Animated Instances using Solaris and Variants: Instancing Part 3 - Handy Houdini Tips

When instancing, most cases will require static geometry for things like trees, shrubs, rocks etc. However, in certain cases, animated instancing is required. A major part of animated instancing is offsetting the animation based on the particular use case. This part explores how to create offset, animated instances using the Solaris instancer node.
00:00 Intro
01:00 Killing Flowers with Vellum
03:13 Instancing Points Setup
04:15 Creating a Name Attribute
08:13 Variant Generator
16:08 Using Animated Instance USD File

[@spyral00]

Brilliant! Thank you so much. Looks faster than the SOP copy points.

[@khalilboss2855]

Another goldy houdini tip. Thank you for sharing your knowledge!

[@ArjunSingh-kb9iq]

Houdini is HIP Part 2 Please 🙇

[@AlexandruPreoteasa]

Nice techniques. You mentioned in your video you'd like to see how other people do this.
There is a video Josh Weber published 12 days ago with the title "Houdini | Creating animated USD assets and time offsetting instances" which I highly recommend.

[@cgaltruist2938]

I was thinking the same, Weber video goes without creating the variants, both are great methods. Thanks for sharing.

[@ripvangu]

I appreciate the tutorial but i think making a variant for every frame is a convoliuted way of doing things

[@pinkmoon5332]

I did the weber tutorial recently. Quite nice! But neither of these tutorials address instancing with adjustments to the shader (such as in part2 of this 3-part demo). Most instancing techniques pre-usd cover that area.

[@songpeng]

Awesome🎉 as usual❤

[@oleit3]

Thank you for sharing your approach!
I've been researching for a way to do this, and it seems like the "Retime Instances" LOP node might also be a great way to go, if anyone would like to try that. It appears to be a more native way to do this, without having to separate frames into variants.

[@ripvangu]

i think so too

[@pinkmoon5332]

oh no! which quixel object is it? nvmd, figured it out, but I dont see you passing through the color (clr) noise pattern to the shader as you did in part 2. How can this be done in part 3? Usually that process is readily achievable in the instancing realm.

[@StayOkToday]

Hey, great video! I was wondering where I could find a link to your discord channel?
I was just struggling with instancing rbds in Solaris as they stay visible before they are born or killed. Will attempt using collections and instancer for this, because I just did simple SOP import and that did not work.

[@user-cw4wh7ji6s]

brilliant

[@NineBetween]

Thank you!

[@randomlikeu]

❤

[@spectrewashere]

Hey dude, great technique. Would you do a version based on the species method you explained in the previous video please ?

[@nicolaastanghe475]

you can use VFP to make ezalaly make simulation geo and then use pointdeform to transfer the sim.
->
Note go try if this works with your ropes and a line

[@wewantmoreparty]

🤘🤘

[@bodhihorton5854]

Great tutorial. Have you found a simple way to export from Solaris to unreal with material x ?

[@oleit3]

Hey Bodhi, afaik Unreal still only supports standalone MtlX files, not yet ones embedded within a USD file, sadly... If you find any way around this please hit me up!

[@doelhasan7310]

Why is CPU(Embree) rendering usage so low in karma XPU?
The GPU(Optix) usage is close to 100%.
Should both CPU and GPU be used in a balanced way like GPU 100 and CPU 70 to 100?

[@nathanbayne3576]

for some reason when im at one iteration in the for each end block i get a ball of jumbled polygons, not sure whats happening

[@mechmedved]

how you say if i try transfer the color from points to instance ? It is easy but not simple )

[@publikumsorientiert]

感恩

[@WillPreston3D]

Is there a part 1 to this?

[@NineBetween]

Hi Will, there is, although it isn't really a follow along type tutorial series, each part just covers important instancing tips. The others can be found here:
th-cam.com/video/Im_t2PJtTuI/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/_lCFA7N0tRk/w-d-xo.html

[@WillPreston3D]

@@NineBetween thanks

[@tanrayta7352]

Hello author, ask you a question. I did it the way you did, but the final effect is not animated, although it does have frame changes, but it is not dynamic. Could you ask me about it in detail? Similar to the effect of this animation, I have this animation plant programmed growth project, if you need to send it to you directly for animation scatter. th-cam.com/video/S9Ccta-6YC8/w-d-xo.html

[@spectrewashere]

did you solve it?

[@kaleliberali903]

Nice! You can't do animated instancing in redshift

[@lewistaylorFX]

I don't think you should be storing variants per frame, that is not how you'd approach this workflow.

[@tomallen5837]

Is there a better way? I'm looking for what I think is the holy grail having just gotten into lops. Yes, I don't think this is it, but definitely some great things I learned along the way. So, what's the holy grail? Okay the holy grail is to be able to have multiple instances complete with multiple materials assignments for each instance, and to be able to scrub the timeline quickly, supporting proxy instances. If you have a better way, please point the way.

[@edh615]

too tedious for an artist

[@Snowsample]

Hello, cool tutor. But how, for example, to make it different flowers with random animation?
sop wrangle
string basepath = chs('root_path');
string elemlist[] = {'PLANT_A','PLANT_B','PLANT_C','PLANT_D','PLANT_E'};
string elem = elemlist[i@variant];
string fr = sprintf('%04d',i@fr);
s@instancefile= basepath+elem+'/'+elem+'.'+fr+'.'+'bgeo.sc';

[@apzzpa]

I just took that course. All you need to do is copy the code he gave in In Bloom.
ie
i@fr = chi('frame');
i@fr += chi('offset');
i@fr -= floor(f@dist*chi('offset_delay'));
i@fr = clamp(i@fr, 1, 150);
You need to put this in a wrangle before the instancefile snippet so it can read the i@fr attribute
f@dist is from a distancealonggeometry sop but you could use any falloff you want like mops falloff for example.