gregjenings

Hi everyone! I asked about this earlier but didn’t get any responses, so I thought I’d try again.

Does anyone know how to recreate this kind of timecode-driven lighting effect in Houdini, similar to what’s shown in this video(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sicHNdE-U5o&list=RDkYnRKOgZulU&index=3) I’m particularly interested in how the lights are animated across the patterns, with the changing colours and movement.

Any tutorials, tips, or guidance on the right approach would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Thank you both, Liesbeth and Kai, for your suggestions and for sharing your methods. They clarified a lot of things for me. However, there are still a few points that I’m not completely sure how to achieve.

First, if I don’t want the clumps to be distributed equally, how could I create a more random clump distribution? Also, is there a way to control the clump distribution using a mask or a painted attribute? This would give me more control over where the clumps are created.

Second, I tried to generate Glue Constraints using the method you suggested, but unfortunately, I’m either not applying the constraints correctly or the method does not fully support them. The Glue Constraints seem to work quite well when using the standard Houdini grooming workflow, but I’m having trouble getting the same result with this approach.

I’ve attached a file showing my setup and how I’m currently approaching the method you suggested. Hopefully, this makes it easier to understand what I’m trying to achieve.

Finally, I have one more important question. If this method works well, how would you recommend simulating and rendering millions of hairs? Simulating all the hair directly seems to require a lot of memory.

Is there a more efficient or memory-friendly workflow for handling millions of hairs while still getting a good simulation result? For example, should only a smaller number of hairs be simulated and then used to drive the rest?

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you again for your help!

Hi Liesbeth,

Thank you for your last reply! It worked perfectly and helped me solve the previous issue.

I have another question regarding the imported hair curves.

I’ve brought render hairs/curves from another hair package, and now I want to apply a Glue Constraint based on Clump ID. However, these imported curves don’t currently have any Clump IDs.

Manually selecting curves by looking at their existing clumps and assigning Clump IDs would be extremely tedious, especially when dealing with a large number of curves.

Is there a procedural way to automatically generate Clump IDs based on the existing hair structure, proximity, or distribution?

More importantly, I would like to have control over the number of clumps. For example, I might want to generate 50, 100, or 500 clumps and have the curves automatically distributed into those clumps.

Ideally, I’m looking for a workflow that can:

Automatically identify/group related or nearby curves into clumps
Generate a Clump ID attribute for each group
Allow me to control the total number of clumps
Use those Clump IDs later for the Glue Constraint

I’m trying to avoid manually selecting and assigning Clump IDs curve by curve.

Is there a recommended procedural workflow, node setup, or approach for achieving this in Houdini?

Thanks again for your help!