Hi,

I am new to Houdini and a hobbyist. When I learn a new package, I always practice building the same object below. It's called an “Advanced Inertial Reference Sphere”. The corner piece of the sphere is a challenging (at least for me) object to build in a way that is ‘perfect’ and clean in SubD.

Consider it my acid test to verify that I am comfortable with the basics of the modelling portion of an application.



I have dreamed of being able to use Houdini for almost 15 years. I always thought it was only for rocket scientists and that you needed a PhD to achieve the simplest results.

I am sure that the current iteration of the application is far more accessible than it used to be in the past. However, I am amazed at the result of spending about 10 hours with tutorials. I have NEVER been able to achieve such a clean and continuous surface with any application that I used in the past whilst retaining full control over the cage.

I always seem to either end-up with either a soup of control loops, having to retopologise after a Nurb'ish/Boolean'ish sledgehammer approach, or end up with a good cage that wasn't 100% perfect (I am a bit OCD).

Houdini is the first application in which I ever managed to achieve this level of perfection without having to push vertices along guides manually.

Thank you SideFX! You just improved my standard of living by 250%

Where's the pic of your actual model?

Yeah lets see some wireframes; I could be wrong but the image looks as if I've seen it before.

Christopher R
Yeah lets see some wireframes; I could be wrong but the image looks as if I've seen it before.

You most likely have: http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Weapons/Airs.html [nuclearweaponarchive.org]

It would be nice to see some actual Model. Would love to see some Hard Surface Modelling here.

Hi,

I did attach 3 images to show the cage with the original post. They seem to have gotten lost.
I will upload them at the end of the week. I am currently on a business trip and away from my workstation.

The image within the post is a reference picture.

Why did you post an image from another site ? I'll let this thread play it's self out.

As I mentioned, I attached three files. For whatever reason, they are not showing.

EDIT: Just got back and uploaded the attachments to the original post. I could not see that they weren't attached initially as my post went into review (probably because I am a new user).

Here is an update. I think that I reached the stage where I cannot reduce the number of polygons in the cage any further. The shape conforms to a perfect sphere and the holes are perfectly spherical.

A few cups of coffee later….

Looking good

very nice work.
keep sending us feedback on your experiences with modelling in Houdini

Looks great, super clean model.

Thanks for the positive feedback. Here is an update with the inside of the corner piece done.

I have used Modo since version 1 for subdivision modelling. While I miss the selection tools from Modo, Houdini gives me the comfort to take a complex scene or model much further than I ever would have with Modo. I can't quite put my finger on the exactly why this is the case.

Since I intend to use Octane for the final render, I thought that it would be a good idea to now add the materials and check that my scene didn't contain something that Octane doesn't like.

I was a bit afraid that I would not be able to re-create the very pleasant ‘look’ that Mantra gave me. Anyway, using the Octane Uber shader, I was able to set everything up in about 15 minutes.

I am using a single GTX 1080 and the result in Octane with very low settings is astounding. Not only is it faster, it also produces less noise with only a max sample setting of 260.

I love the fact that I can have the two render engines and materials running at the same time. I expected the application to crash when I tried rendering at the same time. It didn't!

One the left screen is Mantra. Octane is on the right.

First test renders. I like the group based UV projection feature a lot

Each one of these renders only take 4 seconds (hence the noise)

Here is a test render that took 3 minutes at 3440x1440 resolution.

Here is a little video to wrap this weekend up. Time for some Starcraft 2 now.

The fact that I can randomise the rotation of the screws with a simple expression and a stamp function makes me chuckle.

Like!

(silly there isn't a button eh.)

With the spreadsheet, null objects, object merge, groups and expressions, there is always a way to get myself out of a pickle. Houdini is a beast.