A personal 3D project exploring vellum simulations and COP texturing Rendered with Karma

I think that it is very unfortunate that Houdini does not support the metal api. Macs have gotten to the point that they rival high end nvidia gpus and have significantly more vram (and I am pretty sure the most vram you can buy on an individual chip from any manufacturer). If SideFX added metal support to karma, the mpm solver, the vellum solver, copernicus, the flip solver, and the pyro solver, Macs would be a no-brainer for many artists.

That being said, are there any plans to introduce this support in the near future?

I'm just writing to vent. I'm so frustrated with the way Houdini is making the Cop Network - Old hard to create. In 21, it was still there. In 22, all I can do is open a file created on an older version to copy paste the node into the new Houdini.

I'm a big user of the old cop network. I hate Copernicus. Everything I could do with the old cop network takes 2 to 5 times more nodes and setup in Copernicus and now every AI search result confuses both of them and keeps giving half assed answers that lead nowhere.

Why is there no "Level" node in Copernicus? Just fuckin WHY????

Or Mosaic for that matter. I work in video games and mosaic is such a huge time saver for assembling sprite sheets and the new equivalent that is named "Contact Sheet" can only work if I separately load all images as separate file nodes instead of a single sequence.

Why the fuck is this trash being force fed down my throat goddamnit!

hey guys, i've been working on my first waterfall sim in houdini, and i've kinda hit a wall with figuring out how to mesh it and to get the smooth transition between the water and the foam. Trying to kill points based on vorticity, speed or Foam density attribute all seem to not work out for me. also this is my first time using Karma render and i kinda dont know the workflow for the whitewater stuff. If someone could just give an idea on how to actually mesh it and set up materials for the vdbs and attributes. Idk if i can post HIP file but i'll just leave the preview of the sim here couse i dont even know if the main sim setup looks fine (part sep 0.05 voxel 0.1) and a screenshot of karma preview with the water as vdb with whitewater material

I have a very simple flip using a tank with a animated object that rise through the water. If I view from the flip solver it respects the collision but after 'Fluid Compress' it is completely ignored.

Is this common and are there any work arounds?

hello guys after rendering just the ocean to check , I realized the waves and choppines are off, this is my first project ,trying it without checking course or tutorials.

I'm going for middly stormy sea and now I feel the waves are off , they are bit small and too choppy right ?

I'm wondering if it's possible to redo the ocean spectrum without redoing the sim ? the sim itself has an rbd boat that was simulated for movement with very rough flip(that uses the ocean spectrum for the big movement) , before the main flip sim.

or can I lower the displacement in the shader ?

Thanks

Hii I'm a beginner using Houdini and Maya. I tried rigged and animated a character in Maya, and the mesh looks fine there, but when I import it as FBX into Houdini, it's broken (pics on the right). What could be causing this?

My understanding of for loops is just too weak. I know it can be done, but can't figure it out. I'm trying to do a system that I can chose the amount of points my cutter moves for my wood lathe, and also rotate my piece of wood off-axis a certain amount each time my cutter cuts at one position (which makes a spiral) I did a version where I do it twice, but I want to do 30+ times. Just can't wrap my head around feedback loops etc. Could someone enlighten me? Thanks!

Hey everyone,

Working on a procedural pave solver and ran into an issue with stones on tighter curves.

Even when collision checks pass, bigger stones near surface edges end up with their outer girdles sticking out too far because of the local curvature.

To fix this, I added a local curvature/gap check during distribution. If the distance between the stone’s edge and the surface exceeds a set tolerance (around 0.015mm), the solver automatically downsizes that stone to the next standard size in 0.05mm steps until it sits properly and relaxing accordingly .

Seems to work pretty clean so far for keeping topology consistent on sharp turns.

Curious how others handle dynamic clearance or edge alignment on curved surfaces in Houdini?

usually i would do this with rbd + vellum, but i wanted to try it with mpm instead. not the same amount of control and it needs a lot of clean up, but overall i think you can get a realistic and more natural look.

Hey guys, I wanted to ask if it's possible to create aesthetic lighting and really cool-looking renders in Houdini.

I'm mainly learning Houdini for FX, but I also want to create some cinematic and visually appealing renders. Should I focus on lighting in Houdini itself, or would it be better to learn lighting in Maya or Blender?

Also, how much knowledge of Nuke and DaVinci Resolve should I have to make my renders look more professional? Do I need to learn compositing and color grading in depth, or is basic knowledge enough?

Would love to hear your suggestions!

Hey again :-)

After many months of polishing, adding new features and cleaning up my graph, I decided to put my Jackfruit project file on G*mroad for everyone to explore and tinker with on their own leisure. If you’re interested, follow my linktree on my profile. Thanks <3

Hey guys,

I have been doing XGen and I’m very interested in exploring the Houdini Hair and Fur system.

I posted a similar post a month ago and I went through some of the recommended free tutorials and they were great.

I’m looking for a high quality paid tutorials (nothing too expensive as I can’t afford much) that includes the assets so we can follow the tutorials. Gnomon was a great resource but some of them didn’t have assets included and it felt a bit limiting as I could not practice.

I hope it’s not against the rules but if it is, please feel free to let me know and I will delete the post.

Thanks!

What is the most Houdini way to do this nowadays

By segment, I mean the process of partitioning an image into distinct regions or pixel-level masks and linking them to natural language prompts or semantic concepts

-- assuming this is done on a rasterized version of the curve set, and that the regions attributes are then transferred back to the original curve afterwards.

For example: starting from an EPS file of a side view of car, I would like to get some kind of attribute for each point / curve / connected piece, in order to make it easier to make something with said curve.

Any thoughts ? There is so much data available in the context of AI training, it would be nice to be able to augment any geometry in such a way. I guess it's already solved in a much bigger context though, as is almost anything nowadays

For example say you have this in SOP as curves.

how to segment it semantically, to help rebuild it as a 3d model, set texures and whatnot

Hello guys , I need an artist for tutoring and helping me, I don't want keep asking questions over and over,help can't always be free and to be honest, I'm bit fed up with my inability to move on flip like others sims, I have been stuck for weeks just cause each time I lack experience to deal with model prep, issues of wedging etc.

No matter how much i debug and read documentation, I still think I have hard time for some models to react correctly , prolly because there's theory that comes with time experience of an artist work and I would like to learn/help for debugging.

My questions are around cross wedgings, simulation, and model prep for flip.

Is there any tutor here that has leaning in flip sims ? You can give me your prices guys so I can consider this.

Thank you

Hey y'all :-)

It's been a while since I started working on this. I was surprised by the positive reception to this project and some people asked me if I could publish the project file. So I spent some time polishing it, adding new features and learning a little bit of Karma to bring it to a state I'm comfortable sharing.

If you're interested, check the YouTube videos description for the G*mroad link.

Hi everyone. I’m 23, from Japan, and I’m currently learning Houdini on my own. I’m using Houdini 22, and my long-term goal is to work as an FX artist, particularly in realistic and cinematic VFX.

I’m still a beginner in English, so I usually study English tutorials and documentation with subtitles and the help of AI for translation and clarification.

So far, I’ve gone through several SOP tutorials and practiced some basic VEX through simple particle work. Right now, I’m focusing on learning Pyro.

My current learning approach

Going forward, I’m planning to focus on one FX discipline at a time.

This isn’t simply because I want to study different areas one after another.

Rather than touching several areas at the same time and only learning each one superficially, I want to focus on one area, understand how it works and how to control it, and gradually build up a list of things I can genuinely say, “I can make this myself.”

My goal is to keep building up those capabilities one by one and gradually expand my overall FX skill set.

So for now, I want to make Pyro my main focus and develop a solid understanding of it, and then eventually move on to other FX areas such as RBD and particles.

Of course, this is a learning plan I’ve come up with based on my own reasoning as a beginner, so I’d also really like to know how this approach looks from the perspective of people who actually work in the industry.

How should I approach Pyro in Houdini 22?

My main question right now is about SOP Pyro and COP Pyro.

Based on how Houdini has traditionally been used, I would naturally expect SOP Pyro to be the main place to learn Pyro.

However, with Houdini 22, COP Pyro has become much more substantial. It no longer feels like the old idea of COPs being mainly for 2D/image processing, and it can now handle Pyro simulations in a much more complete way.

I’ve actually tried COP Pyro in H22, and I found it very intuitive. Iterating on parameters and immediately seeing the result also feels extremely fast.

So what I’m wondering is:

“If you were starting to learn Houdini 22 from scratch today, how would you approach SOP Pyro and COP Pyro?”

In previous versions of Houdini, I would naturally expect SOP Pyro to be the obvious starting point. But now that COP Pyro is becoming a much more significant part of Houdini, how would you personally learn Pyro if you were starting today with H22?

For example:

• Focus mainly on SOP Pyro and learn COP Pyro later
• Focus mainly on COP Pyro and learn SOP Pyro when needed
• Learn both from the beginning, but make one of them the primary workflow
• Learn the fundamentals deeply in one environment, while learning the other for different purposes

I’m not really asking which one is simply “better.”

I’m more interested in what learning order and division of roles would make the most sense if you were learning Pyro today, taking the current state of Houdini 22 into account.

I’m especially interested in perspectives based on the current H22 workflow, rather than advice that mainly comes from older versions of Houdini.

One more question about my overall learning strategy

I’d also like to hear your thoughts on my idea of building up my skills one capability at a time.

For example:

• How much should I be able to understand and actually create in one area before moving on to the next?
• While focusing deeply on one discipline, how much should I still explore the other areas?
• If I learn FX disciplines one at a time, how should I learn the connections between them?

I’m still at the stage where I’m figuring out how Houdini and FX actually work, so I’d really appreciate honest advice from people who use Houdini professionally.

In particular, I’d love to hear from anyone currently using Houdini 22 or familiar with the more recent workflows.

I am currently working on a small-scale fire effect and am encountering challenges when incorporating gas turbulence, particularly with the resulting smoke behavior. Need help

Would live to hear your thoughts on this and ideas how to shade and lit this

(video showing part of the issue where you can see that session sync updates, but the unity part does not)

I have run into a bit of trouble with the houdini engine for unity terrain system. i built a procedural terrain network outputing a height layer and 8 texture layers. i made it an HDA and used it in unity and it worked beautifully. all parameters worked and the terrain game object updated nicely.

Then i decided to add Scatter points for Trees, i added the required attributes to the height layer and the scatter points, updated my HDA and the scattering worked, the terrain looked nice and the trees all appeared as they should.

Here is the BUT, as soon as i added the Scatter points, the Terrain didnt update anymore based on parameter changes (yes i made sure update on parameter change was ticked on). The terrain in unity seemed to be locked. if i changed a parameter, nothing would happen on the unity side, but in session sync, the scene would update, but just not translate over to unity. No amount of recooking or rebuilding would fix this.

Once i removed the Scatter points again, it was fully dynamic again and updated in unity aswell.

I thought maybe there is an oddness with scattering and tried a few other methods. At first i tried having the Scatter points behind a switch that is off by default and then only enabled when the final terrain look is locked in. This didnt work. again the switch node updated in session sync, but not in unity.
Then I tried to make the scatter tool seperate, so one HDA for Terrain gen and another for the Tree Scatter. But again the same issue, it works great for the terrain gen, but using that already generated Terrain as an input for the Scatter HDA, it would update in Session sync, but not in unity.

I am at wits end and have been trying to figure out a solution for a while now

I am using H22 and Unity 2022.3

Hi there, i made this simulation for a school project.. apart from some minor tests this is my second actual render and the first one used in a short.

I'm very proud of it and wss looking on some feedback what could have been improved and ofcourse just wanted to show my work.

I didn't make the sphere animation, if i would i probably would have made it come down diagonally to show the cloud moving more.

Thanks :)