Day 52: Creating a VEX operator

VEX-(Vector Expression) It's the shading

Modifying the particle attributes. VEX does not create data.. it modify data
Two types:
VEX is the code and VOP- Visual operators
Propose to define new SOP operator.

Getting started with VEX in the network view. press tab and type "SOP type" to add the SOP operator. right click and create new to "SOP" operater in th eproperties tab type "deformer" as the name of the operater.
Dig in to the node, press tab and type "multiply" to add the vop operator.
press tab and type "parameter" to add the vop operator.
language it extended to other objects like Geometric points, particles, pixels etc.

Open one more network view to add the "geometry" node. dig in to the "geometry" node. delete the "file1" node and add the " grid1" node.
at the output of the "grid1" node press tab and type "deformer" to add the "sop" node we created. from the properties we able to change the size of the grid using the "defromer " VEX operater.

Day 51: Using the fur

Open the file fur_start.hip, it's nothing but an human head.
make sure that in object level of individual items the geometry file is liked to the object.

later from the fur tool, select add fur to object it gives an a brush , it add's fur to whole object. then use paint density tool to adjusting the proper size of the brush we able to paint the fur on the area we would like to add or remove the fur. we also able to use "paint length tool" to incrise and devrise the length of the fur.

Final touches are be given by using comb th hair, add the color to the hair in required direction then use the "Depth of shadow" map to make rendering more faster..add camera and render the sequence..

Day 50: Animate mouse and render the sequence.

Houdini has a good procedural animation tecnique which able to multiply and animate the mouse.

Create a simple encloser using the box and extreude it also create a grid as a base. from the base grid, add  and null as a emitter of particles.
Number of particles emits at frame One is 25 and frame Two is 0, we control the numbers using the animation key frames.

later use the instance and attached the mouse to the particle. so mouse follow the particle path. some of the mouse are colliding each other so add the collision node, and incrise the collision tolerance to 0.5. so before they collide they move away. then also add interact nod eso it affect the individual interaction with the mouse. lastly add the speed limit node to control /reduce the speed of the mose running around.

lastly, add lights and camera in to animation to add some realastic effects of material and lights.This exercise is very good if people would like to explere the procedural work flow of houdini.

         

Day 49: Animate key and mouse tail using channel editor

Open mouse_anistart.hip. to animate the key select the key and use transform node in the properties change the rotation sequence to Ry,Rx,Rz
then in Rx use expression $F*5 where they key able to rotate for th ewhohe timeline sequence that is 240 frames.

next task is to create use the bones to animate the tail so we create a 24 frames animation of one cycle. wher ekey can rotate from left to right and back.

this cycle need to change the value a bit so on frame 12, Change the parameter values of four bones by offset them a bit.
last part is to repeat the cycle for whole length. this one id done by using the channel editor, where we able to move the mouse left and right scene for the whole 240 frames of the animation the loop we use the expression  repeat(start frame,end frame)

Test the animation using the scene viewer.

Day 48: UV unwrap and apply textuer to mouse

Started with the full mouse model file modelUV_start.hip

In houdini the UV maping is bit simpler as it's a node based. select the key model in scene view by choosing points and select uvproject from the texture shelf. all the points will we projectes in the UV view.
Make sure you aline the key in the top left as there are other objects going to come in.

select the mosue body project on XY plane and see the body in the UV plane. next one to seect the mouse tail,
select the tail using premitive mode and view in the UV view and move down at the bottom. next one select the ear..
this work a bit different than the other nodes. select the ear baseic node that is "cap" then use UV unwarp.. to unwrap the uV then use UV transform node to move and scale the objects in the UV view.

after doing all the UV unwrap right click on the merge nod eto save the TGA or JPG file. this file we able to do touch up using phototoshop or any image editing software.

To apply the texture.. create the mantra material and add color map to assign the color map path also apply amaterial in the material to appy to object.
Rensder the save the final render file with subdivide node.

Day 47: Modelling a mouse toy

Modelling a mouse toy has 4 differnt parts of the body.
Main body, Nose, Ear and key

I started with modelling the main body of the mouse. Take a basic sphere shape then modify the sphere in she shape of mose as shown in the picture above.
the body is more tapering towerds the start of the more rounded towers the back of the body.
At the more rounded side of the mouse body seelct the center polygone and use poly extrude to scale it down. also use another poly extrude to extrude the polygone to convert it in to a tail. see th emouse pic below.

As the base body is ready, next part is to create a ear for mouse using NURBS.
create a simple NURBS curve using 6 poinnts duplicate the curve using peak node. merge the both curve and add skin node to create the surface and cap node to close the inbetween gap.
then use transform node to move to the front of the mouse body and scale and rotate to aline in the front of the mouse. onece aline the ear use the mirror node to mirror ear to the next side of the mosue body. 

next thing is to create the mouse nose and aline it to the front of the mosue
Us esphere node to create the nose and applied transform nod eto aline it to the front of the mouse.

next one is to create a key to the mouse toy. so it starts with the basic node box. change the box to polygonal mesh to do edit it.
change the axis division to 2,4,2 so that we able to ge tthe vertical key height.
use poly extrude to extude the polygone to get the key head.
Create another box and keep in the center of the Key head. then use cookies node to substract A minus B so we able to see the key with a hole in between.
then add divide node to clean out the extra poits or polygone so it look more neat.

At the end of all the individual objects, press tab and add "null" node and rename it "mouse_body","mouse_ear","mouse_nose","mouse_key" and merge them all to merge node. lastly aline the key to the back end of the mouse as shown in the image and use subdivide node to smooth the whole mouse object.

Day 46: Modelling a cheese

Start with a basic tube, change to polygone and reduce the colomns to three and add on the caps to create the basic cheese shape.

later add fuse node to merge the extra points, and divide node, cleanup polygons: fix concave polygons, divide N-side polygons into triangles.
so it creates the smooth nice cheese shape
also we can add an "transform node to move the cheese up above the grid line.

To make holes in the cheese we use metaball node. use scatter node to convert the cheese geometry in to poits format then use copy SOP to merge the two nodes  so  we able to see the metaballs in the cheese shape.

Actual cheese has holes in to the shape, so to make the shape reverse we use cookies node and minus the metaball from the cheese geometry to look like a cheese has holes in side.