Typically you add more detail by reducing the amount of particle separation, if you can please attach an example file of what you're seeing and maybe I can help you out.

Hi Alex,

Lucky for you there is a simple solution to your problem.

One train car works fine with your setup, however if you're using multiple cars it will try to scan all of them in one cook.

If you use a RBD_Fractured_Object node instead you can assign each car to its own group so that Houdini will scan each car independently before it runs the gas solve.

To get this working you can use a connectivity sop followed by a partition sop on your train geo to give it a group per car. Then in your dop network put down a RBD_Fractured_Object instead of RBD_Object and point it to the train geo with the groups. Make sure to set the “Group Mask” to something like car* or piece* (or whatever you named the group) so it will cycle through all groups.

I've attached a working Example File.

I looked this up before posting and what I found led me to a page that's no longer available:

http://git.techartadventures.com/sburrichter/realtimevfx-shelf [git.techartadventures.com]

I tried adding the Realtime-VFX shelf in Houdini but it doesn't show up under the listed options. I also tried making the shelf myself and adding the scripts manually but couldn't find the scripts I needed.

I'm trying to do something which should be pretty simple.

I have 1,000 points and they move from 10 to 0 in Y at random rates. I need to export these animating points in the FBX format and import them into Unreal.

Each point has a grid attached, none of the points have any dynamic properties and do all of their motion via a wrangle node.

All of the data lives in one object at the sop level, nothing is looking for channels etc. Point counts do not change.

Is there a simple way to import this deforming geometry into Unreal? I've seen the discussions re: Fractured Objects and exporting them with bone deformers. Is this really necessary? And if so, how would I go about doing so in my setup?

A brief description of my setup would be:

Scattered points > attributeWrangle (for motion) > point vop (for some animated noise) and then > copy sop that attaches grids to each point. 8 nodes in total.

Thank you

Honestly it's pretty disappointing SideFX hasn't updated this tool at all to include a second input for noise offsets. The way it's designed right now it feels like a half baked idea.

Having to customize a tool that is missing basic functions is a waste of time for all of us. Collectively we've probably spent months solving this and coming up with better waves ourselves.

You can lock the “glass_mug” file node (Right Click>Flags>Lock/Unlock) That way it will be baked into the file so we can see it in the example you've posted.

As for your question depending on your setup you could simply change the “Start Time” parameter on your AutoDopNetwork to whatever frame you want the RBD sim to start.

You could also take your glass_mug RBD_Object dop and set creation frame to whichever frame you want.

In addition you can add a switch node to your DOP network and switch between a static and active object. I've attached a modified version of your file with an example of how that would work.

Any updates on this? I'm running into the same problem.

It seems if your Influence Scale is smaller or equal to your Droplet Scale the VDB from particles node inside the network throws an error. Once it errors other switches start throwing warnings and the vdb surfacer never snaps out of it.

I have to lay down a new particlefluidsurface node and make sure my Influence Scale is set to 2-3x's my Droplet scale.

This seems to be working, I'll reply to this thread if it breaks again.

A simple merge sop should work.

For me it's been easier to just create a separate object for each pyro I'm dealing with. This allows me to easily adjust shadow intensity, shader attributes, link them with volume lights etc. It depends on your workflow though, sometimes I'll have a few pyro sims merged together into one object and others are stripped out for lighting purposes.

You can open it but it will be changed to a hipnc file when you do, which shouldnt be a problem in this case.

I'm using Houdini version 15.0.244.16

I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for but I've attached a file with some examples of setting normals, reversing normals, and grouping reversed normals.

Typically a facet sop with “Post-Compute Normals” checked on will have normals that orient the way you want.

If this isnt what you're looking for let me know and I'll try to help you out.

Cheers!

One way to get around the shortcomings with booleans would be to try the openVDB workflow.

I've attached a Hip file with an example if you want to check it out.

Enivobs response is correct.

As with (almost) everything in Houdini there is another way to offset your pyro if you'd like. This method will also work for animated textures, composite sops, etc.

In your file node you'll have to write a bit of code:

Let's say this is the geometry/sim file you're pointing to in your read node

Cdata/mydata/pyro_v01.$F4.bgeo

You'll need to modify it and do the time shift. But you'll also have to make sure the range is clamped and wont error out. In this example we have $F padded by 4, so each frame will be 0001, 0002, 0003, 0004, and so on. To shift, clamp, and define frame padding you can write an expression like this

Cdata/mydata/pyro_v01.`padzero(4,clamp($F-99,1,300))`.bgeo

padzero(4,$F) defines the frame padding
clamp() lets you define a range to clamp values to
$F-99 makes it so that frame 1 won't happen until frame 100
1,300 is the start/end of the original range

Make sure not to forget the tics ``

If your frames aren't padded the expression would look like this

Cdata/mydata/pyro_v01.`clamp($F-99,1,300)`.bgeo

Hope this helps!

Thanks Tomas,

That helped. I was able to bake one shader into the ifd. When I bake two, it grabs the first shop_materialpath and that's all I get. This is still very useful and solves my problem, with one shader baked into the ifd I was able to layer an additional shader onto the delayed load when rendering.

Thanks again!

-Daniel

Hi,

I'm trying to get an object with two materials (one surface shader, one displacement shader) to render using the delayed load procedural pipeline.

I've tried rendering an ifd via the mantra archive rop, I've tried both bundling the materials in with the geo and writing them out separately. However, when I source the ifd in my delayed load shader I get the geo with no materials assigned.

I'm probably missing something within the mantra archive workflow. Any tips?