Hey Folks,
As this is my first post, let me just say a quick hello to the Houdini community. I'm new to 3d graphic packages and houdini is the first one that I've been trying to learn so apologises in advance for newbie questions.
Anyway, I'm trying to do a pool table scene where I have 15 spheres (which obviously are the pool balls) in one geometry object. When doing the animation for this scene, I want a ball to disappear when it has been potted but I've a problem with that. I've been made aware of the display parameter in the render page of the geometry object but this causes all 15 spheres to disappear when I only want one of them.
I don't really want to have to create 15 new geometry objects for each sphere so I was wondering if its possible to keyframe animate the display of each individual sop within the SOP level ?
Thanks in advance.
Cheers
Starkhorn
Display Problem
3231 3 0- starkhorn
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- goldfarb
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- JColdrick
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That could work. It's just a guess, but is the reason you're doing this on the sop level because you're using a particle system? If not, then I'd point out that if you're concerned about “neatness” and not having allthose balls cluttering up your main scene, don't forget you can make a subnet on the /obj level and stuff them in there. Really, it's not particularly any different than doing it in SOPs unless there's something specific in SOPs you need to access, like a particle system.
If you are using a particle system, you could have the particles die off when they go below a certain height - that way the associated ball would disappear.
I'd also point out that if you're using motion blur having SOP-based data appear and disappear can be a problem if you're using deform blur - you'll want to either work on the obj level *or* use particle velocity blur(which is a good hack but not always respectful of real mblur).
Cheers,
J.C.
If you are using a particle system, you could have the particles die off when they go below a certain height - that way the associated ball would disappear.
I'd also point out that if you're using motion blur having SOP-based data appear and disappear can be a problem if you're using deform blur - you'll want to either work on the obj level *or* use particle velocity blur(which is a good hack but not always respectful of real mblur).
Cheers,
J.C.
John Coldrick
- starkhorn
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Actually the reason I did this at the sop level was because the initial part of my scene is all the pool balls racked together in a nice triangle. I did this by creating 4 sphere and then adding a copy sop to each sphere with X number of copies for each row of the triangle, i.e. the last row has 5 spheres, the 4th row has 4 spheres etc etc.
Doing it that way meant I only had 4 edit's to do in order to get the spheres into a triangle rather than the 15 that I have to do otherwise.
Perhaps a silly reason of course but being newish I didn't really know any better.
Anyhow, I tried the switch thing but it seem to be causing me even more headaches so I just gave up and went for 15 geometry objects with each one containing a sphere and a transform.
Thanks though for your helpful respones. Much appreciated.
Cheers
Starkhorn
ps minor hint for those new like myself who may read this thread at a later date.
A small issue with keyframing the display parameter of the object so that I found the object actually disappeared before the keyframe that I had specified. This was because the channel function was cubic by default and the behaviour that I required meant that I had to use a constant function. This is changeable very easily in the channel editor. This stumped me for a little while until I looked at the slope of the channel. Just FYI.
Doing it that way meant I only had 4 edit's to do in order to get the spheres into a triangle rather than the 15 that I have to do otherwise.
Perhaps a silly reason of course but being newish I didn't really know any better.
Anyhow, I tried the switch thing but it seem to be causing me even more headaches so I just gave up and went for 15 geometry objects with each one containing a sphere and a transform.
Thanks though for your helpful respones. Much appreciated.
Cheers
Starkhorn
ps minor hint for those new like myself who may read this thread at a later date.
A small issue with keyframing the display parameter of the object so that I found the object actually disappeared before the keyframe that I had specified. This was because the channel function was cubic by default and the behaviour that I required meant that I had to use a constant function. This is changeable very easily in the channel editor. This stumped me for a little while until I looked at the slope of the channel. Just FYI.
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