I've scoped the parameters on volume source to 0, on gas coming in. I have no idea how this little tiny fire in the middle keeps chugging along. It's there by default every time i try to make a damned smoke/ fire arrangement.

There's so many little knobs and inputs that you tweak and they do absolutely nothing. I've never been driven so insane by a piece of software in my entire life. Every important element you need to tweak is terribly named, has no documentation on its tool tip (the less important it is, the more likely it is to be tool tipped), is scattered into some corner of the node tree, and in no way has any indication of being important.

I'd thought i had solved this a month ago, and now here it is again. I was able to get better results in my first week of using this software than i am now, I'm so incredibly frustrated.

Would it kill you guys to create a sticky of worthwhile resources to learn this forsaken software, considering how impossibly hard it is to ask 1 question at a time to become competent with this thing?

The capabilities of Houdini are amazing for particles, the actual workflow and setup of the system is maddening, documentation and resources to pick it up are abysmal.

crazyfingers
I've scoped the parameters on volume source to 0, on gas coming in. I have no idea how this little tiny fire in the middle keeps chugging along. It's there by default every time i try to make a damned smoke/ fire arrangement.

If you provide a hip file, then it's much easier to help you.

crazyfingers
There's so many little knobs and inputs that you tweak and they do absolutely nothing. I've never been driven so insane by a piece of software in my entire life. Every important element you need to tweak is terribly named, has no documentation on its tool tip (the less important it is, the more likely it is to be tool tipped), is scattered into some corner of the node tree, and in no way has any indication of being important.

Every node has a help card, with a detailed explanation of all its parameters and tips on how to use it. Just click on the question mark in the upper right corner of the Parameters Pane

crazyfingers
Would it kill you guys to create a sticky of worthwhile resources to learn this forsaken software, considering how impossibly hard it is to ask 1 question at a time to become competent with this thing?

The capabilities of Houdini are amazing for particles, the actual workflow and setup of the system is maddening, documentation and resources to pick it up are abysmal.

Did you take a look at the tutorials listed here ?
http://www.sidefx.com/learning-paths/ [sidefx.com]

hava word to whoever is forcing you to use Houdini, let them know its not working out for you.

Appreciate the links, sorry for the rant, had a lot on the line last night and Houdini just wasn't cooperating.

I may stick with it despite my better judgement .

Thanks guys!

the reason for the lingering fireball is the fact that the heat and fuel have not fully been used, or are still being emitted into the sim

you need to find a way to eliminate all the unspent fuel since it would be rather impractical to quickly erode the temperature field

there are many ways this can be accomplished, spike the Burn Rate parm and lower the Fuel Inefficiency to help ensure all the emitted fuel is spent, at the same time you need to make sure the Source Volume dop for your fuel emitter is emitting 0 for both fuel and temperature

you can also add a mask to the region of fuel and quickly erode the unspent fuel

Turn on the Fuel visualizer on the smoke object to help see where you need to eliminate the extra fuel

I think you need to run a flip simulation and put the fire out with that! See if that does the trick

That's probably it! Thanks a ton Sidenimjay. This forum is surprisingly helpful. There aren't THAT many things driving me crazy with this software ATM, may get to be competent at all this thing some day…