LYNX | Houdini | Force General Asset

LYNX | Houdini | Force General Asset

LYNX | Houdini | Force General

LYNX tool numero tre 😉

If you’re coming from a simulation software other than Houdini you’ve probably struggled a bit when first playing around with forces in dops. There are a lot of nodes (pop wind, pop force, gravity, wind, uniform force,…) that seem to do the same thing with slight differences. On top of that some of them go after the solver, some into the pre/post-solve inputs and some only work with points, others with volumes. Simply masking a force to a certain area is quite the hassle of adding multiple nodes and controlling the mask transform/shape is usually not done in the dop context.

To solve this issue I’m now presenting:

LYNX_force_general

The goal was to eliminate the above described problems and to still have enough user control for customization. You simply plug it into the solvers of your choice! It can work on geometry and volumes (aka dop “fields”) simultaneously. Masking is enabled by the press of a button with support for various shapes (even custom geometry). You can also override any paramter or the final force strength via vex or even choose to write to custom dop data. For advanced cases you can also share the masking vdb fields
the asset generates internally across multiple “LYNX_force_general” instances to reduce memory usage. So to put it simply: Instead of a lot of force nodes for different purposes, you now have one.

Features include:

  • Simple to use interface with handles in the 3d viewport
  • Presets to “hit the ground running”
  • Easily slide the shape along any curve or pin it to a deforming polygon
  • Masking the force by shapes with fine tunable falloff settings
  • Guides to visualize force strength/direction/masks
  • Vex overrides with support for an additional input/custom bindings(attributes & groups)
  • Full Houdini native documentation

Download the tool and the example files on Github!


Release log

v1.0 Release:

  • New gradient force let’s your sim flow along the gradient of your geometry.
  • Pin the transform to any polygon geometry or slide it along a curve.
  • Full Houdini native documentation with useful tips & tricks.
  • Noise now supports all noise types, curl noise sdf influence and “noise as strength”.
  • Full support for curves with helpful visualizers.
  • “Hide on Playback” support for guides
LYNX | Houdini | Force General | Release 1.0 | LucaScheller
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v0.9 Release:

  • Simple to use interface with handles in the 3d viewport
  • Presets to “hit the ground running”
  • Masking the force by shapes with fine tunable falloff settings
  • Guides to visualize force strength/direction/masks
  • Vex overrides with support for an additional input/custom bindings(attributes & groups)
LYNX | Houdini | Force General | Demo | LucaScheller
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Tutorials

Here is a complete tutorial covering the basics and advanced topics:

LYNX | Houdini | Force General | Tutorial | LucaScheller
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Special thanks to Patrick Zeller & Philipp Engelhardt (Website) for beta-testing and giving valuable feedback for improving the tool 🙂

 

3 Responses

  1. MostHated says:

    This tool is fantastic, thank you so much for sharing it. As a new Houdini user I spent the last week and a half simply trying to figure out how to even start making a custom velocity/force for my pop fluid, I was able to get it figured out and working just as I had hoped in about an hour after installing this! I cannot express just how helpful this is, not just to a new Houdini user, I definitely can see myself using this in pretty much any situation in which I need velocity/force for my projects.

    Thanks!
    -MH

  2. Carsten says:

    Luca, your tool is fantastic! I am new to Houdini and began pulling my hair because of forces handling in Hou. Thank you for Sharing this. Cheers, Carsten from Hamburg (@eyelovemotion)

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