This was my first meeting with Medhi about the personal project to discuss my ideas that I had jotted down on my blog. I sent the link to Medhi to have a read through what I have planned and thought of so far to get the most out of the tutorial. No one has booked a time slot today so I was fortunate enough to have all the slots to work on my project.
Chop net node – this would allow my to manipulate the animation through the break down of music
We spoke about the different examples that I had on instagram to show what sort of work I would like to produce. The simple method is to get a sphere and fracture this object which would move according to the different channels of a song. This was a very generic representation of music that is quite common on the internet but I thought it was wise to learn all ways and then progressively become more experimental so I understood how each method on Houdini was possible. Also, this is a good way to familiarise myself more independently on Houdini instead of just following tutorials Medhi makes.
So using the different channels with in a song meant that the frequency needed to be split into sections like soprano, base, alto (high, medium, low sounds).
Nodes:
- File
- grid
- facet
- Chop network – adds music, works with curves, 2 channels (left + right)
- delete
- export – to directly link the file and chop network
- parameter equaliser
- spectrum
- voice split
- audio in
- filter
- pitch
- resample – gets rid of extra of info not needed
- filter – smooth curves
- attribute wrangle – @P.y=chop (find cheat sheet online)
- rename – manage channel
- height – H script
- primitive
- poly extrude
Expressions:
- * – Multiply/all
- $PR – primitives
- use range (0-10) not * for primitive node
Node set up reference:
- band equaliser
- reference downloaded to work from to figure out the right way of going about it,
- Put into asset Houdini folder
- used pitch node divisions
- multiple frequencies
To start off to see how the Chop Node works Medhi made a grid with 10 faces on this plain and split a song into 10 channels. This was then linked to the different faces so when on channel would increase in frequency so would visually show what the music would look like.
Get a clear reference to work with for the poly extrude sphere to test. Find expression for each perimeter. Try different ways to get audio driven animation. Build a still render to try and animate scene – create mood board.
My aims for next week:
- Attempt a simply sphere extrusion animation.
- Watch back on recorded tutorial, attempt to progress further.
- Learn what each of the nodes spoken about in the tutorial do.
- Find Houdini expression cheat sheet.
- Create mood board for overall scene to animate