Houdini 20.5 Nodes Dynamics nodes

Soft Body Collision Properties dynamics node

Defines how a soft body object responds to collisions.

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Since 12.0

The Soft Body Collision Properties DOP defines how a soft body object, such as a cloth object or wire object, responds to collisions and contacts. It is applied automatically as subdata to a Cloth Object and Wire Object.

Parameters

Collide with objects

If enabled, the geometry in this object will collide with all other objects. These other objects may belong to the same solver or they may be be Static Objects, RBD Objects, or the Ground Plane. When the Collision Detection parameter on the Static Object is set to Use Volume Collisions, then the polygon vertices will be tested for collision against the signed distance field (SDF) of the Static Object. When Collision Detection is set to Use Surface Collisions, then geometry-based continuous collision detection is used. The geometry-based collisions collide points against polygons, and edges against edges.

When geometry-based collisions are used, only polygons and tetrahedrons in the Static Object are considered. Other types of primitives, for example spheres, are be ignored. The geometry of the external objects (e.g. Static Object) is treated as being one-sided; only the outsides of the polygons, determined by the winding order, oppose collisions.

When volume-based collisions are enabled, only points will be colliding against the volumes, not the interiors of polygons and tetrahedrons. When colliding against small volumes, this may mean that you need to increase the number of points on your mesh to get accurate collision results.

Collide with objects in this solver

When enabled, this object will collide with other objects that have the same solver. These collisions are handled using continuous collision detection, based on the geometry (polygons and/or tetrahedrons). For collisions between objects on the same solver, the polygons are treated as two-sided. Both sides of the polygons collide. The surface of a tetrahedral mesh only collides on one side: the outside.

Collide within this object

If disabled, then no two polygons within this object can collide with each other.

Collide within each component

If disabled, then no two polygons that belong on the same connected component may collide with each other.

Collide within each fracture part

This option only has an effect when fracturing is enabled on the solver. If disabled, then no two polygons that belong on the same fracture part may collide with each other. Fracture parts are controlled by the integer-valued fracturepart primitive attribute.

Collision Radius

This is the radius of an imaginary padding layer around the polygons. This layer consists of the region of space that has a distance of at most Collision Radius to some polygon. For two-sided collision surfaces, such as cloth geometry, the layer applies to both sides of each polygon (back and front). For one-sided collision surfaces, such as polygons in a Static Object, the collision radius is applied only on the front side of the polygons. The FEM Solver tries to ensure that the layers for the objects don’t penetrate each other or pass through each other.

For example, when a pair of two-sided polygons collide, one with a thickness of 0.01 and one with a thickness of 0.02, the solver will try to separate polygons of these objects by a distance of 0.03.

The Thickness parameter is one of the very few parameters that is scale dependent. It is very important that you adjust this parameter when you change the scale or amount of detail of your geometry.

Use a Thickness that is significantly smaller than the length of the shortest edge in your simulation geometry. Typically, the Thickness should not exceed 1% percent of the average edge length. To avoid problems with self collisions, you should keep the polygons (and/or tetrahedrons) in your geometry fairly even-sized. Avoid polygons that have very small edges, compared to the average size of the polygons in your cloth geometry.

Friction

The coefficient of friction of the object. A value of 0 means the object is frictionless. This governs how much the velocity that is tangential to the contact plane is affected by collisions. When two objects are in contact, then the solver multiplies the friction coefficients of the involved object to get the effective friction coefficient for that contact.

Inputs

First Input

This optional input can be used to control which simulation objects are modified by this node. Any objects connected through this input and which match the Group parameter field will be modified.

If this input is not connected, this node can be used in conjunction with an Apply Data node, or can be used as an input to another data node.

All Other Inputs

If this node has more input connectors, other data nodes can be attached to act as modifiers for the data created by this node.

The specific types of subdata that are meaningful vary from node to node. Click an input connector to see a list of available data nodes that can be meaningfully attached.

Outputs

First Output

The operation of this output depends on what inputs are connected to this node. If an object stream is input to this node, the output is also an object stream containing the same objects as the input (but with the data from this node attached).

If no object stream is connected to this node, the output is a data output. This data output can be connected to an Apply Data DOP, or connected directly to a data input of another data node, to attach the data from this node to an object or another piece of data.

Locals

channelname

This DOP node defines a local variable for each channel and parameter on the Data Options page, with the same name as the channel. So for example, the node may have channels for Position (positionx, positiony, positionz) and a parameter for an object name (objectname).

Then there will also be local variables with the names positionx, positiony, positionz, and objectname. These variables will evaluate to the previous value for that parameter.

This previous value is always stored as part of the data attached to the object being processed. This is essentially a shortcut for a dopfield expression like:

dopfield($DOPNET, $OBJID, dataName, "Options", 0, channelname)

If the data does not already exist, then a value of zero or an empty string will be returned.

DATACT

This value is the simulation time (see variable ST) at which the current data was created. This value may not be the same as the current simulation time if this node is modifying existing data, rather than creating new data.

DATACF

This value is the simulation frame (see variable SF) at which the current data was created. This value may not be the same as the current simulation frame if this node is modifying existing data, rather than creating new data.

RELNAME

This value will be set only when data is being attached to a relationship (such as when Constraint Anchor DOP is connected to the second, third, of fourth inputs of a Constraint DOP).

In this case, this value is set to the name of the relationship to which the data is being attached.

RELOBJIDS

This value will be set only when data is being attached to a relationship (such as when Constraint Anchor DOP is connected to the second, third, of fourth inputs of a Constraint DOP).

In this case, this value is set to a string that is a space separated list of the object identifiers for all the Affected Objects of the relationship to which the data is being attached.

RELOBJNAMES

This value will be set only when data is being attached to a relationship (such as when Constraint Anchor DOP is connected to the second, third, of fourth inputs of a Constraint DOP).

In this case, this value is set to a string that is a space separated list of the names of all the Affected Objects of the relationship to which the data is being attached.

RELAFFOBJIDS

This value will be set only when data is being attached to a relationship (such as when Constraint Anchor DOP is connected to the second, third, of fourth inputs of a Constraint DOP).

In this case, this value is set to a string that is a space separated list of the object identifiers for all the Affector Objects of the relationship to which the data is being attached.

RELAFFOBJNAMES

This value will be set only when data is being attached to a relationship (such as when Constraint Anchor DOP is connected to the second, third, of fourth inputs of a Constraint DOP).

In this case, this value is set to a string that is a space separated list of the names of all the Affector Objects of the relationship to which the data is being attached.

ST

The simulation time for which the node is being evaluated.

Depending on the settings of the DOP Network Offset Time and Scale Time parameters, this value may not be equal to the current Houdini time represented by the variable T.

ST is guaranteed to have a value of zero at the start of a simulation, so when testing for the first timestep of a simulation, it is best to use a test like $ST == 0, rather than $T == 0 or $FF == 1.

SF

The simulation frame (or more accurately, the simulation time step number) for which the node is being evaluated.

Depending on the settings of the DOP Network parameters, this value may not be equal to the current Houdini frame number represented by the variable F. Instead, it is equal to the simulation time (ST) divided by the simulation timestep size (TIMESTEP).

TIMESTEP

The size of a simulation timestep. This value is useful for scaling values that are expressed in units per second, but are applied on each timestep.

SFPS

The inverse of the TIMESTEP value. It is the number of timesteps per second of simulation time.

SNOBJ

The number of objects in the simulation. For nodes that create objects such as the Empty Object DOP, SNOBJ increases for each object that is evaluated.

A good way to guarantee unique object names is to use an expression like object_$SNOBJ.

NOBJ

The number of objects that are evaluated by the current node during this timestep. This value is often different from SNOBJ, as many nodes do not process all the objects in a simulation.

NOBJ may return 0 if the node does not process each object sequentially (such as the Group DOP).

OBJ

The index of the specific object being processed by the node. This value always runs from zero to NOBJ-1 in a given timestep. It does not identify the current object within the simulation like OBJID or OBJNAME; it only identifies the object’s position in the current order of processing.

This value is useful for generating a random number for each object, or simply splitting the objects into two or more groups to be processed in different ways. This value is -1 if the node does not process objects sequentially (such as the Group DOP).

OBJID

The unique identifier for the object being processed. Every object is assigned an integer value that is unique among all objects in the simulation for all time. Even if an object is deleted, its identifier is never reused. This is very useful in situations where each object needs to be treated differently, for example, to produce a unique random number for each object.

This value is also the best way to look up information on an object using the dopfield expression function.

OBJID is -1 if the node does not process objects sequentially (such as the Group DOP).

ALLOBJIDS

This string contains a space-separated list of the unique object identifiers for every object being processed by the current node.

ALLOBJNAMES

This string contains a space-separated list of the names of every object being processed by the current node.

OBJCT

The simulation time (see variable ST) at which the current object was created.

To check if an object was created on the current timestep, the expression $ST == $OBJCT should always be used.

This value is zero if the node does not process objects sequentially (such as the Group DOP).

OBJCF

The simulation frame (see variable SF) at which the current object was created. It is equivalent to using the dopsttoframe expression on the OBJCT variable.

This value is zero if the node does not process objects sequentially (such as the Group DOP).

OBJNAME

A string value containing the name of the object being processed.

Object names are not guaranteed to be unique within a simulation. However, if you name your objects carefully so that they are unique, the object name can be a much easier way to identify an object than the unique object identifier, OBJID.

The object name can also be used to treat a number of similar objects (with the same name) as a virtual group. If there are 20 objects named “myobject”, specifying strcmp($OBJNAME, "myobject") == 0 in the activation field of a DOP will cause that DOP to operate on only those 20 objects.

This value is the empty string if the node does not process objects sequentially (such as the Group DOP).

DOPNET

A string value containing the full path of the current DOP network. This value is most useful in DOP subnet digital assets where you want to know the path to the DOP network that contains the node.

Note

Most dynamics nodes have local variables with the same names as the node’s parameters. For example, in a Position DOP, you could write the expression:

$tx + 0.1

…to make the object move 0.1 units along the X axis at each timestep.

See also

Dynamics nodes