I'm trying to get a randomly animate a box extruding off the z axis. I tried doing it with rand($PR) but it kept giving me different heights. Basically I need the box to start out small and then have each face/division to extrude randomly until it makes a much larger cube. It sounds easier than I'm making it. Sorry if this is a noobie question. I know there should be a way to do this with copy/stamp but I just can't figure it out. I'll keep trying, but any tips or suggestions would be awesome.

not really understanding what your trying to do. are you talking about the effect of the cube from transformers 2 but backwards?

Yes. That's a much simpler way of putting it. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

make a box, and then under it a foreach set to for each number. turn off merge results and set the 2nd number range parameter to $F. inside put a a sort set to sort prims randomly and a polyextrude below the sort with translate z set to 1 and the group set to `stamp(“..”, “FORIDVALUE”, 0).

this is a simple start. the computer im at right now only has houdini 11 but when i get to my home comp i will try and make a better example using the solver sop so that it can fill into a predefined shape instead of just randomly growing. could do it in 11 in dops but itd just be cleaner in 12.

Thanks zdimaria. I was try the forEach SOP out earlier, but I guess I was doing it wrong. I will try this method out. Using H11 myself, haven't updated to 12 yet for some reason.

Just out of curiosity, do you go to SCAD, saw Savannah under your name. Graduated or still in? Alumni 08 here.

yep. i will graduate at the end of summer quarter '13.

Okay, have it set up that way. Do I use the group tab in the polyExtrude SOP or do I create a group SOP? I'll try it both ways, but wanted to double check.

heres a file. you could do a lot more with it to make it better. one problem with it is that because its random, towards the end the growing gets slower. it should be a good start though. ask if you have any questions


zak

also, i made this in 12, but made sure not to use any nodes that were added in 12, so it shoullllllllddddd work i think. if it doesn't i can rebuild it tomorrow in 11.

It seems to be working, but I had an error message. Did you only use 3 nodes? If not, then the rest of the file didn't load. Trying to install the apprentice version of h12 on my pc, but not having any luck, error messages as well. Will let you know if anything changes.

There is 3 nodes in the geo1 container, but there should be a lot more inside the FOREACHsop.
The nodes inside the foreach are just the usual Houdini nodes from previous versions, so everything should work out ok.