Stephen Wagner

Your file is working, but there are a few things going on here.

-the sphere is low poly which makes it easy for the structure of struts to hold its shape. Bump up you sphere to a frequency around 10.

-constraint iterations and substeps can change the “stiffness”. reduce constrain iteration on the vellum solver to 50.

-if you would like to further weaken the softbody try increasing the detach point chance on the vellum strut.


Hope that helps. Like most things in Houdini it take a bit of playing around with the setting to get what you are looking for.

more info on vellum
https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/houdini-17-masterclass-vellum-overview/
[www.sidefx.com]
https://vimeo.com/294379827
[vimeo.com]

point one - I would imagine its a complex setup possible using struts(vellum soft body)to make the soldiers accessories appear to be ridges.

point two - Jeff is speaking about the vellum solver and what it does by “default” which makes it better at solving interpenetrations. Depending on which vellum solver (SOP or DOP) you can find (and turn off ¯\_( ツ )_/¯) the setting under dopnet>vellumsolver>collisions>Disable Failed Collisions.