Hello there, I'm new in this forum and also pretty new to Houdini.
A admit, I've nevver seen my Beachball pop up so often and for such a long time. Even if my main work is done in AE. But that seems to be the fun about using Houdini.

So sorry for my inability to express my problem in an appropriate terminology.


So, I'm running Houdini 13.0.509 Apprentice on a 16GB, 2.6GHz i7 SSD-Macbook Pro.

My aim is to produce an ocean with regular stormy waves, some foam and water splashes, dark ambient, and two bis tsunami like super waves rolling in towards the camera.

I found some very convincing samples of You guys all around the world. (kudos to all those great artist amongst you!)

My problems seem to be of a very varied kind. As soon as I render out whatever is offered as the H13 whitewater I get some huge snowballs on my waves instead of fine foam and pretty splashes. Even if I spend some very long time, rendering a 120*120 tank with a particle separation of 0.06 or even less.

Also I run into some issue with the volume going above the surface, when trying to solve my problem using a “Ocean Wave” in stormy conditions. (some light green artifacts showing up instead of chop foam)


Most of these great samples on vimeo and youtube are using H12.5.

So: Am I aiming for the impossible, because the latest Houdini's whitewater just doesn't look like these homebrewed whitewaters?
Am I doing something completely wrong?
Is Whitewater also something you have to digg into nodes to correct that strange (and in my eyes very offputting) issue with the nc behind the ending (“picnc” a.s.o.)?


It would be great to receive a sample file of a stormy FLIP-Ocean with convincing whiteater to render on my machine on Mantra - just to be sure, it's possible and I just have to learn a lot more. The default settings of the shelf tools are great for a fast simulation. But as there is not a hint on what you have to change back to “real values” it's pretty difficult for me to get a decent render.

After more or less 10 days of reading, watching tutorials, trying out and still not getting what I want - I could though write a book on some inconsistencies in the documentation, but who am I to complain. ;]

Can you please post the documentation inconsistencies up here or to the support menu above / submit bug. Although there can be issues it's usually apprentice user error in not understanding it yet. Thanks!

It will be best to post sample renders of your scene and the project file showing the issues. A picture is worth a thousand words as they say.

The picnc file extension naming has become a kind of litmus test of aptitude as any real work you will do in visual effects will make that seem inconsequential

About size of your whitewater (huge snow ball) , maybe for some reason your particles come huge ! , maybe this is not a bug :?
To test it , just append a “Point SOP” in the geometry network for your whitewater particles , then in it's parameters go to Particle page and set particle scale to very low number such as .01 (set Keep Scale to Add Scale).
If your problem doesn't solve , then you should upload your hip file please :arrow:

Hi! Thanks for the quick answer.

I do indeed think that most of the problems I encounter are sitting right in front of the machine. ;] (To save some dignity: I resolved the picnc thing in under one hour. What doesn't make one a dungeon master of course.)

One inconsistency that took some time to figure out was the “ignore mass” tip. I couldn't find what was suggested in http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini13.0/dyno/liquids [sidefx.com] at the bottom
Hasn't this feature also just been removed?

I guess I sound like a noob which i am, very much.

My biggest problem is the shelf tool whitewater that - the way I use it – just doesn't seem to add this white splashes to high velocity water and doesn't seem to add that certain foam net like appearance at the chop of ocean waves.

Thank you for Your patience. But as I keep getting strange results that just don't seem to happen to others I am a bit worried I wasted the last 10 days of restarting a crashing houdini and waiting minutes on a turning beach ball after every click on some system issue with my Mac. That's why I was asking if anyone would kindly send me a FLIP ocean file with that “real look”, that I could on the one hand check my render setup and on the other learn what I was doing wrong.

—- I was trying to render out that snow ball like white water while waiting and houdini just crashed about three times after a 3 Minute wait. I'm gonna post without befor I reboot.


Thanks for all the help.

Well, right now Houdini is breaking up every three minutes. Seems that some cache, preferences or whatever got corrupted.
So all I can offer is the last render where the particle separation of the fluid was still at 0.1. It still doesn't look like foam to me, but I'm pretty sure the problem sits in front of the computer having a headache. ;[

This is the whitewater of a shelf Wave tank with nothing changed but the wind speed and the chop cranked up.


Any help - anyways - is very much appreciated.

(I'm not posting the hip right now as don't know if it wouldn't ruin somebody else's system.)

Please post the .hip file - we have ways to deal with ‘bad’ project files.

It'll be more accurate the get to the solution this way, instead of playing wack-a-mole.

Hey Marty, thanks for Your help!
(Went to Your site to see the most impressive stuff You do. It's an honor to receive help like Your's.)

I'm trying to upload some HIP(NC)s.

One is the test setup I did to find out if Houdini would do the job for me. Water needs to burst in through a door. So there is a liquid, a ramp, some door like arrangement of three blocks I can shift around to test sizes, and a wide open bounding box that allows the water to “spread into the room”.

What comes out is a lot of mist around some formed water. What I wanted was a lot of foamy water, a little spray and little to no mist at all.

I was wondering, if it was ever possible to achieve this using the shelf whitewater. I'm not expecting this: https://vimeo.com/67440849 [vimeo.com]
But somehow a litte bubbles inside the water that make it white, some foam on the surface…
Or don't I do this using whitewater but some velocity/curve-related color ramp on the liquid Material?

Unfortunately right now it takes ages to open (I'd like to check before I present my messed up toys to the big guys.

So I'll first upload the last Render I did to show some movement on my side of the world.

I'm very sorry.
(The frustration level just got raised a little again.)

I wanted to check the file before I upload it.
I think I turned off the foam bubbles and spray to check things before the file last crashed. So maybe those are turned off.

I tried to put things where they actually have to be but houdini just didn't let me do anything. Not even the autoupdate could have been turned off due to some cooking process that just wouldn't stop.

Around frame 170 there should be the splash.


It's a bit embarrassing and I might have to re-register under a new name after this. But this is the main file I have been struggeling with.

I changed the scaling of the whitewater particles a little, put in some friction and viscosity into the main liquid and reduced the rendered items to whitewater, surface and liquid.

Good afternoon.

Let me add another problem I have (assuming I try to solve my task using the shelf “Ocean Waves”).

From time to time the Interior of the fluid seem to come above the surface. causing atrifacts. It seems to me that this ist where there should be a lot of foam.

Is the sitting bug inside Houdini or in front of my computer?

7pc
Unfortunately right now it takes ages to open

I usually save simulation scenes at frame 1 for this purpose. Also, you can start Houdini with the -n command line option to load a hip file with cooking disabled.

Ah, the n trick. Thank You! Read about it but forgot. Seemed to be a different problem though.

Thanks 7pc - I'll check it out.

Edit: Had a quick look, very busy with deadlines currently, the crashes will happen most likely as your Ram is not enough.

Try a smaller simulation size first. I'll get back into this later.

Thanks!

Thanks a lot !!

I will try to reduce sizes and reconstruct using shorter distances.

Thank You for Your time on this!

Thanks for all the help on this subject.
I have moved on a bit.

The questions about whitewater are still open but not that urgent any more.

Less particles and avoiding the shelf Ocean made things a bit less “crashy”.