Brian ___

I checked the file… Thanks but there are still a few things i do not understand. straight of the bat; how does your volume(both vdb and isooffset) look very dense and beautiful. mine always looks wierd and has striations i the center where its supposed to be empty. another thing is why is there a volume at the start and what is the dopnet up there. Im not sure how you used the iso offset with “DOPNET” to create an emission. for the sparks I'm lost from the start, you started with and object merge I don't know what that is(but by the looks of it it it just merges objects but and you've used it to import a model from the volume node) and not too sure what instancing is as well if you could explain the sparks further that would be nice. you also have a dopnet here (i know this something to do with simulations but I dont know what the node itself will do if i type create it by itself). atribute Wrangle and attribute sop not sure whats going on in there(you said something about calculating te size of lines, which lines and for what reason?). Sorry for all the questions just tryin to get my head around houdini.

hello I'm very new to houdini and I'm trying to create a jet after burner effect similar to this video… https://vimeo.com/36661653 [vimeo.com] . the author of the video released his .hip file and I had a look at it. I noticed that houdini has changed alot from when he created the video. because he is using the old popnet and also he uses a node called vopsop which should be the equivalent to attribute vop now I think. his workflow is based on emitting particles and then using the copy to turn them to metalballs and then using an isooffset to turn them to a a volume after that I'm not sure how he renders the scene and how to get passes from render in houdini. also I've had a few pitfalls like I cant get the particles to collide with an object(in houdini 12 it was done differently). I also havent fully grasped the use of the vopsop (or attributeVop). coming from Maya its hard to get used to houdini. If anyone would be kind enough to guide me while I create this effect I would greatly appreciate it

I've been using Maya for a while and I'm trying to master houdini. I like that it is procedural thats a big leg up but i cant get my head around some stuff they look like thery are to many nodes to understand. I can create smoke and change a few setting and create some destruction with some few basic destructions but I can't get my head around how the nodes connect together and what they mean (I just use the shelves). For example when I create a billowy smoke houdini seems to create all these nodes and they're not just connected node to node (meaning inside the nodes they are also things like variables referring to objects ). So when I use the same nodes to try create my on smoke simulation it doesn't work. another problem is that when i watch older tutorials it seems like houdini changes how nodes are linked with each version. Not to mention all this business about Dops,Sops,Chops, sop to DOp, Dop to Sop , Lops,sops, zop, xops, lops to chops, to crops…..arghhhh i just dont get it. can someone recommend the best way to learn houdini coming from maya. I haven't even bothered with trying to model in that software because I just keep exporting in geo from maya. Sorry for the long post but i seriously need HELLPPPP….