Volume Merge geometry node

Flattens many volumes into one volume.

On this page	Parameters Examples
Since	11.0

The Volume Merge operation flattens the scalar data in a collection of volumes into a single base volume. This is useful for converting many overlapping volumes into one large volume for more efficient rendering. For example, you can stamp hundreds of thousands of volumes into a single volume for faster rendering, and flatten hierarchies into a low-res base. You can also create a Frustum volume that ensures only voxels in your camera’s field of view are created.

Tip

If you have a lot of overlapping volumes you can turn on the Clamp Maximum option. This allows the merging to stop early when that maximum is reached. However, in this early-exit, the maximum is before Post-Add, Post-Mul.

Note

This node currently only works with standard Houdini volumes. It does not work with VDBs.

Parameters ¶

Source Group

The volume primitives in the first input to be written to.

Merge Group

The volume primitives to flatten in from the second input.

Merge Method

Each voxel of the base volume in the source group will be merged with the corresponding voxels of the volumes in the merge group according to this merge method. A refers to the first input’s value, B refers to the second input’s value. If there is no second input, the first input will be used.

The copy operation will take the volume with the highest primitive number, when more than two volumes are being merged.

Copy

result = B

Add

result = A + B

Multiply

result = A * B

Max

result = max(A, B)

Min

result = min(A, B)

Average

result = (A + B) / numvolumes

Clamp at Volume Boundary

While volume primitives can have boundary conditions, for efficiency it is often best to simply ignore any out of bound volumes. If clamping isn’t done, all of the volumes need to be evaluated for every voxel, which quickly gets prohibitively expensive with many volumes.

Dest Pre-Add, Dest Pre-Mul

The A in the calculation is set to A' = A * m + a, where m is the Dest Pre-Mul and a the Dest Pre-Add.

Source Pre-Add, Source Pre-Mul

The B in the calculation is set to B' = B * m + a, where m is the Source Pre-Mul and a the Source Pre-Add.

Post-Add, Post-Mul

The result that the destination field is set to is modified by result' = result * m + a, where m is the Post-Mul and a is the Post-Add.

Clamp Minimum, Maximum

The final result is clamped optionally to these ranges.

Examples ¶

DetectOverlap Example for Volume Merge geometry node

This example shows how to detect the overlapping regions of many incoming volumes procedurally using Volume SOP and Volume Merge SOP.

volumemerge Example for Volume Merge geometry node

This example shows how to use the Volume Merge SOP to flatten multiple instanced volumes onto a single camera frustum volume.

Parameters ¶

Examples ¶

Geometry nodes