The other day I was watching Just One of the Guys and suddenly I thought how would you go about creating spare parameters in a Python Sop in Houdini. I mean, we know that in our trusty VEX Wrangles, we write a line of code, click on that little thingamajig and suddenly we have our custom parameter. However, I don’t remember seeing one of those in a Python SOP. Hmmm… Anyways, today I’ll go exactly over that!  We will be creating spare parameters in a Python SOP and connect the Python code to the parameter. A little different than in […]

These days I find myself in Wrangles more than I do in VOPs. I also prefer seeing the code as opposed to using the visual “programming” in applications such as Houdini or Unreal Engine. However, sometimes it’s just easier to wire up some nodes or maybe you’ve received a file constructed with VOPs. Hopefully, that person was kind enough to label and name their operators. If not, it’s like diving into an unknown sea of nodes. If that’s the case, this #QuickTip will help you out and show you how to quickly Jump to VOP Inputs and Outputs in Houdini. […]

Mistakes. Mistakes are great. They help you learn and improve. As they say, if you are not failing, you are not progressing or something to that effect. In our Mograph Multishader Setup in Houdini #QuickTip, we looked at how to texture planes with random images from a folder similar to Cinema 4D’s Multishader. We are back to look at some of the things I goofed up on. Are you ready? Mistake One If you recall, our setup was rather simple. A network for our frame and a network copying our frame to a bunch of scattered points. We wrote some […]

So if you run in the Mograph circles you most likely have come across the infamous random image to plane deal. You know the one. The one where you take a folder full of images and map them to individual planes. I know I’ve had my share of it. Sure enough, I was asked to do it again recently. Normally, I would reach for Cinema 4D and quickly set it up. However, I wanted to try it in Houdini since I figured this would be a piece of cake. There are probably multiple way of dealing with this setup in […]

If you are a UNIX nerd like me, you were probably jumping for joy the day Microsoft WSL was announced. Now you have access to lots of the UNIX goodies that your Mac and Linux friends have. I love myself a Bash shell and it’s one of the main reasons I prefer Mac and Linux or Windows. However, now I can make life easier for myself by using Bash on Windows. In this #QuickTip, we will be setting up Bash/WSL for Houdini on Windows. I’ll show you how to set up Windows to initialize the Houdini environment and have access to […]

If you read that last #QuickTip, you may have asked yourself “How would I expand Hscript global variables & expressions with Python?”. That is, can you use Python to expand a global variable like $F or $HIP or even and Hscript expression? In this #QuickTip you will learn how to expand Hscript global variables & expressions with Python. Expand Global Variables Again, our trusty hou module has the function we need to accomplish this task. The hou.expandString(str) function takes a String and returns the value at the current frame. So for example, if we were at frame 41, I would […]

Efficiency is the name of the game. The faster you can work, the quicker you can get to watching some Six Million dollar Man reruns. One complaint you hear from new Houdini users is the jumping back and forth between networks gets old fast. Houdini 16 introduced a new way to navigate your networks through a system called Quickmarks. In a nutshell, you are just setting bookmarks for each network view you are in and by calling a hotkey, you can quickly jump to it. I hadn’t been using them until recently but now I can’t stop using them. So […]

If you have some 3d models in .obj format but for some reason Houdini is having a hard time reading them in, here is a #QuickTip that may help you out.  In the past, converting the troublesome file to another format that Houdini can import has resolved the issue for me. We don’t want to convert our .obj files to just any old format. Specifically, we want to convert obj models to bgeo format. Convert OBJ Models to BGEO format in Houdini The .bgeo file format is the standard format for storing Houdini geometry. However, how do you convert an .obj […]

So you are writing some cool Python based tools but you find the need to use HScript. What are you to do? Give up and watch Three’s Company? No, watch Three’s Company after you learn how to run HScript commands from Python. Run HScript Commands from Python The Houdini hou module contains the hscript function that allows you to execute HScript commands from within Python scripts. You provide the HScript command as a String and the function will return a tuple of 2 strings. The first string contains the regular output of the executed command and the second string contains […]

Cinema has a cool tool called the Region Tool that allows you to create a box around your keyframes and edit them in bulk. I believe Maya has a similar feature. If you’re looking for the same tool in Houdini, you’re in luck. Here is a quick way to edit your keyframes with the Box Handle.   Edit Your Keyframes with the Box Handle Select your keys in the Animation Editor and hit the keyboard key Y. Yes, really easy. You’ll get a nice box around your keys that allows you to manipulate them in a group. If you want […]