Hello,

I've just purchased a book on Houdini and started reading it. There is not too much information on shader creation.

I've been thinking if it is difficult to create Afterburn(3DMax) or BinaryAlchemy Volume(XSI) like shader that would work with Houdini?

It should probably be Renderman shading language compatible and therefore, it should be renderable with both Mantra and PRman.

Thanks, with regards…

hey Bunkai

Im not too sure how easy or hard it could be
you could take a look at this book, ive found it great to get an understanding on the topic
Texturing & Modeling: A Procedural Approach, Third Edition (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics)
and if the code isnt what u into and if you're looking for something similar to afterburn in houdini
take a look at
http://www.myrtlesoftware.com/ [myrtlesoftware.com]

hope this helps

brian

Aracid,

thank you very much for valuable information. I will do what I can. Apparently, MyrtleSoftare is commercialpackage. Is there any chance, that something like that would be free?

also look into Houdini's own i3d.
you can do lit volumetrics with it.
documentation is a little thin on the ground but it's a good starting point.

Jesta, hello..

Ok I will read about i3d. Thank you for good tip.

Just for motivation, look how powerful 3DMax's FlumeFX plugin is.

http://www.afterworks.com/FumeFX.asp [afterworks.com]

I can't bellieve, that something like that exists, and it is for 3DMax platform, which, I would say, is the weakest from all tools in professional 3D.

With regards….

Is it difficult to create Afterburn like shader?

Yes it is. To do similar effects in Houdini it would take a large amount of R&D time to setup a workflow/pipeline for creating these effects.

With Afterburn someone has already done that R&D work for you.

The difference between Houdini and Max is that Houdini has a more “atomic” approach to things. Side Effects provides low level tools which you have to combine to create your effects. 3DSMax on the otherhand has a more bundled approach, its more point and click. The downside is that you lose some flexibility. (Which you may or not need.)

I also wouldn't say 3DS Max is the weakest package. 3DS Max is designed to be an easy application to write plugins for. As a result the base package is quite cheap and you have the option to purchase 3rd party plugins. Need fast raytracing? Buy VRay. Need fast volumetric effects? Buy Afterburn. 3DS Max is like a very advanced form of clip-art. (I don't mean that in a negative way, since it does require a good bit of skill to make use of the different plugins.)

To be honest you can't really compare 3D applications. Its like asking which one is better; Paint brush or pencil? They are both amazing in the correct hands.

Come on - it's a paintbrush.

No, wait - pencil.

No, paintbrush. Definitely paintbrush.

Mostly.

Arghh!

don't want to be rude but the best of the best is charcoal, Craig!


Sy.

Bunkai
Jesta, hello..

Ok I will read about i3d. Thank you for good tip.

Just for motivation, look how powerful 3DMax's FlumeFX plugin is.

http://www.afterworks.com/FumeFX.asp [afterworks.com]

I can't bellieve, that something like that exists, and it is for 3DMax platform, which, I would say, is the weakest from all tools in professional 3D.

With regards….

hello bunkai , did you actually used this plugin ?
or have any idea of the time it takes to simulate and render these kind of effect ?

cheers
lulu

remember also that Afterburn has been around for a looong time…it was used in Armageddon ( ‘98 ) before Sitni Sati was even a company…I guess the closest you’d get to Afterburn for Houdini would be Storm from DD…but it's not a commercial app….(yet?)
for now I'd go with i3d…

http://www.afterworks.com/FumeFX.asp [afterworks.com]

this link is for “fume” not “afterburn”..
what you can do witjh afterburn,
same you can do with i3D (easy).
fume -is diferent, it is on beta testing stage now

*** same company makes afterburn makes fume. :idea:

Reminds me somewhat of the demos Sesi were showing for H9. They didn't show any flames yet but the smoke interacting with rbd's was rather sexy….

Hello All,

thank you for great responses. All were beneficial to me… I did not know that i3d can be so strong. after reading Magic of Houdini, I will take a close look at it.

Lulu116, I haven't had a chance to work with it. It is a 3DMax plug in , and it will arrive to market sometimes in this year's fall. I wish again, Houdini could do such amazing flame effects. I think, if this plug-in is released, there will be no more need of better more advanced flame SFX, because, this will give us all, we might think of.

With regards,

Hopefully SESI is keeping Ron Fedkiw's webpage (http://graphics.stanford.edu/~fedkiw/ [graphics.stanford.edu]) open for inspiration. 8)


Physics pit fight!!

Bunkai
Hello All,
I think, if this plug-in is released, there will be no more need of better more advanced flame SFX, because, this will give us all, we might think of.

Forget about it. It will be always need for more! Specially in case of Max philosophy of fast and easy solution for everything.

If something is easy to use it is hard to use in different manner. And there is always different manner as there are always more problems to solve.

From all your posts here I assume that you have some project in mind and prepare your self for this challenge. But for most of technical questions there is no explicit and clear answers. So just start you project!

First you must define your needs then choose first, most obvieous solution and try it. Then, if it won't satisfy you, check next proposition. Then check another one. All these easy tools are like samplers. (PaintEffect, Afterburn, Maya Fluids etc etc.) Lots of work is put there to free you from detail knowledge. This is great! as long as it works. If don't, you choose more elaborate solution and try it again.

You need springfield? So you check PainEffect and see if it's ok for your particular shot. Yes? Ok! No? You take some bio-generator (X-Frog?) and repeat test. Yes? ok! No? You prepare Houdini OTL and see if it's ok.

If you use SoftImage and you don't see why change it, don't change it! The reason to change your tool is when it's not satisfy you and your project.

As long as you know what you want, you can get it - whatever software you use.

Hi Jason,
what a beautiful set of dynamics animation. especially the burning paper and liquids. I have not even thought, something like that is really possible. Who knows if he used Houdini for generating that dynamics. :-)

Hello Symek, :-)

I admire your observation skills. :-) Exactly as you said, I prepare for a project that will take about a year to accomplis.

I had a feeling that asking here would cost me less time as learning all these complicated tools besides XSI, I already know.(Houdini, Maya, Renderman Shader Language, necessary math, 3DMax with Plugins) - this all could take me many months to master deeply enough, so I would be able to create my own opinion.

But, yeah, thank you for your advice. After some time, I must agree and that only I can elaborate judgement what tool best suits my needs, because only I know the project.

I should have enough information to start testing application after application.

Thank you again.
Have a nice weekend.
Rene.

Does anyone know if its possible to make an I3d atmosphere shader in vops?

I managed to figure out how to make an i3d generator shader, in order to do such things as distorting the metaball field with the procedural texture in a way that I choose, and giving my clouds a flat bottom like what happens in the real world.

But now to do the stuff that Hypervoxels, Afterburner etc can do I need to figure out how to make my own Atmosphere shader that reads in the i3d and does the lighting/shadowing… so that I can do things like apply color based on density etc… this is where I get stuck coz there is no documentation on how to do it in vops. In fact there is no help that I can find in making any kind of atmosphere shader at all.
I've been told this stuff has to be done in Vex code, but find that hard to believe, why bother to include an atmosphere vop context?

Does anyone have any tips on how to do this in vops? just a few words or a simple example to send me in the right direction would be greatly apreciated.

Sergio

double post

Well, I've used Afterburn extensively and I certainly don't think 3ds Max is the worst of all 3D programs.

However, there is a clear weakness with things like automating render passes. In Houdini this is a snap ..

with 3ds/ABurn different particles and/or Afterburn effects must be manually turned on and off for each render. They introduced something called “scene states” recently which sopposedly were sopposed to help, but these didn't have any ability to turn on and off particles or volumetric effects … which are some of the most render-sensitive things.

When I saw Houdini's ability to make composits and renders both selective as well as dependent I was amazed coming from a 3ds background.

So, to sum it up, Afterburn makes cool fire .. but it's not procedural once you get to the rendering stage which could kill a project or effect.

are you guys sure, that what you can do with Afterburn, you can do very ewsity with i3D as well?

I would say i3D is much more difficult, but it may be, because I dont know i3D.

Peple talk a lot about i3D - does Houdini Contain all the tools to make new 3D volumetric textures - i3D, or are i3D textures supposed to be brougt to Houdini from another specialized i3D package if such exists?

Personally to me, i3D seems to be much more difficult than Afterburn, but I did not get too deep into i3D.

With regards,
Rene.