Thank you! Really cool :)

________________________________
From: [email protected] 
<[email protected]> on behalf of Christopher Crouzet 
<[email protected]>
Sent: 02 March 2017 13:25
To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. 
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list
Subject: Re: [Houdini] Working with strands the Softimage way

If it can help, here's a basic scene showing one common approach for making 
strands: https://filebin.net/6ml27y3atb6qd7iq


On 2 March 2017 at 20:17, Tim Bolland 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

Thank you Andy that's a really helpful summation, I'm going to give it a go :)


________________________________
From: 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
 on behalf of Andy Nicholas 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Sent: 02 March 2017 13:12

To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [Houdini] Working with strands the Softimage way


Just to confirm how I'm thinking about this, a strand in Houdini is typically 
made up of point positions, not points with arrays as attributes. You can 
manually add an attribute to each point position to say which strand it's part 
of, there's a node that generates lines that will then understand this?

What I'm saying is that's something you can implement yourself. There are no 
nodes in Houdini that understand a point with a vector array is a strand, and 
no shaders that will do that automatically either. Again, you can build that 
yourself if you like, but it's quite advanced if you're going to be delving 
into procedural geometry shaders.

Otherwise you can create polyline primitives and feed point IDs into it. This 
will generate a polygon line (polyline) between the vertices in the primitive, 
and in some ways this is just like the point[pointarray] technique.

Yep. A polyline is nothing special. Just an unclosed polygon. As others have 
pointed out, you can apply attributes to the points to set things like width 
and color. Or you can use something like the PolyWire SOP to generate your own 
rendertime geometry.

The key is how do you create these point clusters and the order. In ICE I would 
make strands using a build linearly interpolated array with two vectors feeding 
into it. I guess I could try and recreate this using vex/vops, and maybe that's 
what I'm after, I just need to find a way to manipulate all these points in the 
right order.

Easiest way (assuming you already have some animated points) is to use the 
Trail SOP with it set to "Connect as Polygons", turn "Close rows" off, and set 
"Trail Length" to something like 10. Next stop after that is to take a look at 
the Resample SOP. Especially the "Treat Polygons As" parameter, as that'll let 
you create interpolated shapes to your trails which is kind handy.

A




On 02/03/2017 12:58, Tim Bolland wrote:

That's a good point Andy, and in my mind this would make the most sense! But 
like you say maybe not the most supported.


Just to confirm how I'm thinking about this, a strand in Houdini is typically 
made up of point positions, not points with arrays as attributes. You can 
manually add an attribute to each point position to say which strand it's part 
of, there's a node that generates lines that will then understand this?


Otherwise you can create polyline primitives and feed point IDs into it. This 
will generate a polygon line (polyline) between the vertices in the primitive, 
and in some ways this is just like the point[pointarray] technique.

The key is how do you create these point clusters and the order. In ICE I would 
make strands using a build linearly interpolated array with two vectors feeding 
into it. I guess I could try and recreate this using vex/vops, and maybe that's 
what I'm after, I just need to find a way to manipulate all these points in the 
right order.

I'm rambling a bit here, but hopefully getting somewhere!

Cheers,

Tim

________________________________
From: 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
 
<[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]>
 on behalf of Andy Nicholas 
<[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]>
Sent: 02 March 2017 12:27
To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [Houdini] Working with strands the Softimage way

Hi Tim,
Did you notice that you can do per-point array attributes in VEX? There's 
nothing stopping you setting up position vector arrays on each point, just like 
in ICE, and then using a Point Wrangle at the end to use that array to generate 
a polyline. The problem is that you then have to write all those handy ICE 
nodes like "Simulate Strands", etc. yourself.

That's why generally, you're better off just trying to use polylines as a 
primitive as they're more supported by Houdini's other frameworks (e.g. wire 
solver) and constraints.

A



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Christopher Crouzet
https://christophercrouzet.com

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