Hello,

I have recently found out about this VDB and it sounds like its an amazing way to work in in Houdini. I haven't really worked very much with Houdini and was wondering if there was any kind of tutorials on this subject? I have already looked through the Siggraph 2013 documents and been to the openVDB website, but I don't think I am fully grasping what this VDB is about. If someone could lead me into the right direction that would be amazing.

Thank you,
Jason Healy

Not that I know of. There's a tutorial on the CloudFX though which makes use of VDBs underneath:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2498&Itemid=132 [sidefx.com]

The VDB nodes inside the cloud tools might be instructive.

Thank you, That actually helps a lot on understanding how to setup the network.

Would you be able to help me out on how I would load a .VDB file into Houdini? For example, the examples from the Open VDB website. I loaded them in through the object import, but I am pretty sure that's not the right way for the object loads but there is no network.

- Jason

JasonH
Thank you, That actually helps a lot on understanding how to setup the network.

Would you be able to help me out on how I would load a .VDB file into Houdini? For example, the examples from the Open VDB website. I loaded them in through the object import, but I am pretty sure that's not the right way for the object loads but there is no network.

- Jason

To my understanding a .VDB is just the information cached to disk, like you would cache out one frame of, say a Pyro sim, to .bgeo. If you load that in you will only see that information, there is no “network” to see. Or am I missing something?

JasonH
Would you be able to help me out on how I would load a .VDB file into Houdini?

You can just put in the appropriate path into a File SOP. Or if you're new, the easiest way is to use the main menu, File > Import > Geometry.

Ok, that's what I did. Good to know I was doing it right.

Thank you.

JasonH
Hello,
I was wondering if there was any kind of tutorials on this subject? I have already looked through the Siggraph 2013 documents and been to the openVDB website

if you're still interested, we just added some great stuff on the OpenVDB website. [openvdb.org] I created a really thorough HIP file (on the downloads page [openvdb.org]), which walks you through a ton of different techniques and workflows. You can check out the Siggraph slides [openvdb.org] from our talks as well.

I hope that helps!
-jeff

I am

Thank you

pretty detailed examples, thanks!!

Just wanted to say thanks for this very detailed file.

of course, happy to help! let me know if you have questions or need clarification on anything.

-jeff