Greetings Houdini community! This is my first of likely many post to come. I'm a college student pursuing a chemistry degree, with a passion for art, and I'm hoping to develop my skills in VFX. I don't consider myself above intermediate or an expert in 3D modelling, but I'm a computer savvy guy and I can learn fast once I've got a goal. From what I hear it's not much of a learning curve in Houdini, it's more of a learning wall, but I'm determined to train myself this powerful tool as I strive to become a freelance multi-media artist.

To get more of an idea of what I'm brainstorming up, view my post at CGI society. I'm striving towards clouds - water - lightning type animations.
https://forums.cgsociety.org/t/how-to-get-what-i-want/2051039 [forums.cgsociety.org]

Right now I'm attempting to create this project, essentially it's just a simple “skybox” where I will eventually rotate a camera around a stormy-cloudy setting, cycling view shots of an illuminated object/letters behind clouds. For this post, my main issue I've encountered is trying to bring my vector graphic logo (.ai file) and extruding it.

So I made a logo, in adobe illustrator - saved as an illustrator 8 file (from what I've learned in a tutorial)>loaded the .ai file into Houdini>opened it's floating file filechooser>unchecked save as one sequence - then saved>transform-node (centered my logo to origin)>hole-node(to correct the filled “O” in my logo)>polyextrude-node. The poly extrude node let me extrude my logo but, the letters are going in opposite directions, I was trying to play with the sliders in the polyextrude node but I can't get it to extrude in both directions equally. My first goal with these letters, is I want them to illuminate as if a beam of light from a distance shined on these glassy letters from left to right, in a cycle. I've attached a screenshot of what I'm talking about.

Hello, polyextrude uses normals (or a vector attribute) as extrusion direction.
I guess your individual pieces/letters have opposite normals, or polyextrude precomputes them in a non-consistent way.

Better you hardcode the normals yourself and tell polyextryde to use them.

In a wrangle node just before the polyextrude copy the following code:

Then set the polyextrude to use point normal - existing normals.
Cheers

Andr
Hello, polyextrude uses normals (or a vector attribute) as extrusion direction.
I guess your individual pieces/letters have opposite normals, or polyextrude precomputes them in a non-consistent way.

Better you hardcode the normals yourself and tell polyextryde to use them.

In a wrangle node just before the polyextrude copy the following code:

@N = set(0,0,1)

Then set the polyextrude to use point normal - existing normals.
Cheers

Oof, I'm in the midst of teaching myself python, unless your interested in a brief summary of how to use the python console? I've played with just a mere bit of java (Processing).

I just selected the letters and made an edit node to translate along the z-axis. I'm assuming the vector attribute your speaking of is still facing opposite than the other letters.

No python console needed. Simply add an Attribute Wrangle node, copy/paste the above code, done!

Midphase
No python console needed. Simply add an Attribute Wrangle node, copy/paste the above code, done!

Alright, I input the attribute wrangle node before the poly extrude node, and put typed the code Andr said in the VEXpression box. Within polyextrude node, I set extrusion mode to point normals, and my logo dissapeared and up came an error. I attached a hip file this time.

Your hip file doesn't have any attribute wrangle. Did you submit the right hip?

Also put a stash node after your file node and click on the stash button to load up the file data into that node.

Otherwise the file node is pointing to your file on your computer - which we don't have access too -

BabaJ
Your hip file doesn't have any attribute wrangle. Did you submit the right hip?

Also put a stash node after your file node and click on the stash button to load up the file data into that node.

Otherwise the file node is pointing to your file on your computer - which we don't have access too -

Here ya go. I tried clicking the “stash input” button in the stash node, nothing happens.

Your stash node worked, nothing really is suppose to happen in any obvious way.

You can always flag the visibility of the stash and disconnect it from its' source(or in your case bypass the file node). If you still see the geometry, you know it works.

You only had one minor error. Forgot the semi-colon to your line of code in the wrangle.

If it's like this, you will see the end result you were after;

BabaJ
Your stash node worked, nothing really is suppose to happen in any obvious way.

You can always flag the visibility of the stash and disconnect it from its' source(or in your case bypass the file node). If you still see the geometry, you know it works.

You only had one minor error. Forgot the semi-colon to your line of code in the wrangle.

If it's like this, you will see the end result you were after;

@N = set(0,0,1);

Fantastic, thanks! Now, I don't want to make another thread, but I've noticed the letters that had opposite vector attributes, also have different color, when I add another color node, they don't all become the same, there's like some hint of blue that's sticks on it no matter color I select.

The original source lines do not have the same vertex order when brought into Houdini.

A reverse sop was added to make them all the same for the primitives.

I couldn't figure out how to preserve grouping through the polyextrude, so I did the operation with for blocks to have a group for each letter to more easily access them at the end with the transforms.

The normals added for the poly extrude sop where just for the extrusion process, so normal sop was added at the end for the vertices to get proper shading of your applied color.

And a little expression for a bit of animation to add some momentum