Dear fellow Houdinistas!

We are pleased to announce that after more than two years of tinkering, qLib [github.com] - our open source asset library for Houdini - has reached version 0.1 .

qLib is a library of more than a hundred more or less simple tools [github.com] that we built during and beside production work as Houdini artists. When we started qLib we wanted to have a library that is documented, and actively developed and maintained. Later we wanted version control and decided to embrace the open source development model, so we put the whole library up to github [github.com] and made it public. But now we want even more..

Now we want to invite all of you to test, to comment, to criticize [facebook.com], to report bugs [github.com], to help us to write better docs [github.com], to fix tools that doesn’t work as intended, to share your ideas and to share your assets that you find useful and that you have no problem with others finding it useful too.

We believe that Houdini has a wonderful user community with lots of clever and helpful member, so we hope that a project like qLib can focus that knowledge and wisdom into tools thus making every Houdini user’s life a little bit better. Even better..

The qLib Team

hi folks!

I encourage You to download the library and open the example files, there are some really nice tools for speeding up certain workflows, just some highlights:

- waypoint qL SOP - provides very nice and comortable bgeo caching mechanism

- vector qL - easy manipulation of vector or 2 vectors trough graphical interface, built in mix/dot product/cross product etc calculations

- vector jitter ql - provides angle and lenght jittering, very nice tool for defining initial velocities for explosions or emitters

- prim group assets - various usage of primgroups, for example making proxies for faster rbd simulation with proxy primgroups qL or getting centroids of primgroups with primgroup centroids qL

- attribute manipulation tools: attrib shape qL, noise qL, attrib lookup ramp qL

- deformation: bend qL, twist qL, deform by surface, path deform qL etc

- generator SOPs: star, spial, maze etc

- object level tools: camera rig qL, turbulate motion qL, shot qL

take a ride!

Realy nice set of tools, thanks for sharing

late reply - but a heartfelt thank you to all those concerned in making these tools. they really are very good and i urge everyone to have a look at them.

many thanks qlib team - you rock!

great! very usefull, thanks for sharing

cheers

Lucas

It looks like the github repo has moved to here?

https://github.com/qLab/qLib [github.com]

Yes, I cannot recommend qLib highly enough. Whenever I'm at a studio that has Houdini seats, I always encourage pipeline dudes to check out qLib and to consider integrating with their own OTL libraries. Many of the qLib assets are more robust than lots of the proprietary in-house tools I've played with…

They also serve as great examples of seriously well-designed digital assets. You can tell that a lot of love went in to putting these guys together.

A great set of tools that used to be very lacking. Thank you for that! Let's test.

Hi!

A lot of improvements has been made to various tools, since november. Also there are a bunch of new assets to play with.
Give it a whirl.

Yes, the links have changed…

- the main page is at http://qlab.github.io/qLib/ [qlab.github.io]
- the repo is at https://github.com/qLab/qLib [github.com]

I recommend to grab the “dev” branch from the repo. (We do a “release” from time to time, for some reason, but the latest is always in the dev branch for now.)

I also recommend to check out the facebook page at

https://www.facebook.com/pages/qLib/145692112131248 [facebook.com]

where there are lots of screenshots of the various tools, and all kinds of Houdini-related goodness.

cheers,
imre

This library is basically a “side effect” (heh heh) of us working with Houdini (we realized we need to build an asset library anyway, so why not do it properly – and while we're at it, why not share with others). Makes our life _much_ easier.

Making sure the quality is OK is also very good for us in the long run. We use this stuff all the time, so we want to make sure our own dog food tastes proper. Apart from sharing all the stuff we're very selfish people.

—

The last two major additions to qLib are Scatter qL SOP and Ray qL SOP – they're a bit feature-incomplete compared to the originals, but they are multithreaded – if you're working with tens of millions of particles, using all CPUs does matter.

Right now I'm working on some underwater-ink effects. The way it's usually done is by creating some volume fluid/smoke sim and advecting lots of particles with the velocity volumes.

Anyway, I was in a situation where I had to build my emission points in SOP using Scatter, then doing the sim in POPs. We're talking about tens of millions of points on a single CPU.

I ended up un-hiding the DOP-POP stuff that was in the beta but hidden in the final release, and building Scatter qL SOP. Now all CPUs run all the time and I have acceptable simulation interactivity (!) with tens of millions of particles.

(Btw, DOP-POP is so much faster that I'm making it a principle never to enter a POP network again. – Don't mean to beat a dying horse, especially one that did so much so well.)

It's a great thing that SESI guys also build low-level nodes and the final OPs are built using these and other existing OPs. This allows us to do the same thing which is great. Scatter qL is basically just a Point Generate SOP and some VEX code. And if you have multithreaded point generation and modification – voila, you have a Scatter variant that's magnitudes faster.

Ray qL SOP was a result of when I had to ray similar amounts of particles on an ocean surface. It does matter when you speed up your processing times by 4x, and the only single-threaded operation is disk output. (The only thing missing from Ray qL right now is the multi-ray sampling feature.)


The bad news is all this stuff won't save me from working on a sunday, so I have to go now…

cheers

Whoever has not yet checked out this repo: Do so now. No exceptions.

Awesome stuff, thanks to everyone involved!

What's the best way to install this on a Windows machine?

DASD
Awesome stuff, thanks to everyone involved!

What's the best way to install this on a Windows machine?

We use Git for Windows, but you could simply download. Install docs here (don't forget to edit houdini.env):
http://qlab.github.io/qLib/ [qlab.github.io]

DASD
Awesome stuff, thanks to everyone involved!

What's the best way to install this on a Windows machine?

something like for h15

in h.env
QLIB=“XqLib-dev”
QOTL=“$QLIB/otls”
HOME15 = “$HOME/houdini15.0”

HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH = “$HOME15/otls;$HOME15/otls/wip;$QOTL/base;$QOTL/future;$QOTL/experimental;&”
HOUDINI_GALLERY_PATH = “$QLIB/gallery;&”
HOUDINI_TOOLBAR_PATH = “$QLIB/toolbar;&”
HOUDINI_SCRIPT_PATH = “$QLIB/scripts;&”

i clearly do not understand this adress - @/scripts

Thanks!
In the end I did it like they suggested:

In git terminal enter the following lines (and press enter after each):
cd PLACE/TO/INSTALL
git clone https://github.com/qLab/qLib.git [github.com]


And add the following lines to houdini.env file:
QLIB=PLACE/TO/INSTALL/qLib/otls
HOUDINI_OTLSCAN_PATH=@/otls;$QLIB/base;$QLIB/future;$QLIB/experimental

With the following lines I get git to update the files:
$ cd qLib
$ git pull

Hello,

I installed the Qlib otls library by modifying the houdini.env file, works perfectly and all the assets are available but I can't get any help card from the help button.

H15, osX.

Is there anything I should do ?

Many thanx.

Hi.
Great initiative!
If i want to contribute, i fork the dev branch and:
- If i make a new otl do i place it in the experimental folder? Or how do you want this organised?
- Do you want PR's in the dev branch or in separate pr issue branches?

-b

Jerome Pastorello
Hello,

I installed the Qlib otls library by modifying the houdini.env file, works perfectly and all the assets are available but I can't get any help card from the help button.

H15, osX.

Is there anything I should do ?

Many thanx.

i think otl/hda help is broken in H15 atm. does not work here either.

Ah Ok thanx Doudini.