I have problem right after I reshaped my tube and trying cap my rocket… ops:
Don't know why, after I tab->Cap, the blue help text along the bottom of the Houdini window, instead of top, saying Select the faces and/or hulls to cap and right click to complete….and then my problem is I right click on the tube and nothing really happened. Even though a cap icon showed up on the network pane, my tube is still a tube. :shock:
This is really embarrassing since it's just the beginning, haha….but really hope anyone can help me out…
Did you make sure your fuselage was selected before right-clicking to finish the operation? After that, it may have worked but it just capped it with a flat primitive. Play around with the Cap SOP's parameters. In particular, change the “First U Cap” parameter from “End cap faceted” to something like “End cap rounded”.
If that's because of the version difference, then I apologize that I didn't read through the changes. I am working on the tutorial comes with Houdini. The Rocket model in Quickstart Modeling - Part 1:Modeling the Rocket Fuselage - Step4
About selection, I didn't select anything else so the tube is selected. (In fact, I don't know how to select in the Viewer pane like in other softwares but the tube node in network is highlighted.) Now, I just tried again and still not sure where to RMB click at to complete. I clicked on the tube eventually and cap node shows up in the Network pane but still not in Viewer pane.
Ok, so it's from the default Houdini docs. I was a bit confused about your comment about the blue text. From your screenshots, it looks like you forgot step 2 on the page. The Cap SOP works with NURBS geometry. By default, when you put down a Tube SOP, it's a “primitive” type.
I got a problem here where I need to make my rocket into Object view. In order to have the whole rocket visible I have to merge the rocketbody and fin nodes but how do I merge them? I checked around and got to know how to connect between nodes and stuff but it seems not the right way to merge. Thanks for yoru help.
If you're in the network editor, Tab > Merge. This means hit the Tab key to bring up the operator menu. Now you can either find Merge in the menu (eg. under Filters or Sourcing). Or the keyboard and type Merge <enter>. Now you can connect both SOPs into it and display the Merge SOP.
Yes, I did Tab->Merge and the cursor became a square outline so I was afraid to go further. Now, you confirmed that's the right way to go so I tried again. I clicked on blank space and a new node came up called merge1 but still getting nothing in the viewer window so I connected both the cap and fins to the merge1 and I got to turn the whole thing into Object view.
Is the connection nodes to the merge1 necessary? Or it should be merged together right after Tab->Merge? :roll:
If you're doing it in the network editor, you will need to manually connect the operators together. There's some other shortcuts though if you have them both displayed in the viewer. eg. footprint (purple) flags enabled on them. Then you can just use the viewport's pane menu Operator > Merge Operation with all Footprints. This will automatically create the Merge SOP, connect all the footprint nodes, and change the flags in one step.
Hmm … I think it means to re-order the “Fuselage Color” and “Fins Color” parameters in that tree in the Operator Type Properties dialog. If you left-click drag one of those downwards, there should be this downwards bevel line that shows up indicating the new location when you let go of the mouse button. So I think the tutorial is just saying to move those inside the Colors folder.
Sorry, got another question right after 2 steps, Edward. ops:
Is there any reason my tab > POP Network doesn't show up?
I create a geometry, renamed it. Press i to go to SOP mode and delete the defult file1 in network pane. But the POP Network doesn't show up on the tab menu list…
ops: 
/houdini/content/base/tutorials/fm_02_guide_quickstart_1002085.xml
