Particle and Dynamic Animation (Houdini II)

Exercise 1 - Intro to DOPS and POPS

The goal was to introduce dynamic operation (DOPS) and particle operation (POPS) networks through a simple pendulum system.

Houdini 2 - DOPs and POPs from Sean Dooley on Vimeo.

Overview

The goal was simple - experiment with DOPS and POPS to learn the basics of how they work and how you can control them. We were to follow a tutorial of a swinging pendulum (DOPS) and include particles in some manner. The motion of the pendulum reminded me of a domino chain falling and I wanted to play with that thought, but to keep it a little different (while still figuring out how everything works for the first time) I wanted to place a new chain of dominos at the apex of each swing of the pendulum so something new was falling. The smoke particles were added to the pendulum to meet the requirements. I would've liked to add them to the collision points of the objects, however, I had trouble with rendering a particle as a sprite in the first place, so I didn't know how to set up a collision event to spawn more particles and I ran out of time.

Review

What I Learned/Challenges

- I learned how to create, modify, and control particles using a POP network and I learned the very basics of how to set up a dynamics network.
- For some reason (maybe due to a corrupt file or a bad build), I had weird issues rendering particles. At one point it wouldn't render because they didn't have a size; but even after a size attribute was added, nothing changed or I'd have the sprites, but the size attribute wouldn't modify the size of the sprites.

Future Improvements

- More variety to the particle behavior as well as the dynamic behavior.
- More time spent on the visual development, especially on the rendering of the sprite particles.