openSourceVFX.org » houdini

Partio

Philippe Leprince — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 16:08:14 +0000

Particles are an important part of effects work, because they allow free-form information in 3D space. Unfortunately, there is no standard format for particles akin to Wavefront .obj. Most animation systems have their own proprietary particle formats. For example Maya uses the binary and ascii particle database formats .pdb and .pda file formats. Houdini uses the .geo and .bgeo geometry uber formats. Renderers typically have their own point cloud format such as RenderMan’s PTC format and Houdini’s .pc. All of these formats share a common theme. They allow particles to be iterated or indexed and associate a customizable set of attributes with them. The goal of Partio is to provide a unified interface akin to unified image libraries that makes it easier to load, save, and manipulate particle files.

Home Page: http://www.disneyanimation.com/technology/partio.html
Project Page: https://github.com/wdas/partio
Language: C++ Python
Platform: Linux, OSX, Windows
License: New BSD
Sponsor: Walt Disney Animation Studios

rmanPtc SOP

Philippe Leprince — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:21:28 +0000

The RmanPtcSop project is a Houdini geometry operator (SOP) for loading and displaying RenderMan point clouds. It is based on the open source dnPtcViewerNode project from Double Negative Visual Effects.

Features of the rmanPtc SOP include:

Independent control for limiting the number of points loaded and displayed.
Geometry output for all point attributes in the cloud.
OpenGL display preview for attributes as point or disk primitives.
Ability to cull points based on a reference bounding box.

Home Page: http://danbethell.github.com/rmanptcsop/
Language: C++
Platform: Linux, Windows, OS X
License: New BSD License

Houdini Ocean Toolkit

Philippe Leprince — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 11:08:53 +0000

The HOT is a collection of dso’s and an OTL for rendering deep ocean waves using the algorithms of Jerry Tessendorf described in the SIGGRAPH 2004 course notes. The dso’s implement a SOP for displacing geometry and VEX functions functions for use in various Houdini contexts. The OTL contains a VOP that wraps the vex function.

Project Page: http://code.google.com/p/houdini-ocean-toolkit/
Language: C++, VEX
Platform: Linux, Windows, OS X
License: GNU General Public License v2

Bullet Physics

Philippe Leprince — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:00:28 +0000

Bullet 3D Game Multiphysics Library provides state of the art collision detection, soft body and rigid body dynamics.

Used by many game companies in AAA titles on Playstation 3, XBox 360, Nintendo Wii, PC and iPhone
Modular extendible C++ design with hot-swap of most components
Optimized back-ends for pthreads/Win32 Threads multi-threading and PS3 Cell SPU
Preparation for OpenCL data parallel optimizations for upcoming Bullet 3.x
Discrete and continuous collision detection (CCD)
Swept collision queries
Ray casting with custom collision filtering
Generic convex support (using GJK), capsule, cylinder, cone, sphere, box and non-convex triangle meshes.

Rigid body dynamics including constraint solvers, generic constraints, ragdolls, hinge, ball-socket
Support for constraint limits and motors
Soft body support including cloth, rope and deformable
Bullet is integrated into Cinema 4D, Lightwave and Blender, and a Houdini and Maya Plugin is available
Supports import and export into COLLADA 1.4 Physics format
Support for dynamic deformation of non-convex triangle meshes, by refitting the acceleration structures

Home Page: http://bulletphysics.org/
Project Page: http://code.google.com/p/bullet/
Language: C++
Platform: Linux, Windows, OS X
License: ZLib License, free for commercial use.

GTO

Philippe Leprince — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 19:53:36 +0000

GTO is an open source file format designed for computer graphics. It was developed by Tweak Films to serve as the core storageformat for our geometry and rendering pipeline. GTO is used by VFX and animation facilities, post-houses, and game developers for a wide variety of applications. It’s small size and versatility make it useful for animation, modeling, particle dynamics and 3D paint. It can be used to replace file formats such as PDB/PDC, obj, and binary RIB.
At heart GTO is just a clean and optimal way of storing large, named, and organized arrays of binary data (although there is a text version of the file too). GTO naturally lends itself to a “least common denominator” role between computer graphics applications. The storage mechanism and the data layout are independent, so that the format can be easily adopted without regard to how the format is used by any particular application. The GTO library has bindings in C++ and Python making it relatively easy to develop custom tools to read, write and manipulate GTO files.

The GTO library includes the low-level reader and writer classes, a slightly higher level raw data reader/writer, and source code for a Maya scene and particle export, particle display, a Maya deformer to use GTO as a geometry cache, Houdini plug-ins, a number of command line tools, a Wavefront .obj parser (for a command line converter), and a Python module for reading and writing GTO files. The GTO reader/writer and tools have been tested thoroughly in feature film and game production on GNU/Linux and OSX as well as Windows XP, Vista, and 2000. GTO is also used as part of Tweak Software’s commercial products.

Home Page: http://www.tweakfilms.com/products/open-source-software/gto
Project Page: http://github.com/jimhourihan/gto
Language: C++
Platform: Linux, Windows, OS X, etc
License: GNU Library General Public License with exceptions for static linking.
Sponsor: Tweak Films