Great, I'll give that a go. Much appreciated!

Thanks for the reply.

To clarify, soft pin all points on the high res geo to all points on the sub divided guide cloth? Or just every n points?

Apologies for my ignorance, I rarely use vellum!

Hello all,

If I have a low res, basic cloth sim, is there anyway of then simming on top of that with a much denser cloth geo to get more folds and wrinkles, taking the basic/general movement of the basic sim?

I've tried strategically pinning parts of the cloth to the "guide cloth", but then the cloth will have pointy areas where its pinned. What I really want is to say follow the general movement of the input geo, but only say by 30% in this area, 60% in this area, 90% in this area etc, completely dynamic in these areas etc.

Is that doable?

Thanks!

Hi,

Thanks for your reply and suggestions! That totally works. However, my bad, I definitely should have mentioned, I am trying to do this procedurally, as I have many curves and need to run them in batches/parallel. In the example file the method that works with a linear carve is procedural, and I'm hoping to find a way I can apply easing to the carving and find out mathematically how mimic that with the birthframe distribution.

Thanks again for your solution though!

Hello,

I have a carved line, which after the fact I am calculating a "bornFrame" for each point in the line (i.e. the frame the line begins to 'exist' on). I'm doing this with a simple fit between the carve frames and ptnum and npoints of the pre carved line. It works as the fit and the carve are a linear mapping. It breaks when I apply easing on to the carve.

Initially I thought this was simple, just apply the same easing curve to the calculation of the bornFrame, but that doesn't work as for example easing in will produce lower bornFrame values, but they would need to be higher as it would take longer for each point to be "born".

Can anyone enlighten me as to how to do this?

Thanks!

Fwiw, I was having the same problem and Sean's suggestion of Detail -> detriangulate -> only unchanged polys worked a treat.

Finally it seems vdb combine actually does what it says on the tin, as of 17.5, with the ‘Flatten all A’ option.

This is how this node should have worked from the start and was one of those things where I couldn't understand why for years it was so convoluted to flatten x number of vdbs!

Hello all,

I'm using 2 merged ocean spectra to generate a large ocean, and then plugging it into the foam sop. The 2 ocean spectra represent low freq and high freq waves, with the high freq spectra being very high res (12 res. exponent) and the low freq being only 8/9. This makes the foam generation very slow. I'm looking at using the downsample parameter to speed this up, but I noticed that the ocean evaluate has a ‘max resolution’ parm also, so instead of globally downsampling both spectra, you can just set a clamp on the res.

However, I notice that unlike the downsample parm, the max resolution parm is not promoted on the ocean foam sop from the ocean evaluate that is inside. I am wondering if there is any particular reason this is not exposed? To my mind it seems a better option than globally downsampling both spectra (as with a downsample of 2, my low freq spectra would then go from 8 to 6 - too low, as well as the high freq spectrum going from 12 to 10)?

Any advice from people in the know would be awesome.

Thanks!

I'll check to see if there is anything similar in there. Thanks!

Hello,

Is it possible to get hold of the source hip files for features demo'd in the side fx videos? I started experimenting with vellum and I'm impressed with the cloth and how easy it is to use. I am having some issues with vellum hair interacting with rigids however (stretching etc.) so it'd be useful to see the setup for the spiderweb and toy collider seen in the H17 demo at 1:50:-

https://vimeo.com/291934239 [vimeo.com]



Are these available anywhere?

Thanks!

I use the new for loops whenever I can, but I can never get them to work when the operations I want to loop over contain any time based sops (e.g. timeshift, trail etc.).

The foreach subnetwork allowed for all these situations.

I am aware of the technique of structuring it so whatever time based stuff your doing lies outside of the loop, but its cumbersome, forcing you to work around the problem instead of addressing it directly.

Are there any plans to make the new loop structure work in these scenarios?

I'll check it out. Cheers!

Hello,

Can you guys recommend any links to free shading and/or lighting tutorials that are up to date (16.0 onward)? I am keen to improve my knowledge in these areas but I'm having trouble finding many tutorials on these specific topics for the newer releases.

Thanks!

Dean.

Ok seems I have the wrong env variable. I should be using $PYTHONPATH, I mis-understood one of the helpcards!

I also found out how to do it on the fly, I'm sure lots of people already know but just in case any don't you can add this to your tool script before it tries to source the module:-

import sys
sys.path.insert(0,“/path/to/my/awesome/script”)

and your tool will see your module.

Hello,

I am creating a shelf tool that sources a custom python module. Is there anywhere to store said module that Houdini will automatically pick up when using import other than/lib or /usr/lib/? I don't have write access to these directories.

I know I can add a custom directory to $LD_LIBRARY_PATH, but if I want to distribute the tool to other users they will have to do the same. Is there a directory within ~/HoudiniX.Y/ somewhere where it would get sourced automatically? I tried ~/HoudiniX.Y/scripts/ but no go, even though this directory works for sourcing other Python files, like OnCreated.py for when you place a node.

Thanks!

Thanks Tomas!

Ah right, isHidden() pertains to hiding a parameter using the ‘Hide when’ field in ‘edit parameter interface’, not the ‘invisible’ option.

Makes sense.

….anyway to test the invisible option?

Hello,

Does the isHidden() function not work in HOM?

It always seems to return false for a parameter even if it is invisible, or is isHidden() testing something else?

Thanks,

Dean.

Its used, pretty much to some degree by most major studios I'd say, but not as the sole solution.

I've lit and rendered stuff in Houdini/Mantra at Framestore, DD, Sony, Double Negative and ILM that have gone into the final shot. Although almost all of these things were fx elements.

It's true that many studios don't use Houdini/Mantra in their lighting dept as the main basis of lighting and rendering on big shows, but many fx departments do, and fx is more or less the only other department that regularly renders is own stuff. So I guess you're both right in a way, the main bulk of the rendering on big shows is rarely done in Houdini (apart from at Houdini only studios), but some rendering is usually done in Mantra, in the form of fx elements.

Yep this was one of the things I tried to use. Didn't seem to give me what I expected. I'll try again.

Thanks.