Hello All,

I'd like to convert a polygonal mesh to a voxels representation. Is this possible in Houdini? Maybe any documentation available?

Also, does Houdini come with any APIs that let you interact with voxels?

Thank you.

Hi, “junfan”,

depending on what you mean by “voxel”, I would claim that a lot of Houdini's most-used features are somewhat “voxel”-use-cases. You can use VDB (packed voxel), you can create your own signed or unsigned volumetric grids, you can do octrees … that's all voxel-ish.

For example, you can create a VDB from polygons using a “vdbfrompolygons” node, then later convert it back to polygons, using a “convertvdb” (set to polygons). Pretty straight forward.

Houdini “is” the API to interact with voxels … or you can use Vex, Python or C/C++ to “interact” with Houdini which handles the voxel-stuff for you.

Alternatively you could have a look into openVDB alternatively, to gain a better understanding of what happens behind the fences in Houdini.

Marc

Conversion: https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/nodes/sop/vdbfrompolygons.html [www.sidefx.com]
Interaction: https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/nodes/sop/volumewrangle.html [www.sidefx.com]