Rob Sullivan

Hi, if you open Houdini (without loading the file), you should be able to select Manual Update instead of Auto Update (bottom right). Then open the file and it should stay on Manual Update so it won't cook anything.

Another method that sometimes works is to change the viewport to something else (like Geometry Spreadsheet) and then load the file. Some crashes will only happen when it tries to display a problematic node in the viewport.

Rob

Hi, Houdini has a few methods for determining orientation along a curve.

- The default orientation for a circle in Houdini is the XY plane which also happens to match the default sweep settings. If you change the circle orientation, you'll get different results. (Which might be what you are seeing in Modo)
- If your circle (or whatever shape you are using) is at a different orientation, you can use the options in Sweep to adjust it. (Construction Tab > Up Vectors)
- An alternative method would be to use the Orientation_Along_Curve sop on the curve before it goes into the sweep.

Regarding your second question:
Moving a circle to the start point of a curve is not really how a sweep is used. If you offset the position of a circle from 0,0,0 before it goes into a sweep, the sweep will be offset by the same amount.
What you are describing could be a method of using a polyextrude as a sweep alternative which requires the start and end points of the curve to match the front & back of an extrude.
Extrude along curve: https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/56419/?page=1#post-254260 [www.sidefx.com]

Regarding your third question:
If you have 12 points along a curve and you want to smooth them procedurally. You can use either of the following sops:
- Smooth (curve has same 12 points)
- Subdivide (curve now has 23 points)
- Resample (set to Subdivision Curves)
- Polybevel (set to points)

Note: Sweep can use multiple cross-sections if you want extra control over the start/middle/end of a sweep.
Multiple cross-sections: https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/70970/?page=1#post-301394 [www.sidefx.com]

Rob

Hi, looking at your hip file I noticed the following:

- The size of your keyboard is 44 x 13 Units. The default size of an area light is 1 x 1 unit. A unit in Houdini can be anything you want but the default is 1 unit = 1 meter. So either scale up all lights or scale down your keyboard.
- The Boolean on the KB_Body resulted with ngons. Your Polydoctor is highlighting the ngons in red.
- In the KB_Keys, there was an error with your selection for the polybevel2 after the Boolean. It was missing some edges which resulted in an incomplete bevel. I've shown how you can use abseams from the Boolean as a procedural selection for the polybevel instead.

Personally, I prefer to model to scale rather than scale down/up at the end of the chain. In this example, I've scaled the keyboard down at the end and you'll notice that editing anything upstream will be at the original scale. This means any editing will require zooming out to see what you are doing and zooming in to preview the result.

I also prefer to model using the headlight and use Redshift for setting up the actual lights.

I've uploaded a hip file where my changes are coloured green.

Rob