Houdini 20.5 Nodes Geometry nodes

Facet geometry node

Controls the smoothness of faceting of a surface.

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This node also lets you consolidate points or surface normals.

Facet, like Divide, works as a pipeline to change geometry in stages. For this reason, Compute Normals appears twice. For example, you can compute surface normals before making any points shared by different polygons unique, which gives you the unusual result of smooth shading and unique point, as the normals get computed while the points are still shared.

This tool is useful for cleaning up polygons. You can reorient back-facing polygons, remove degenerative polygons, consolidate or unique points, or cusp polygon based on edges.

Tip

This op is great for cleaning up geometry read in from .dxf files. It corrects flipped normals present in some .dxf files.

Using Facet

  1. Select the faces, edges, or points you want to facet.

  2. Click the Facet tool on the Polygon tab.

    You can change the facet specifications in the parameter editor.

Parameters

Group

Subset of geometry to facet.

Group Type

The type of group that Group specifies.

If Guess from Group is specified and the group type is ambiguous, the guess is made that Group specifies a primitive group.

Pre-Compute Normals

Computes normals based on incoming geometry.

Make Normals Unit Length

Resizes the incoming normals to a length of 1.

Unique Points

Creates new points for any vertices sharing a point so that points will be unshared.

Consolidate

No Consolidate

Points are not fused together.

Consolidate Points Slow/Fast

Points within a specified distance of each other share a point.

Consolidate Normals Slow/Fast

Points within a specified distance of each other have their normals averaged.

Note

The slow versions of consolidation should not be used. They are for backwards compatibility only.

Distance

Threshold distance for consolidation.

Use Accurate Distance

Forces Distance to represent consolidate distances accurately, and forces consolidation to be performed in order of point number, to avoid moving points to within Distance of other points.

Remove Inline Points

Remove points from polygons if they lie on the line connecting the previous and next point.

Distance

Threshold distance for collinearity.

Orient Polygons

Winds all polygons the same direction.

Cusp Polygons

Creates hard edges between adjacent sides by uniquing points when the edge angle exceeds Cusp Angle. Using a Normal node to compute vertex normals may be preferable, since uniquing points of a watertight mesh will make it no longer watertight.

Cusp Angle

Threshold angle to cusp at.

Remove Degenerate

Cleans up any degenerate polygons.

Make Planar

Flattens each of the polygons so their points lie along a plane.

Post-Compute Normals

Computes normals based on result of this operation.

Reverse Normals

Reverses the direction of all of the point normals. Performed after all the other computations.

Examples

FacetVariations Example for Facet geometry node

This example shows the different ways to use the Facet SOP to let you control the smoothness or faceting of a given object. It also shows how you can consolidate points.

Press the right arrow key to show each example.

See also

Geometry nodes