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TOTAL DURATION: 1h 2m 59s

A great way to understand Houdini’s node-based workflow is to explore it in the context of a project. It is important to start learning how to think and work procedurally. In this lesson, you will learn how to create your own custom brickify tool using procedural nodes and networks to define its function and interface.

Along the way you will get to use different aspects of Houdini’s workspace. By learning how to use these UI elements together, you will dive deeper into Houdini’s node-based workflow. The lessons will then give you a chance to put your ideas into practice, which is one of the best ways to learn.

This lesson includes a Step by Step PDF document to help guide you.

This is an updated version of this H19.5 Lesson.

CREATED BY

rmagee
ROBERT MAGEE

Robert Magee is a Senior Manager | Products and Customer Insights at SideFX who has been working with Houdini for 20 years. He has created lots of learning material and demos designed to help artists understand how going procedural with Houdini can benefit their work.

More from Robert Magee

COMMENTS

  • erasesea 1 year, 4 months ago  | 

    It's so fast I can't keep up. I can't see anything because it's going too far.

    • erasesea 1 year, 4 months ago  | 

      misunderstood after only watching the video. The PDF is so well organized, I like it! I can't delete the reply, so I'll reply instead

  • Immy_Raja 1 year, 3 months ago  | 

    task was quite straight forward but after smoooth shading at the end, my nuggin on my brick is not quite circular, it has straight edges, ive repeated the lesson and found the same result.

  • Immy_Raja 1 year, 3 months ago  | 

    it seems to happen when i do the last polybevel onto the group :) any help would be great

  • Immy_Raja 1 year, 3 months ago  | 

    i figured it out, i missed a step, when beveling make sure you turn off group selection in the parameter plane, before you select include edges box,

  • animatedpaul 1 year, 3 months ago  | 

    my point light isn't allowing me to manipulate it

    • DanielaLobo 1 year, 1 month ago  | 

      mine either!!!!!

      • hrgiger 1 year ago  | 

        Did you switch to shadow mode?

  • leifdux 1 year, 2 months ago  | 

    Interesting, I know everything is wired correctly because I am able to get both the color from the Color Node as well as the Cd attribute with the rubber toy color.
    But...when I do check Pack and Instance, it does not show any color at all (just the grey color you see in clay).

    Did not check Add Shader in the testgeometry_rubbertoy too... Help please...

    • rmagee 1 year, 2 months ago  | 

      Did you change your viewport to OpenGL? There were instructions at the beginning of the first video. That might be causing the issue.

      • leifdux 1 year, 2 months ago  | 

        Thank you for the reply! Yes, not setting viewport to OpenGL was the issue (was set to Vulkan).
        Sorry, I was following the textbook version until I got stuck at this. (I believe the textbook did not mention to set to OpenGL?)

        Is here the best place to reach for Q&As?
        My lego blocks are seemingly too big and is overlapping a lot, I'll follow the video version to troubleshoot.

        • rmagee 1 year, 2 months ago  | 

          Post to the Houdini Learning Material forum and ping me - be sure to include your hip file. That will make it easier to find where things aren't working.

  • Emil 1 year, 1 month ago  | 

    Thx Rob for a nice tut. I wanna know why you set the attribvop to Run Over: Vertices and then promote them back to Points, couldn't we just read the Cd from the texture and apply directly to points?

  • Emil 1 year, 1 month ago  | 

    Hi again Rob, I just gave it a shot by using the Attribute From Map node which works directly on points and it kinda replaced those 2 nodes (attribvop and attribpromote), at least visually looks the same.

  • janisfs 1 year, 1 month ago  | 

    Hi Rob
    I noticed this - the pegboard has an uneven shadow from the figure. There is a shadow on the base, but the tops of the bricks do not have one.
    How can this be fixed?

  • LuzidVision 9 months, 3 weeks ago  | 

    I really dont think explaining the basic UI stuff in every foundation tutorial is useful? Rather annoying?

    • rmagee 9 months, 3 weeks ago  | 

      The reason is that we don't know which of the foundation lessons people will start with. So we make sure to make it accessible to first timers in case this is the lesson they start with.

      • LuzidVision 9 months, 3 weeks ago  | 

        Sounds reasonable, I guessed as much. Still its sometimes a bit frustrating, given how frustrating Houdini can be by itself. When I fight for an hour with a 10 mins segment of a tutorial, starting the next tutorial with repetitive info is somewhat agitating :D

  • LuzidVision 9 months, 3 weeks ago  | 

    Otherwise great series

  • LuzidVision 9 months, 3 weeks ago  | 

    feels a little odd to have to select the deprecated option for a quite recent tutorial. is there no way to achieve the coloring with vulkan?

  • LuzidVision 9 months, 3 weeks ago  | 

    the HDA should be saved with the suffix -deprecated

  • sdeleurere 5 months, 3 weeks ago  | 

    In lesson 2, Houdini would straight up crash when trying to copy the brick to all those points. I checked my RAM usage and it shot up all the way to 64GB. The only way to fix this is to add the copy to points node manually and enable "Pack and Instance" before connecting the rest to it.
    ( I have a 7900x, 4080 and 64GB ram running Linux Mint)

    • rmagee 5 months, 2 weeks ago  | 

      Strange - I have less memory than that on Windows and I wasn't crashing. But that was H20.5 and it sounds like you are in H21.

      The way you set it up sounds like the best option. I should recommend to R&D that Pack and Instance is on by default for this node.

  • asilin 1 month, 3 weeks ago  | 

    I'm going through this beginner path series in order and in this video I can not for the life of me get the "Copy to Points" to work. Every time I click "Copy to Points" then select "rubbertoy" and hit enter I'm just brought into the rubbertoy's object view. I've watched the video, YouTubes, and read this and general Houdini forum instructions and can not get the "single_brick" and "rubbertoy" nodes to become connected, or merged for lack of a better word, within the object view. Every single time when single_brick is selected and I click "Copt to Points" then select "rubbertoy" and hit enter, it just drills down into that rubbertoy view. Can you help? Was something turned on in one of the first two videos that needed to be turned off in the display settings but wasn't mentioned? Thanks in advance

    • jayfx 3 days, 20 hours ago  | 

      Did you find a solution? I have the same issue. I also often get a fatal error when hitting enter when using copy to point. I'm on a Mac, not sure if this is the reason it's not working properly...

  • joelPinto 1 month ago  | 

    How do you change 3d viewport to OpenGL on Houdini22?

    • rmagee 1 month ago  | 

      You don’t need to for Houdini 22 - Vulkan can now do what is needed for the lesson. It couldn’t in H20.5.

      • weisz 3 weeks, 6 days ago  | 

        I'm in Houdini 22 and since I don't need to change the 3d viewport rendering, how do i get the color onto my bricks? They only show up gray. I can see the colored points before it is input into the copytopoints node. After that it is still gray bricks. Would be wonderful to figure out what the issue is!

        • weisz 3 weeks, 6 days ago  | 

          My eventual solution, in case others have the same problem (my scene was also very crashy), i was able to create my hda, then I started a new scene and File > Imported the HDA and after that the colors and the crashing seem to be fixed!

      • waimoe 2 weeks, 3 days ago  | 

        i do not think Vulkan is showing colors, i am in 22 and still getting default grey color

        • waimoe 2 weeks, 3 days ago  | 

          pack and instance did not carry Cd attribute to all the pieces because these brick are act as same exact one single brick

        • rmagee 2 weeks, 3 days ago  | 

          Are you talking about the parts at the object/geometry level or when it is brought into Solaris? I recently tested this and it was working at the object/geometry level.

  • waimoe 2 weeks, 3 days ago  | 

    bro explained each step but forget to explain why the node are uses, why the setting are changed, which node are doing what blah blah...

    • rmagee 2 weeks, 3 days ago  | 

      Are you working with the PDF document? There are more explanations there - the videos are meant to help make all the right clicks where the printed page doesn't work effectively.

  • JorgeFBX 1 week, 3 days ago  | 

    Hi everyone! If you are following this tutorial in newer versions of Houdini (like v22) and getting viewport crashes or losing your colors, here is the exact step-by-step fix:

    1.- CRASH / FREEZE at 0.1 Point Separation:The viewport collapses because it tries to render millions of polygons all at once. Why doesn't this happen to the instructor? If you check around minute 3:03, you will notice that when he drops the value to 0.1, half of his geometry is automatically hidden. In his older version, this safety feature was enabled by default, but in Houdini 22+ it comes disabled.

    To fix this, hover your mouse over the 3D viewport, press "D" to open Display Options, and go to the "Optimize" tab under the "Culling" section. Enable the options that are turned off by default (like packed geometry culling and backfaces) so the viewport hides unseen geometry. You can also lower the polygon display limit (I dropped mine to 8 million)—feel free to tweak this specific value until you find the sweet spot that matches your computer's hardware power.

    2.- MISSING COLORS on the bricks (Cd attribute):
    If you added the Color node but your bricks remain gray, it is due to a change in how attributes are handled. Select your "Copy to Points" node and go to the "Attributes" tab. In the "Attribute from Target" section, you will see three rows configured with different operations under the "by" column (Copying, Multiplying, and Adding).

    We need to edit the first row, which is set to "Copying" (the one with the huge list of attributes starting with an asterisk *). Click at the very end of that specific text field, add a comma, and type Cd (make sure to match the uppercase/lowercase). Hit Enter, and your colors will transfer perfectly and show up instantly!

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