Hi!
I would like to have some text on my cloth with other material and I would like to do it inside Houdini i.e. using Font.
I can boolean shatter the text on the cloth but that distorts the simulation and the result is not as smooth as it should.
So using texture would be better but I haven't found a way to use the Font for textures
I have tried to search here for “procedural text” but the search engine ignores the quotation marks and so gives way too many results.

So please someone tell me (a Houdini newbie, see sig so please explain well) how to do that the best (or any) way?

Oh and if that affects the method, I render with Octane

Thank you!

Antti

There are 2 relatively easy methods to do this:

1.) use COPs. There's a FontCOP that can either use a text file or an expression. Use that to render out your textures, and point your materials to them.

2.) You can also just render a complete 3D scene to an image and use that as a texture.

To have a full procedural setup that runs in the right order for everything you can use PDG/TOPs to build a dependency graph.

*Edit: I have attached a super simple example. Load the hip, dive into the COPnet, hit “render” on the ROP, so that it generates the texture for the first time.

WOW! That was fastest help I have ever got anywhere and very nice demo too :O

Thank you very much, I'm still a bit confused with COPs/SHOPs so I didn't notice the FontCOP node

I can use this as base and do it in two phases (first this and then use the image for texture) but is it possible to use that output directly as texture for material?

I have no idea what this means: “you can use PDG/TOPs to build a dependency graph”. I know TOPs are some tasks but other than that I have no idea, sorry If you have some link for me to RTFM, please share or even better, a tutorial link

Anyway, thank you VERY much, already this helped a lot and now I can also start searching for more info on this

Antti

Hi,

you can use it directly (even though that is a bit more arcane), by using the so called op-syntax. I attached an updated hip that points to a different part of the COPnet (just a green color).

Here's the section of the manual:
https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/io/op_syntax.html [www.sidefx.com]

Just beware! You can easily build setups this way that eat massive amounts of performance, because these run every frame. So it may be more sensible to cache stuff out.

Hi!

I had just found a tutorial that uses the same method

Also thanks for the tip, maybe I'll need to learn about TOPs and dependency graphs (and of course COPs) to do it correct way

Thank you very much again!

Antti

Hi atnreg,

I'm also trying to learn how to add dynamic text via a texture to my geo in Houdini (rendered via Octane). I appreciate you asking this question as protozoan's answer has given me some insight, but I was wondering if you could share the link to the tutorial you found and or if you have any advice on how to implement this. Do you just put a path to the COP texture in the filename field of the texture node in your Octane shader?

For more context, I'm looking to add an incrementing number per object instance that will be visible in the render.

Thanks in advance!
Travis

Hi!

That was long time ago so I don't remember the tutorial and also could not find it from my bookmarks, sorry

I am not currently using Octane (subscription) so I cannot access the Octane parts of that project

However, based on what I can access in that project is that I used ROP File Output to create image file and then used that in Octane. The reason I don't remember anymore, it may have been something that was easier to do that way in that particular project for some reason but it also can be something that I could not get the OP path method to work after all with Octane. But as I did not do animation (except for cloth dynamics but only used one frame) and I needed different text versions, it may be that the image method was more suitable for some other reason as well.

The OP path method works fine with Mantra in latest daily build, just tested with the protozoan's demo. I haven't tried it with Karma yet. I am hoping that Karma/USD has developed to be usable, I tried it in Jan/Feb and it crashed all the time and was very complicated to use and horribly slow so if it works now I am targeting getting rid of Octane and to be able to work in Houdini and export to USD for Clarisse which is my main renderer/layout tool.

I had long break (3-4 months) in 3D stuff as I was doing javascript/Python project but now I'm back to 3D and need to check where the Karma development is now

So I'm afraid this did not help you much
I can activate my Octane if you need to know how I used it but as I have no use for it currently I'd rather not

BTW, it's sad to see that if you don't have some plugin activated, you cannot even see the network structure, that was surprise for me

Antti