Wire Configure Object dynamics node

Attaches the appropriate data for Wire Objects to an object.

On this page

Parameters
- Initial State
- Geometry
- Material
- Fracturing
- Collisions
- Drag
- Visualization
Inputs
Outputs
Locals

The Wire Configure Object DOP takes a simulation object and attaches the data which is needed for it to be used as a Wire Object.

This DOP is very similar to the Wire Object, except it allows you to explicitly control the creation of the object using another DOP, such as the Empty Object DOP. This can be used for more advanced instancing or creating objects every 10 frames.

Parameters ¶

Use Object Transform

The transform of the object containing the chosen SOP is applied to the geometry.

SOP Path

Initial State ¶

The path to a SOP (or an Object, in which case the display SOP is used) which will be the initial pose for this simulation object.

Position

Initial position in world space of the object.

Rotation

Initial orientation of the object. This is in RX/RY/RZ format.

Pivot

Local space position around which rotation is applied.

Velocity

Initial velocity of the object.

Angular Velocity

Initial angular velocity of the object.

Geometry ¶

Import Rest Geometry

Causes the Rest Geometry to be re-evaluated each frame.

Rest Geometry

The path to a SOP (or an Object, in which case the display SOP is used) which will be the rest geometry for this object.

Import Target Geometry

Causes the Target Geometry to be re-evaluated each frame.

Target Geometry

The path to a SOP (or an Object, in which case the display SOP is used) which will be the target geometry for this object.

Target Stiffness

This parameter defines how strongly the wire resists deforming from the animated position.

Target Damping

This parameter defines how strongly the wire resists oscillation relative to the animated position.

Material ¶

Physical ¶

Compute Mass

Determines if the mass will be calculated automatically from the object’s density and volume.

Density

The mass of a wire object is its volume times its density. The volume is affected by the width parameter.

Mass

The absolute mass of the object.

Width

The width of the wire object defines the diameter of each cylindrical section.

Friction

The coefficient of friction of the object. A value of 0 means the object is frictionless. This governs how much the tangential velocity is affected by collisions.

Dynamic Friction Scale

An object sliding may have a lower friction coefficient than an object at rest. This is the scale factor that relates the two. It is not a friction coefficient, but a scale between zero and one.

A value of one means that dynamic friction is equal to static friction. A scale of zero means that as soon as static friction is overcome the object acts without friction.

Elasticity ¶

Linear Spring Constant

This parameter defines how strongly the wire resists stretching.

Linear Damping Constant

This parameter defines how strongly the wire resists oscillation due to stretch forces.

Angular Spring Constant

This parameter defines how strongly the wire resists bending.

Angular Damping Constant

This parameter defines how strongly the wire resists oscillation due to bending forces.

Adjust For Length

Enabling this parameter will adjust spring and damper strengths according to segment lengths. This allows wire flexibility behavior to be independent of segment resolution.

Adjust For Mass

Enabling this parameter will adjust spring and damper strengths according to segment masses. This allows wire flexibility behavior to be independent of mass.

Plasticity ¶

Stretch Threshold

This parameter defines the amount of stretching allowed before the wire is permanently stretched.

Stretch Rate

This parameter defines how quickly a wire’s permanent shape becomes stretched.

Stretch Hardening

This parameter defines how a wire becomes stiffer (if greater than 1) or weaker (if less than 1) when permanently stretched.

Bend Threshold

This parameter defines the amount of bending allowed before the wire is permanently bent.

Bend Rate

This parameter defines how quickly a wire’s permanent shape becomes bent.

Bend Hardening

This parameter defines how a wire becomes stiffer (if greater than 1) or weaker (if less than 1) when permanently bent.

Fracturing ¶

Enable Fracturing

Fracture Threshold

This is the amount of relative stretch that will cause the geometry to break up into separate parts during the simulation. For example, if the threshold is set to 0.1, then the geometry may break in places where there is more than 10% stretch compared to the rest geometry.

Collisions ¶

Collide Independent

If enabled, the wire object will be prevented from touching or passing through any affectors that have a Volume collider label (e.g., RBD Objects or the ground plane). This can make the simulation slower.

Collide Codependent

If enabled, the wire object will be prevented from touching or passing through all of its wire affectors. This can make the simulation much slower.

Collide Self

If enabled, the wire object will be prevented from touching or passing through itself. This can make the simulation much slower.

Repulsion

A repulsion force is applied to gently push apart these pieces of geometry when the two pieces of geometry overlap (including overlap of the collision width). This parameter controls the strength of the force.

Collision Width

The width that is used to calculate whether the wire object has collided. This is scaled by the same point attributes as the width found in the Physical tab. This width acts as a diameter, creating a cylinder of this diameter between the end points of a wire segment.

When a wire object collides with a cloth object, the Cloth Thickness parameter in the cloth object will be used (it is used in the same way as described by the cloth object).

When a wire object collides with a non-wire, non-cloth object, then only the wire object will have a film around it (the polygons in the non-wire object will be treated as having a thickness of zero).

Drag ¶

Normal Drag

The component of drag in the directions normal to the wire. Increasing this will make the wire go along with any wind that blows against it. For realistic wire-wind interaction, the Normal Drag should be chosen larger (about 10 times larger) than the tangent drag.

Tangent Drag

The component of drag in the direction tangent to the wire. Increasing this will make the wire go along with any wind that blows tangent to the wire.

External Velocity Field

The name of the external velocity fields on affectors that the wire will respond to. The default is vel, which will make the wire react to fluids and smoke when the Tangent Drag and the Normal Drag have been chosen sufficiently large. The Tangent Drag and Normal Drag forces are computed by comparing the wire’s velocity with the external velocity.

External Velocity Offset

This offset is added to any velocity that’s read from the velocity field. When there’s no velocity field, then the offset can be used to create a wind force which has constant velocity everywhere. This wind effect is more realistic and more accurate than the wind that is generated by DOP Forces.

Visualization ¶

Width

Turn this on to visualize the wire’s collision width in the viewport.

Width Color

Penetration

Turn this on to visualize the parts of the wire object which have collided, but which did not have the collision resolved.

Penetration Color

Use this parameter to choose the color for visualizing the wire’s width in the viewport.

Force Scale

This is used to define the scale of the force lines drawn in the viewport. Use a small value if the lines are too long and distracting, and a large value if you can’t see any lines.

Torque Scale

This is used to define the scale of the torque lines drawn in the viewport. Use a small value if the lines are too long and distracting, and a large value if you can’t see any lines.

External Force

Turn this on to see external forces, applied by DOPs Force nodes (such as the Fan DOP).

External Force Color

Use this parameter to choose the color for external forces in the viewport.

External Torque

Turn this on to see external torques, applied by DOPs Force nodes (such as the Drag DOP).

External Torque Color

Use this parameter to choose the color for external torques in the viewport.

Internal Force

Turn this on to see internal forces generated by a Wire Solver to resist stretching.

Internal Force Color

Use this parameter to choose the color for internal forces in the viewport.

Internal Torque

Turn this on to see internal torques generated by a Wire Solver to resist bending.

Internal Torque Color

Use this parameter to choose the color for internal torques in the viewport.

Collision Force

Turn this on to see the force preventing collisions in the viewport. This includes wire/volume collisions, wire/wire collisions and self-collisions.

Collision Force Color

Use this parameter to choose the color for collision forces in the viewport.

Constraint Force

Turn this on to see forces generated by a Wire Solver to satisfy constraints.

Constraint Force Color

Use this parameter to choose the color for constraint forces in the viewport.

Constraint Torque

Turn this on to see torques generated by a Wire Solver to satisfy constraints.

Constraint Torque Color

Use this parameter to choose the color for constraint torques in the viewport.

Impacts

Turn this on to see impacts in the viewport. The impacts may appear in strange locations: they are shown at the position where a collision would have happened.

Impacts Scale

This is used to define the scale of the lines drawn in the viewport to show impacts.

Use a small value if the lines are too long and distracting, and a large value if you can’t see the lines.

Impacts Color

Use this parameter to choose the color for impacts in the viewport.

Show Substep Impacts

Use this to show all impacts during a DOPs step. The wire solver takes many substeps per DOPs step. If this is cleared, only the impacts for the current substep are shown.

Axis

Turn this on to see each point’s orientation.

Axis Scale

This is used to define the scale of the axis lines drawn in the viewport. Use a small value if the lines are too long and distracting, and a large value if you can’t see any lines.

X Axis Color

Use this parameter to choose the color for local x-axis.

Y Axis Color

Use this parameter to choose the color for local y-axis.

Z Axis Color

Use this parameter to choose the color for local z-axis.

Inputs ¶

First

The simulation objects to turn into Wire objects by attaching the appropriate data.

Outputs ¶

First

The simulation objects which were passed into this node are output with the data required for them to be considered Wire Objects attached.

Locals ¶

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.

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.

Parameters ¶

Initial State ¶

Geometry ¶

Material ¶

Physical ¶

Elasticity ¶

Plasticity ¶

Fracturing ¶

Collisions ¶

Drag ¶

Visualization ¶

Inputs ¶

Outputs ¶

Locals ¶

Dynamics nodes