Day 39 The Dawn of Age

Couldn't really get the result I wanted, I was abit stuck with the current system where i had no idea how to imply/activate the field to affect the particles With understanding of using sopgeo to bring in the field and gasparticletofield, I roughly work my way out and re-create the hip file sent by the odforce user. However, Mr Ron gave me a file he did, some test of various method of different system. He show me on how he did it in full detail and different segment to take note of.

different method of system

Above are the different types of system.

Day 38 The Dawn of Age

After Mr Douglas saw our weekly progress, he show us some software related stuff. With my vector field ready, I could art direct the way of the water gush. I went on to the forums to ask for directions regarding the series of Gas node which can "activate" the vector field to progress on. Soon enough, Macha from Odforce came out with a reply with a hip file attach. The hip file is a test where smoke goes through two spinning circle which is the main field. A SOPgeo and a GasParticletoField node were included in the autoDopnetwork. The SOPgeo is to bring in the two spinning circle as a geometry to act as fields and GasParticletoField to advect the movement of the flow.

Day 37 The Dawn of Age

After getting two curve field going in opposite position, I did not know how to continue. Mr Ron then show me the direction by letting me to research on a few node which will be the gasadvert field, field force and the the gasfield vop. All this might help to activate the field to affect the water.

different nodes to activate field

I went to test out white caps on my sculpted fluid but somehow I keep getting error when I hit the whitecaps tool on the shelf. Some forum user also encounter such error when using white caps.

error when using white-cap

forum user on white-cap error

Day 36 The Dawn of Age

I went to Odforce to search for topic using keywords like water, ocean, flood, fluid and etc. Certain topic have links to their personal test in Vimeo, links to another topic, and many variation. I checked out their videos and ask them to teach me how to do their stuff step by step or if possible, to share the hip file. Hoping to get their hip file, "hack" into it and study, then add to my knowledge. Later into the day, Mr Ron dropped by and help us with our progress. I told him that I am stuck with the previous system where the particles driven by the metaball attractor. Mr Ron then showed me an interesting and better (in my option) way. It is by driving the water stream into a velocity field and use that velocity field to affect the movement.

Using a line to create a curve with expression like sin and cos functions. With resample node to alter the points and attribute-create to "force" out the normals. Downloaded a OTL from sidefx.com, Tangent node. Another OTL will be the volume attribute transfer.

 curve expression

 

 tangent OTL

 volume attribute OTL

 field radial

 field to affect the water

Day 35 The Dawn of Age

I went to watch some tutorial video. And I encounter a tutorial which might help with my attachment in sidefx. Its similar to how sandman was form in Spiderman 3. It is from many particles to form into a organic being. I saw/found a video on Vimeo.

http://www.vimeo.com/14207113

I also did a simple testing about blend-shape

I also stumble upon a video and talks about white caps which I wanted to try out on my fluid test.

http://www.vimeo.com/19534874

Day 34 The Dawn of Age

Mr Douglas came over to see our progress. I showed him the metaball attractor system where this could be the system to simulate the curling of the water stream. However I explain to him that when I tried to do this using a POPsolver in a flip fluid emitter, it does not work and will try different alternative, Mr Ron explained. After Mr Douglas finished going through everyone work, I went to the forums to see if theres reply. There was reply from both forums, which is good. A user from CGtalk suggest an interact pop to ease the clumps. A couple of users in Odforce suggest doing a oversample using expression like $FF.

forum reply

without interact node

with interact node

Day 33 The Dawn of Age

I test the system to get the look to of the curling of the water. I played with the parameters to achieve the look I wanted. A delete node that somehow controls the amount of metaball via a copy node, the radius of the metaball to act as an attractor and the different forces to determine its rotation pattern. But there are some clumping issue that I need to solve so I head to the forum to get some help.

test

 different parameter

different forces to tweak

clumping issue

Day 32 The Dawn of Age

I went to test the system using a flip fluid emitter and input the same system into the POPsolver. Added in all the forces and direction, a SOPnetwork and dive in to add a POPmerge to call in the particles. However, the particles did not appear or show in the viewport. I consulted Mr Ron and the forums on how to solve the problem.

 sopnet in POPsolver

popmerge in sopnet

Day 31 The Dawn of Age

Explaining to Mr Ron about my progress for the past 2 weeks, I show him the water gushing system. I told him that I wanted to achieve the curl of the water stream. With his help, a simple test was done. Using source from geometry to emit particles from, wind and force was added for direction. A bounding box group was created to group the core of the stream and the outside was left expose to attractor to twirl with. A SOP network was use for copy stamping various sizes of metaballs to be the attractor. So while the middle parts stay the same stream movment, the outside which not group under the bounding box have a twirling movment.

bounding box

metaball in different size as attractor

twirl effect by attractor

Day 30 The Dawn of Age

After finishing CardanFX fluid tutorial, I went on to watch more fluid tutorials. This time by Digital Tutor. Somehow, I find that DT videos were more detail and clear.The topic on fluid consisted on simple caching of simulation, visualization & guides for particles, emission and sinking of particles and also saw the tutorial where liquid poured into a beaker and fusing color via the gas diffuse node.

Digital tutors

 visualization & guides

physical attribute

color fusing using color attribute

collision geometry guide

Day 29 The Dawn of Age

Mr Douglas came to review on our progress.It started with me first as I did not have much things to show as I was waiting for reply from the forum. I showed the water gush "in-progress" file and talk about the stuff I did in that week. I continued watching tutorials, on introduction to particle fluid, I was finishing with that section. However CardanFX did not touch on that particular area of fluid I wanted to know. At least, with the basic of particle fluid builded up, I tested out sculpted fluid and here is the test.

Day 28 The Dawn of Age

I continued watching more tutorial on basic Houdini skills to introduction of dynamics(DOP), foundamentals of particles(POP) and finally on particle fluid. All from CardanFx, his videos were easy to understand and quite detail.

Here are some of videos I watch on.

Everything on group. Group node, attribute, how issit use and where to use.

group node



Attribute copy, transfer talks about how to copy attribute like copying color data from one geometry to another and expression like "Cd" to transfer color attribute for attribute transfer.

attribute copy/transfer

Introduction to Dynamics(DOP) scratches the surface of DOPnetwork. There are three ways to make a object to be static/passive. By RBD object and deactivate the solver, by static object and make it a terrain object. It also explore the different attribute in dynamics and shows how to baked simulation to set as initial state.

RBD object

terrain object

different attribute in RBD object

baked sim as initial state

 The fundamental of particle talk about how user can call/source particle from more than a place like from the particle selection, create a POPnetwork in object level or inside geometry level then locate from there. The different type of operation or attribute to tweak to adjust the emitter style. Also, how to create particle emitting from objects and parameter of particle-fluid-object node. This is my favourite part where it teaches how to allow particle to interact with objects in the scene.

emitter attributes

particle-fluid-object parameters

POP object



Last but not least, Introduction to particle fluid, the topic which I am interested to look into. I saw some video about the basics of particle fluid like how to create one, the exsisting parameter, baking sims, sculpted fliud, the whitecaps, emitting particle fluid, sinking of fluid and forces. Below is a test I did.



Day 27 The Dawn of Age

Was waiting for reply from two forum which I seek help, cgtalk.com & odforce.net. Meanwhile, I watch tutorial videos to brush up my foundamental of Houdini. I will say that my basic was not strong enough and afraid that as time passes for both FYP and eventually the L.A sideFx attachment, the advance stuff will collapse on me. I use this opportunity to catch up. I watched quite a few of tutorial video by CardanFX. A series of 10 minutes video of diferent category.

CardanFX videos screen-shot

Video on basic geometry was about different default geometry, different primitive type affects the attributes differently and some shortcut keys like Space+G to close in to the selected object.

basic geometry video

basic geometry video

Video on metaball talks about the introduction to metaball.

Day 26 The Dawn of Age

I went back to the voxel & flip simulation after a few days working on the water gush (hydro-pump). I made some new discovery. I couldn't understand how that person achieved it, went to odforce for enquires. Afterwhich I re-do once more but encountered some problems. Surprisingly, I encountered problems which I had never encounter previously. Here are some of the problems I faced.

The new discovery made was that the smoke solver in the original file had more option, which I think might affect the outcome of my re-do test, thus making the result a failure.

New discovery - Different SmokeSolver

  

What's an ISOoffset? What does it do?

 1) ISOoffset

Also, the original file enables the "treat SDF as fog" option, before checking that option on, the simulation was alright until I checked that option on. As shown below, after checking on that option, there was an "explosion" of smoke around the emitter box.

"treat SDF as fog" uncheck

"treat SDF as fog" checked

Day 25 The Dawn of Age

I did not feel well today. Went to watch more tutorial videos and checked on the forums for my thread and also on other interesting threads.

Day 24 The Dawn of Age

The day Mr Douglas dropped by, since approximately 2 weeks ago. Everyone show their progress of work. I also propose my intention of further research where I improve on the voxel-flip system and add curling to the water gush. If I had time and when I am ready, I could test the water shader. The progress check went on for quite a while. Afterwhich, everyone together with Mr Douglas, Mr Pang and Mr TK, had lunch till about 2-plus. After lunch, work resumes. I watch some tutorial videos by Cardan FX to brush up my houdini knowledgeto strengthen the foundation, which will be useful for both FYP and the L.A SideFx attachment.

Day 23 The Dawn of Age

Understanding the concept of the file(water-gushing), I went to re-do the hip file. However, I manage to complete up to 90% of it. I can get the velocity and direction I wanted but did not get the same effect of noise and turbulancy effect. I post more question on the forum for enquires. While waiting for answers, I went on to add motion blur and did some batch renders tests.

test gush

test renders

Day 22 The Dawn of Age

After getting replies from the forums(CGTALK.COM), Before I went re-do the file, I went on to analyze deeper on how is it done. I had learn that point sop was a useful node which can help affect quite alot of stuff like points attribute, forces, particle, color changing and many more attributes. Using a point node, the direction of the particle and be altered and even adjust the normals of the directions of the particles to give a slight variance of noise and turbulancy effect. After gotten the direction of the gush, a VOPsop was created in the emitter to create more noise.

Vopsop network