Hello,

i am brand-spankin-new as far as using houdini goes, and i was challenged by an associate to create a relatively realistic bead of water running down a string.

I could probably create something halfway believable in any other package, however i would like to implement the residual effect of what the water may leave behind on the string, and i'm incredibly interested in what houdini has to offer!

I'm using houdini 9.5… does anybody think this is something a beginner could do in a relatively small amount of time? And, are there any leads as to how i would begin to accomplish something like this?

thanks

it's definitely achievable i'd say try get Houdini 10, the learning edition works great.
main reason i say go to 10 is because the cloth system has been improved a lot which seems appropriate for this project.

then:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1540&Itemid=132 [sidefx.com]

and

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1223&Itemid=262 [sidefx.com]

somthing like, a cloth/string sim, with a fluid sim on top of it. the fluid paints colour on the string which feeds back into the string sim and changes elasticity parameters etc

I wouldn't attempt something like this with fluids…
you could birth a particle and creep it along the wire, or even do this manually using a carve sop to create a point that moves along a curve… that way you can keyframe it's motion (depending on what this animation is like). if you need to bake attributes over time you could try the sop solver.

None of this is overly difficult, but not necessarily beginner…