Still learning Houdini here. While I successfully understood the procedural geometry workflow to produce interesting and complex geometry; there is still something bugging me in Houdini that I can't get rid of : fully manual 3D data editing, like a classic 3D modeling software.
To be clearer as to what I'm asking, I'll go with an example:
I used the mapbox node to extract the openstreetmap coastlines of a terrain. I needed edit and then convert the lines into a surface. Took 15 min inside Houdini wondering how to proceed. Failed. Exported the line to Blender and it took me 30 seconds. Where can I learn the power to do this inside Houdini ?
I am not clear about what you are trying to do - the problem might be a communication thing. If Blender “works” for you, I would personally recommend using Blender, as it seems counter-productive to use a tool for a job that takes you 30 times longer to achieve a goal. Houdini is all about pipelining, doing one thing in another package doesn't hurt its feelings. (When I try to do ANYTHING in Blender, it usually takes me minutes to hours to even find the most fundamental functions - and I usually don't get a result that even resembles what I had in mind, so there you go: Use the tool you feel comfortable with instead of wasting precious lifetime on using the WRONG tool.)
If the end result that you are after is what you show in the last picture and what you get in is a number of points, I can imagine several approaches: From VEX-wrangling it all the way through using a fine grid and cutting off those polygons/primitives that are not inside a given area (defined by your “coastline) to using a VDB workaround … so many paths to Rome.
The ”power" to do anything in Houdini, I think, is to understand that it is a TOOL. A tool that can be tweaked to serve the way you need it to - but does not enforce (for the most part, Houdini can be quite persistent sometimes) any specific approach. Without having a clear idea of WHAT you want to do, it can be … frustrating.
Marc
--- Out of here. Being called a dick after having supported Houdini users for years is over my paygrade. I will work for money, but NOT for "you have to provide people with free products" Indie-artists. Good bye. https://www.marc-albrecht.de [www.marc-albrecht.de]
I quite understand the principle of composing with the tools available or those you are good at. And honestly I wouldn't look further if it wasn't for the sole challenge of doing it all inside Houdini itself. But like you said, that's probably a wrong way to approach it. I understand that modeling isn't it's forte, but I was pretty confident I could achieve some basic curve/face editing only using the mouse and some keyboard shortcuts like I do in Blender. After all, I saw a tutorial on how to model a whole dropship (thank you Indie Pixel for existing) only using Houdini. Time to shift my paradigm a little it seems. or wait for the future versions, who knows
> I could achieve some basic curve/face editing only using the mouse and some keyboard shortcuts like I do in Blender
… well, I don't know about Blender, nothing there works for me, but you CAN do some basic curve/face editing only using the mouse and some keyboard commands in Houdini. Sculpting comes to mind, soft-transform is a great tool for massaging points into place … so many goodies.
If you could, maybe, demo what you want to do in … what's that tool's name … Blender? Then it might be easier to provide suggestions on how you could do similar in Houdini or even do something completely different that achieves the same goal.
Marc
--- Out of here. Being called a dick after having supported Houdini users for years is over my paygrade. I will work for money, but NOT for "you have to provide people with free products" Indie-artists. Good bye. https://www.marc-albrecht.de [www.marc-albrecht.de]
The edit and add sop are about a manual and old school as you can get. It took about 5 seconds to make an arbitrary curve into a polygon with the curve as one of the edges.
I wouldn't use the most manual approach of the add sop though. That's what the vast array of nodes are for. In this case:
Ends: converts a line to a closed polygon edge divide: add extra points the the new edge edit: move the new points into place divide: triangulate the result
There's probably dozens of other ways to achieve a similar result, depending on the desired topology.
Ok thank you both; jsmack's process seems to be what I was looking for in terms of manual editing. Turns out my main problem is knowing nodes and what they can do… Thanks again Until next time
