Houdini wood fracture techniques have been around for a long time. Many tricks and tips exist on how to do it. One thing I noticed and haven’t seen anybody try is adding some imperfection details like warping the geometry. Think water logged wood planks, they twist and curve a bit. A few years ago I did some experiments as a training exercise for myself, and came up with a solution. This tutorial explains a few techniques, and alternate ways to handle a task.
Looking to dive right in and study the build? You can purchase and get more info about the project file (currently for H18 or newer) via the button below. The project includes the full build from the tutorial, including the DOPs setup.
- Some tutorial highlights include:
- Setting up a simple wood fracture geometry
- Implementing custom controller parameters
- How to easily shift geometry to the floor plane with Match Size
- Basic DOPs rigid body setup
- VEX code
- Hotkeys and tips throughout
David Torno
Fendra Fx
David Torno is a self-taught visual effects professional with a passion for the technical and educational side of VFX. Since beginning his career in 2000, he has worked on films, commercials, music videos, and large scale multimedia projects. In 2008 he started sharing his wealth of knowledge with other creatives through video tutorials, project templates, and utility scripts. While most known for serving as the Technical Director at Ghost Town Media for 8 years, David has focused mostly on 3D volumetric and particle animation in recent years. Through the consolidation of his lifes work under the Fendra Fx name, David continues to create helpful tools, and informative training videos for the creative community.
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COMMENTS
3edoelbatl 3 years, 9 months ago |
nice
vfxman222 3 years, 9 months ago |
Thanks.
rlvelocity 3 years, 9 months ago |
Exactly the format of tutorial I think most people want: step-by-step, explaining everything. I only wish speed control were enabled so I could watch it at 1.25x or 1.5x speed. I think you can enable it this way: https://vimeo.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115012275447-Playback-Speed-Controls
vfxman222 3 years, 9 months ago |
Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it. I’ve always been one to try to explain process beyond just click this click that. Teach a person to fish really.
vfxman222 3 years, 9 months ago |
I’ll take a look into the playback options too. Thanks.
vfxman222 3 years, 9 months ago |
That was actually super easy. The speed controls are now on for this video. I'll keep this in mind for my other tutorials. Thanks for the suggestion.
rlvelocity 3 years, 9 months ago |
Very cool. Thanks for doing that.!
vfxman222 3 years, 9 months ago |
No problem. I always appreciate the feedback.
rlvelocity 3 years, 9 months ago |
Around the 37:30 mark you show us how to randomly color the pieces of the voronoi fracture. In many Houdini nodes now, there is a little "bubble pin" icon at the far right of a field that toggles visualization on or off. In the case of the Voronoi Fracture node, it sits to the right of the "Piece Prefix" text field. If you hold down the Ctrl key when clicking on it (LMB), it will bring up the visualization editor. In the editor, you would just select "Type: Color" and then" Color Type: Random From Attribute" to do what you used VEX code to create in the attribute wrangle node.
vfxman222 3 years, 9 months ago |
Hahaha, I knew it got tucked away somewhere. Well now you know how to recreate it with VEX, and now I know where to find that. Thanks.
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