Toonman

Well, I've been able to solve some problems, and introduce others. I'll keep banging on this…

I think I'm starting to understand how to use a POP Network to achieve what you explained. I'll try it out later…

jeff
Houdini doesn't think. It just does what you tell it to. It's just nodes working on geometry modified by other nodes is all. There is no magic in there. The magic lives in you (oh my now I sound like Celine Dion). No hidden operators to stupify the workflow.

Hey Jeff. Sorry for the delay. Got stuck in other things these days. First of all, thanks for the reply and the sample file. I took a look, and had further questions, if you don't mind.
First, what I meant by the above, is that Houdini has some quite specific requirements around how data needs to be fed to it so I can arrive to the result I need. These requirements are different to how I need to feed data to other DCC tools. That's basically what I meant by “learning how it thinks”.

Now, for the rest…

jeff
Posting a hip file could have shrunk your above post to three or four sentences. Next time just post your hip file so we can see what you are up to. Hip files are completely self-documenting. Add Notes in networks where appropriate to clarify issues.

See the attached hip file.

Thanks for the suggestion. Following your instructions, I've attached a file to this post that will probably offer a lot more visibility on what I'm trying to achieve than my attempts at explaining it.

jeff
Skinning particles is generally done by first creating the “parent” attribute on the source and followed with a Split POP generating a fixed number of splits. Then use an Add SOP to build primitives by attribute. This workflow supports changing topology (I even use a fuse to consolidate co-incident points), varying source emission, whatever.

I'll give this a go and see where it takes me.

—-

jeff
Modulo is represented by % which is common in many programming languages.

Nice. I'll try using it and see if I run into any problems. Thanks.

jeff
Source POPs are limited to what local attributes it can access. See the Help for that Operator. Actually that is the first place to look when wondering about a node: the node help. Since it is creating the points, it doesn't have a filter to read in those attributes. Just add a POP after to do the filtering. POPs are creating a single rule set that is applied to the point accel, v and P.
That is why $ID doesn't work on the source emitter POP.

Here's where I got a bit lost. I'm not quite sure how to do this in the file I've attached. If you could take a look and explain a bit, I'd sincerely appreciate it.

jeff
The Houdini textport is used to type in Hscirpt commands directly. To evaluate expressions, you need to use the echo command and encase your expression in back ticks for it to evaluate.

For example:

echo `sin($F*3) * ch(“/obj/geo1/point1/ty”)`

or

echo `rand(chs(“/obj/geo1/point1/group”)`

Ah, well, that helps a lot! Thanks! I'll keep this handy in my notes. Thanks a lot Jeff!