an FBX skin that I created in another program. I made sure to create it out of ONLY triangles because I knew in the end I would want it to be exported to torque and that requires triangles.

I then followed this tutorial:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=991&Itemid=258 [sidefx.com]

Obviously I adapted it to the biped and Houdini 10. As far as that goes I didn't have anything I couldn't adapt as far as I know.

So here is the question that you might be able to answer. In the end the DTS exporter needs to be able to export the animations of the bones and skin. What object(s) should I point to in order to get that to happen?

When I animate the rig in Houdini, it animates as I would expect. The geometry moves like I have told it to.

When I export to Torque I actually get a few (about 20 out of 1000) triangles of the skin that export. Why would I get some, but not all of them?

One thing that might be related is that the tutorial above uses muscles. Maybe the torque exporter needs bones? If so, could you look through that tutorial and tell me how to do the capture painting using bones instead of muscles? I tried that myself and in the tutorial when it says to click on the capture_weights node then press enter in the view to start painting it doesn't work. I can only follow the tutorial if I use muscles.

Even better how about doing a new tutorial. I can supply an FBX skin of a human for you to use if you like :-)

The other thing I forgot to tell you is that the eyes used in the auto rig are not triangles, so I had to change them to triangles using a divide node. I got that done, but even they didn't export to torque and I don't know why.

tpitman
The errors that I get in the output when I try to export to torque are like this:

Error #hd0obj/toon_character1/source_geometry/geo_from_file: Failed to get geometry
…

This should now work with Houdini 10.0.583.

tpitman
The other thing I forgot to tell you is that the eyes used in the auto rig are not triangles, so I had to change them to triangles using a divide node. I got that done, but even they didn't export to torque and I don't know why.

This should also work now. Enjoy.

I will give this stuff a try. Thanks.

Can you please answer me an upgrading question. When I install Houdini it wants to install it in a path that includes the version.

When I go to install the next release, like the one that fixes this problem, I have been uinstalling the previous version and installing the new one.

Is that the right way to do it or should I install Houdini in a path that doesn't include the version and just install over the top each time?

I am running Windows 7

Ok, I have the latest version and am still having trouble getting something to output to Torque. I do not get any errors anymore, so that is good.

I created a brand new Toon Character using the 554.

The problem is that I don't get anything output.

I need someone to give me the final word on what I have to export. I found the geometry that is not triangles inside here:

toon_character1/toon_character_deform_rig/head_and_neck/left_eye
toon_character1/toon_character_deform_rig/head_and_neck/right_eye
toon_character1/toon_character_deform_rig/skin

I added Divide SOPs in those 3 locations. The on-screen model now is triangles, so it should export.

I believe my problem at this point is just not knowing what to export or the Torque SOP not knowing what to export.

Please help…

tpitman
I created a brand new Toon Character using the 554.

The fixes went into a later build. Houdini 10.0.583 builds should start appearing in the download page's daily builds section sometime today.

Heh, I feel a little stupid. You say that right in the posting. Sorry. I will get it as soon as it shows and let you know.

tpitman
Can you please answer me an upgrading question. When I install Houdini it wants to install it in a path that includes the version.

When I go to install the next release, like the one that fixes this problem, I have been uinstalling the previous version and installing the new one.

Is that the right way to do it or should I install Houdini in a path that doesn't include the version and just install over the top each time?

Multiple versions of Houdini can happily co-exist on one computer. I think most people just install a new version using the suggested installation directory and keep around the older version as a backup until they want to free up some disk space.