Falloff Control in Houdini

This chapter is a quick introduction to the tool we will be making.

A quick lesson on the matrix functions needed in this lesson, as well as the theory behind our falloff functions.

We set up the base asset and controls for our controller object. The controller object is used to determine falloff type, falloff settings, and coordinates of the falloff effect.

In this chapter, we set up our SOP level HDA. The falloff SOP will read in data from the falloff object and parse it into attribute data that can be applied to geometry.

We set up the necessary space transformations and apply our sphere function.

We move on to the cube function, adding it to our falloff SOP.

Taking a short break from our falloff types, we add a couple bells and whistles. Namely, we add a four dimensional noise to add variety to the falloff and also add a remapping ramp.

Back to our functions, we continue to add a cylinder falloff.

Continuing from the cylinder falloff, we incorporate a torus falloff.

Similar to the cube falloff, we reuse some of that function to create a plane falloff.

Rather than recreating functions from scratch, in this chapter we utilize Houdini’s surface sampling functions to make our surface and volume falloffs.

This chapter is an explanatory chapter, rather than a follow-along chapter, to keep the length of the tutorial manageable. In here, we add capsule and points falloff. We also go back through our asset, address outstanding issues, and discuss next steps to take it to the next level.

Now that you have made this tool, how do you use it? Here I show a quick demonstration of how the falloff information can be utilized to control a simple copy effect.