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Toufik Mekbel. FX Thinking. How to make birds fly good. 10. Put some effort in Now we have gone some way to creating a realistic cycle, but what if we have to show our character flying under strain? Perhaps carrying something heavy. In this situation there is a temptation to revert to the up/down ratio problem I showed before, with the wings rotating faster down than up. Click to Play Looking at the osprey's up/down humerus ratio as it struggles to get air bourne, I count a fairly constant 12 frames up to 20 frames down, (a ratio of 1/1.67) . * Ospreys are medium/large bird, reaching 60cm length. for comparison an eagle owl can reach a length of 75cm ( humerus ratio1/1.7788 ), a barn owl reaches 45cm (humerus ratio 1/1.42) One would think it would make sense for a bird under strain to move it's wings faster to stay in the air. Another situation where a bird is exerting increased effort in flight is during take off. In the image above I have taken the highest and lowest points achieved by the wing tips (note: not the humerus).

Project Eden. Painting with Polygons. Most non-photorealistic rendering solutions tend to involve brilliant but unwieldy new technologies, such as volume-based rendering engines1 or complex image analysis2. Even the best polygonal rendering engines3, which create “hand-crafted” abstraction using patterns, will only allow limited lighting and color control. Acceptable results can often be achieved using simpler methods and non-proprietary toolsets, even toolsets designed with other effects in mind. Our studio has been experimenting with ways to achieve a hand-painted look with basic tools that are common to most 3D applications. Normal displacement, usually used to add detail to topology, can also be used to distort a surface without compromising the object volume.

If this distortion is cycled once per frame and rendered with motion blur, the resulting effect simulates layered, transparent brush strokes . Line Drawings from Volume Data (2005) M. Procedural go! go! go! | My way in procedural animation. VFX. Martin Sawtell's website. Point Clouds Point clouds are one of those things in Houdini that can be confusing and unclear the first time you try to use them; people often throw the term about in many different contexts and the documentation doesn't make it clear what's going on either. So I figure I should write up some common workflows and how they might apply to the POPs context.

First up is using the pcopen pop vop, and how it can pull arbitrary float or vector attributes off geometry. It's kind of like an attribute transfer sop or pop, but done within a pop vop context so you can link it directly in to whatever you are cooking up. The cool thing is that you can directly reference another sop that is cooked dynamically as per normal- no caching required! (though you can cache stuff to disk if you like). This is particularly handy if you are super-sampling the particle system (sampling the sop and pop chain more than once per frame). So put down a source pop, emit some stuff and add a vop pop. Important! Use Python to create and manipulate objects - AIworks | Houdini 12 Education, Animation & 3D/FX. SideEffects have been developing Python implementation in Houdini for several years now. Python - being much more readable language than HScript, is a great addition to the Houdini toolset, making it's capabilities limitless.

In this tutorial I will show you how you can quickly start using Python in Houdini. If you don't use Python too often, you will also find here a couple of code snippets useful to create and modify objects in Houdini. There are several ways to access Python scripting in Houdini. Most common are: using Python Shell (Windows-> Python Shell, or Alt + Shift + P, or accessible via Technical Desktop)using Source Editor (Windows->Python Source Editor)using Type Properties dialog of any Digital Asset Python shell is ideal for interactive access to objects and network nodes in Houdini. Python Source Editor is very convenient for less interactive access. Open the Source Editor. <span style="color: red">Sorry, JavaScript is required to use the code buttons</span> Actualités - Blog sur Houdini et les fx - Houdinimatic | Forum sur houdini et les FX.

Lesson 1: Introduction to Shaders in Houdini « Houdini Render Passes. In Autodesk maya, you interact with shaders at a very high level. The inner workings of the shader is usually not directly accessible to the artist. Instead, you are given access to an organized variety of sliders that the artist would tweak to achieve specific looks. This is quite the opposite with Houdini. While working in Houdini, you will most likely need to understand the mechanics of the shader to get the most out of your workflow. You have to get used to working at a very low level. In programming, this is the difference between working with Python (high level language) as opposed to C (low level language, closer to computer language). Take for example the basic Surface Shader in Maya.

This constant shader is very similar in functionality as well as in parameters. In the SHOP Network context you will see the Material node, representing your constant shader, along with it’s parameters. Truely, that’s a good amount of nodes for the simplest shader you can possibly find. Power Noise volume shader - Shaders. Not sure if I understand this correctly, I'm trying to write my own version of this same thing. Using volumes (iso offset spheres) I'm trying to copy them to a particle simulation but I am not sure if what you guys have been saying is correct or not.. Is there a way, using the copy sop, to generate copies of the volumes and then have the volume shader stick to the transforms of each copy using object space?

I've tried a few different things to no avail. I would much rather have the visualizaton of the volumes directly in the viewport instead of working with the instance Object. Does the instance object work differently and actually pass the proper object space transforms for rotation and translation . I'm using a vex shader that pulls most of its noise generation from the powerNoise thread but no matter what I have tried, using wo_space(P) or (P) results in objects swimming thru a static texture.

Is it just not possible? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Peter Claes Vfx. Hi, Welcome to my blog. This will be a blog about houdini, visual effects and some of my other effects related interests. I would like to keep the tone of this blog light and fun, but with in-depth information about how to achieve certain effects. I hope you will find some of the information (technical or otherwise) interesting! I have no idea yet how often I will be able to update this blog, time will tell.

If you feel like replying to some of the posts, please keep it civilized. Disclaimer: None of the information I share on this blog represents any opinions of my employers, it is completely my own. That’s it for now, time for some content! Peter Claes. Hosuk's personal website. Short and sweet OP centric lessons - Education. 'danylyon', on 25 Feb 2013 - 6:10 PM, said: What I'd love to see more, as somebody who swichted from another app (not a "newbie").. is an indepth explenation of how houdini works "under the hood".

There's bits and pieces everywhere.. but most Tutorials center around an effect they want to achief. There is no mystery as to how Houdini works. Anything that gets done in Houdini can be expressed by a node. The nodes in Houdini are the lowest level atomic routine/function/programme. To generalize the cooking structure of a SOP network, for every cook (frame change, parm change, etc), the network starts at the Display/Render node and then walks up the chain looking for nodes with changes and evaluates dependencies for each node also querying those nodes for changes until it hits the top nodes. You can set a few options in the Performance Monitor to work in the older H11 way and see this evaluation tree order if you wish. A new Houdini file is an unread book, full of interesting ideas. Quote. Doctor Hou Doodles. OD|FORCE. Houdini tutorial database. Home - Houdini - 3D Animation and VFX.