Horseguy44

Thank you to all who responded. I may have shamed some of you into it, but as someone who’s self taught in all the programs I use professionally (Solidworks, Illustrator, Manga Studio to name a few) and who has taught college students to use both Illustrator and Vellum, I know the incredible value of being able to ask a living person for guidance. Think of yourselves as Houdini Sherpas. I plan on climbing Everest (Houdini) myself, but even getting guidance on what to pack before I get there is of great value. Yes, the guides and videos are terrific, but as my students would say, “if I don’t even know what words are being used to describe what I want, how am I to look it up?”

And as basic as my questions are, the resolutions are not as simple as they might seem. After all, I can key frame rotational positions and generate an expression to create spin, but as soon as I start smoothing transitions out in the channel editor, the functions become Bezier curves(functions) and I no longer have my RPM formulas at the key frames. Clearly I need to figure out how to have a constant slope, with an RPM formula and on either side have ease in/ease out Beziers. I’ll eventually figure that out, but clearly I’m already in deep math waters…so not so basic after all.

For the moment I’ll table the RPM problem in favor of seeing if I can apply Peter Quinn’s Wine Spill methodology to get my liquid swirling in the glass. Hopefully I won’t make as many mistakes setting that up! So many ways to go wrong!

Anyway, thanks again to those who pointed me in a direction (or at least confirmed I was heading the right way) and please be patient with us new users. You all started at the beginning at some point and this particular program isn’t the best for self instruction.
-GW

Looks great Stu but I have to ask, considering pretty renders can be done with other less powerful/less difficult packages, why Houdini? Are there plans to take this iron or other products and animate? Add steam/smoke etc?

This does give me great hopes that my own ambitions for Houdini, as a product design tool (this is a hint to the developers…new/existing market waiting to be accommodated…) will work out!

Thanks for the update.
-GW

Huh, I was hoping for a more active (friendly?) community…

Even someone saying, “hey Noofus (that's Noobie and Dufus combined) try looking at so and so's tutorial or so and so's video.” would have been nice.

I'm not looking for THE answer, just direction.

So far I've found that inputting $F into rotation generates spin, and of course I can increase or decrease by multiplying it, but the spin starts from frame one no matter which frame I put his expression in. Need to be able to spin it up and then back down.

Thoughts? (anyone anyone?)
-GW