RafeSacks

circusmonkey
- Rafe ………

Good to see you have finally picked up Houdini , read the docs though !!.Thats why they are there.
Are you still working with Steve R ?.He mentioned Houdini and testing it when I last spoke to him !. I take it your the “Trial Monkey ” !.

regards

rob east

Hey Rob!

Nope, the only monkeys here are in the trees outside. It's (sort of) unrelated. Honestly though, you shouldn't have posted. Now you're going to start getting questions in your email :wink:.

- Rafe

Hi Again,

I just wanted to make a semi-off-topic comment without further cluttering my last post.

The quality and look and feel of the documentation/help system in Houdini blows everything else out of the water. I have never turned to help docs as my first option before. Usually I don't bother until I need SDK reference, instead turning to friends or Google or websites.

Did you guys even bother making a paper manual?

Having scene files with the tutorials would be the topping on the cake. It would have saved me from typing most of my last post.

Nice work!

- Rafe

Hi,

I'm trying to get through the fur tutorials (the first I've attacked), but I'm having some trouble. Well to be honest, the first tutorials were the video introductions to the UI. I guess this proves how fresh I am. Though I have around 11 years experience working with just about every 3D program, including one that was proprietary, I haven't been in Houdini since version 4 (2001?), and then only for a one week training at SideFX. I'm sure if I had used it in production back then, I would be in a much better head-space… oh well. I hope I am a good test for these tutorials.

In the “Basic fur setup” tutorial, I can't get the custom width parameter (created in the attribCreate node) to have any effect on the render output.

In the “Using guide hairs” tutorial, when I plug the guides reference object in to the hair shader, it causes an error in the render:

fur: “The two sources have unmatched geometry.”

I have attached a file which should illustrate both of these issues.

I have triple checked my work, but as a Novice, I'm sure it is possible I am still overlooking something. Could it be both of these problems stem from how I used the extract tool? This is the only part which I really don't understand (I was hoping to avoid black-boxes in Houdini) The text reads:

Select the SKIN_OUT node in the network editor, and select the grid in the viewport, then click ‘Extract’ on the Modify shelf tab.

The problem is, I can't seem to figure out how to select “the grid” (I'm using a sphere) in the viewport. I'm in the sub-object level here. Why should I have to select one in the network editor and one in the viewport. I ultimately shift-selected both in the network editor. It worked and created the nodes, but perhaps something broke somewhere? I checked the merge nodes in the skin and guides reference objects and they are identical. How can you tell which one uses which “out” node. Perhaps this is where the mistake is?


It seems like things would be more intuitive if there was a “shader out” node, or something. At least I could see the flow in the network editor instead of having to rig nulls as outputs which then go back up to object level just so the shader can reference something lower. It would get rid of all the flag work-flows as well, assuming there is a way to access all the info the shader needs there. I'm rambling now…


Ok, I'm ready to learn something new.


Cheers,

- Rafe


P.S. is there a search feature for this forum? I posted this in the apprentice area before I found this thread.