Houdini 20.5 Shelf tools

Capture Geometry shelf tool

Uses one or more geometry objects as the skin for a hierarchy of bones or a set of metaball objects.

On this page

Overview

This tool is used to bind a character’s skin to its bones or muscles.

Using Capture Geometry

  1. Click the Capture Geometry tool on the Characters tab.

  2. Select the geometry objects to capture and press Enter to confirm your selection.

  3. Select the root object of the capturing hierarchy and press Enter to confirm your selection.

Note

The bones should be slightly angled so that the capture knows which way it should bend. The geometry should also be slightly curved so that the bones fit nicely inside. This prevents the shape from deforming when straightened.

For specific parameter help see the Capture Geometry operation.

To fully understand what is done behind the scenes for these two methods, you may wish to look at the SOPs that are added for each of the captured geometry objects.

Parameters

Method

Specify whether the tool should replace or append any pre-existing weights on the skin geometry.

Type

Biharmonic

Computes weights using biharmonic distances.

Proximity

Computes weights using spatial distances.

Regions

Computes weights using the capture regions in bones.

Select

Choose how bones are to be selected. If set to Root of Skeleton, then selecting an object in the viewport will also select all descendant output objects. If set to Individual Bones, then only single bones are selected at a time.

Use Capture Pose

Creates a setup that uses the bones' capture pose parameters instead of their transforms at a particular capture frame.

Channel Group Prefix

The channel group name prefix used when creating channel groups to contain the newly created channels when setting keys. This is only used when Use Capture Pose is disabled.

Capture Frame

The frame to use for capturing the bones to the geometry. This is only used when Use Capture Pose is disabled.

Set Keys on Capturing Hierarchy at Capture Frame

Creates keys at the Capture Frame on objects used for capturing. This is only valid when Use Capture Pose is disabled.

Set Keys on Geometry at Capture Frame

Creates keys at the Capture Frame on the objects containing the skin geometry. This is only valid when Use Capture Pose is disabled.

Max Iterations

The number of biharmonic solver iterations. More iterations produce higher quality results. This is only used when Type is set to Biharmonic.

High Precision

If enabled, creates a more precise setup using /nodes/sop/solidconform.html instead of /nodes/sop/solidembed.html. This is only used when Type is set to Biharmonic.

Shelf tools

Using the shelf

  • Customize the shelf

    How to change the look of the shelf, change and rearrange its contents, and create your own shelf tools.

Technical