Hello everyone,
It has been a crazy period for me these last few months, loads of work, this is why you haven’t heard any news from me, and I haven’t touched SimSOM for ages.
Since I am not seing any big openings in my schedule any time soon, I have decided:
1 – To share SimSOM with you so that you can try it and play with it. It is far from done, there are still many non implemented features, the simulation codes need improving in many areas…etc and don’t expect it to be problem/bug free, but this is how far I got with the time I had, and it would be a shame keeping it in my drawer for who know when.
2 – I wanted to ask if someone is interested in getting involved in the project to push it further, because it would be a shame stopping the work at this point. Please contact me on my email/pm if you are interested and we can discuss it.
In the attached archive, you will find a windows dll and a linux so file, both compiled against H12.1.185 x64, with many example scene files.
I would like to hear your opinions, and see any nice sims you come up with!!
If -even in this non complete state- you decided to use it for a commercial project please get in touch with me.
I guess that is all for now.

Enjoy!

Download

Sorry for the very long silence, but due to the move to a new country and the lack of time, it is until now that I was able to release some new demos of SimSOM.

It is now an alpha version, and hopefully soon I will be calling out for a few alpha testers, it will be a private alpha release.

Here are a few demos showing some of the old capabilities improved, and many new capabilities, like granular behavior, interactions between different types of materials, switching types of materials, moving geometry, and many other features. And due to a new architecture, the speed and stability were improved a lot as well.

I hope you like it!

youtube
vimeo

To visit the first post please follow this link SimSOM Pre-Alpha I.

Next are the new second iteration demos, demonstrating some of the functionalities upto this point.

To see the videos directly on Youtube or Vimeo please follow the links below:
SimSOM Pre-Alpha II on Youtube
SimSOM Pre-Alpha II on Vimeo

Column Break

Particles: 130515
Substeps: 5
Sim Time:
——- current SimSOM version : 1 minutes 41 seconds (without the meshing)
——- previous SimSOM version: 3 minutes 50 seconds (without the meshing)
Frames: 135
The meshing is done using Houdini’s Particle Fluid Surfacer.

click on Read more to see the rest of the demos.

Cut

Particles: 5440
Substeps: 5
Sim Time:
——- current SimSOM version : 28 seconds
——- previous SimSOM version: 2 minutes 2 seconds
Frames: 240

Dam Break

Particles: 3211
Substeps: 2
Sim Time:
——- current SimSOM version : 16 seconds
——- previous SimSOM version: 55 seconds
Frames: 300
The colors represent the pressure.

Dangling

Left: (No plastic deformation)
Particles: 480
Substeps: 15
Sim Time:
——- current SimSOM version : 5 seconds
——- previous SimSOM version: 9 seconds
Frames: 240

Right: (With plastic deformation)
Particles: 480
Substeps: 15
Sim Time:
——- current SimSOM version : 7 seconds
——- previous SimSOM version: 13 seconds
Frames: 240
The colors represent velocity.

Cloth

Left: (Sticky Cloth)
Particles: 14933
Substeps: 10
Sim Time:
——- current SimSOM version : 12 seconds
——- previous SimSOM version: 36 seconds
Frames: 120

Right: (Non Sticky Cloth)
Particles: 14933
Substeps: 10
Sim Time:
——- current SimSOM version : 12 seconds
——- previous SimSOM version: 35 seconds
Frames: 120

Soft Body Variants

Left: (Non Sticky, Non Breakable)
Particles: 567
Substeps: 5
Sim Time:
——- current SimSOM version : 5 seconds
——- previous SimSOM version: 14 seconds
Frames: 240

Middle: (Sticky, Non Breakable)
Particles: 567
Substeps: 5
Sim Time:
——- current SimSOM version : 5 seconds
——- previous SimSOM version: 15 seconds
Frames: 240

Right: (Sticky, Breakable)
Particles: 567
Substeps: 5
Sim Time:
——- current SimSOM version : 5 seconds
——- previous SimSOM version: 17 seconds
Frames: 240

Dough

Particles: 282
Substeps: 2
Sim Time:
——- current SimSOM version : 7 seconds (without the meshing)
——- previous SimSOM version: 15 seconds (without the meshing)
Frames: 500
The meshing was done using Houdini’s Particle Fluid Surfacer.

Tearing

Particles: 3060
Substeps: 15
Sim Time:
——- current SimSOM version : 8 seconds
——- previous SimSOM version: 19 seconds
Frames: 100

Rabbit Drop

Left:
Particles: 12101
Substeps: 10
Sim Time:
——- current SimSOM version : 59 seconds
——- previous SimSOM version: 3 minutes 50 seconds
Frames: 150

right:
Particles: 12101
Substeps: 5
Sim Time:
——- current SimSOM version : 29 seconds
——- previous SimSOM version: 2 minutes 13 seconds
Frames: 150

Left:
Particles: 12101
Substeps: 3
Sim Time:
——- current SimSOM version : 26 seconds
——- previous SimSOM version: 1 minutes 18 seconds
Frames: 150

right:
Particles: 12101
Substeps: 5
Sim Time:
——- current SimSOM version : 56 seconds
——- previous SimSOM version: 2 minutes 22 seconds
Frames: 150

Particles: 181168
Substeps: 4
Sim Time:
——- current SimSOM version : 15 minutes 38 seconds
——- previous SimSOM version: 32 minutes 4 seconds
Frames: 240

It is called SimSOM, I was searching for a name when sesame seeds came into my mind because of their particly nature, and in my Lebanese mother tongue sesame seeds are called simsom, then I thought: Hey! “SimSOM” could be “Simulating States of Matter” and the name SimSOM was born.

It is still far from done, and there are tons of ideas fighting in my head to implement, but I already managed to get many parts done or partially done, and I am moving forward, slowly but surely – depending on the amount of free time that I can get.

It is basically an independnt library, Multiplatform and application independant, it can be easily implemented for any 3D app. My current implementation is for Houdini using its HDK, and all the demos are realized using it.

I coded everything from scratch, based on many papers, publications and algorithms that I improved on myself.

At this point it is still a work in progress, parts of it are done, parts are not yet written, and other parts are to be modified, updated, or even re-written, to meet all the ideas I have in my head.

Next are a few demos, demonstrating some of the functionalities upto this point.
I will be making more posts and updates along the way, it’s going to be great!

click on Read more to see the demos.

Soft Sticky Material

Water Emission

Water in Basin

Breakable Soft Body in a Bowl

Sphere Hitting a Breakable Soft Body

Two Spheres Hitting a Breakable Soft Body

Breakable Soft Body Falling to the Ground

This is my second video course of the series of Houdini tutorials, in which I will be talking about city generation. In this video I am going to teach you how to create a PROCEDURAL CUSTOMIZABLE building.

Introduction
Buying expensive software to generate cities? Well now you can create buildings right inside of Houdini. Do this interactively and customize the buildings via Assets for new and unique structures. This video will teach you how to create a PROCEDURAL and CUSTOMIZABLE building. Not only you will have the option to change the pre-existing set of parameters, but most importantly you can yourself create, remove or modify the assets which are the actual bricks that constitute the building, ranging from doors to balconies to anything you can think of, they will be directly taken into account and parameters automatically created for them, So that you will be able to modify the general building parameters and the parameters for YOUR assets as well, to customize even more the result you have. You can even build asset libraries and with a few clicks switch from one library to another to get a whole new result. If you’re going to be in this industry…this is the video that you want in your library.

click on Read more for the details and the link to buy.

Buy
Click on the cmiVFX logo to visit the product page where you can buy it.

Building the Outline Shape

The first step in the process is to get the outer outline shape of the building. That can be done in many ways. You’re going to learn in this part how to do that the direct way and then how to replace that with syntax based system to make the outline shape generation the best and most flexible it can be. For the syntax based method a mix between python coding and basic workflow will allow us to get the desired result. While a human can control the result, when the process is automated undesired results may happen, unless some special conditions are added to the input parameters, which will be discussed as well.

Façade Creation

After creating the outline shape of the building, the dummy grid facades that were used, have to be replaced with real facades. To build the real facades there is a lot of possibilities. Some of those possibilities will be explored, among which some are simpler than others and can serve to be used in simple situations where not much complexity is needed, and the last one on which the choice is set for the final building is more complex than all the other methods but is far more flexible and controllable. Here as well python code will be used to participate as a part in a hole in the façade creation. A very important aspect of the building is defined here, which is the customizability of the components of the building, so you’re going to see how the assets system works and how much power, control and flexibility it gives to our building. And at the end you will see how all that adds up to replace the grid facades with the real facades and approach the final shape.

Floor Separators, Roof and Colors

 At this point the building is a hollow shape without a roof, so this part will walk you through the creation of the floors separators which will form the ground for each one of the floors, and using almost the same techniques the roof is going to be created. Sometimes getting the desired result becomes a little tricky, and colors can help you greatly while debugging, this is why you’re going to see how to add some colors to your building based on many parameters such as colorizing per floor, per façade or per wall.

Building Parameters

Now that the building is all done, comes the parameters turn. The parameters are a very important aspect of the building, and they can be divided into two big families, the first is the standard building parameters that are there all the time, and the second family is the parameters that are generated or removed on the fly whenever you create or remove an asset of your building assets folder. Some of the parameters need to generate an event that calls a callback script that will update the building and depending on the scenario this can be tricky so you’re going to see a couple of methods of how to do that and how to implement conditions into that as well. And of course using python code you’re going to see how to generate the corresponding assets parameters on the fly.

Practice

The last part of our journey will be more like an exercise, where you will be trying to use the building, by seeing how to add assets, how to use their parameters to control their use throughout the building. Like any other system, this system has some Dos and Donts that will be discussed here. And at the end we’re going to talk briefly about creating multiple different copies of our building using a copy node and stamp functions.

click on Read more for the details and the link to buy.

Buy
Click on the cmiVFX logo to visit the product page where you can buy it.

Introduction
There is an increasing demand for creating virtual cities for film and broadcasting projects, however getting a city built and preparing it for deployment is not an easy task. The time and resources spent can be very time consuming and costly. cmiVFX provides an innovative solution in automating this virtual city generation process and reduces the time considerably as well as the resources allocated.
Nothing is better than Houdini for such projects, but this course is not limited to just this application, the techniques demonstrated here can be utilized with any other 3D application and it will work the same.

OSM GPS Data
There are many techniques that can be used to generate city patterns; in this video the one demonstrated will be how to use the data of a real life city, exported from openstreetmaps.org, to generate a custom variant of it. The city data used is the same kind of data used in GPS devices, while the GPS uses it to give routing information and data, here the data will be used to generate 3D cities.

XML Conversion

The first step in the process is to identify what city will be the target of the project. Once the city is determined the OSM data must be exported from the open street map, which is an XML variant. Manhattan being the city of choice for this tutorial project, the video will demonstrate how to export Manhattan’s data from Open Street Map (OSM). An overview will also be given to learn more about this data and its structure.

Parsing In Python

The exported data must be parsed into Houdini and Python scripting is the method of choice with this project. The data will be explored in more detail and the utilization of a Houdini Python SOP will write the corresponding code that will parse the first main part of the data and transform it into Houdini points. (Resembling our city of choice.)

Paving The Roadways

Combining the points already created in the previous sections with the second main part of our OSM data, this section will dive deeper into the data analysis. Covering more detail in the parsing and coding, the ability to be able to reconstruct the pattern of the city and treat different data types differently, like the roads, parks and buildings, will be discussed at lenght. At the end of this section the main skeleton of the city will be constructed and ready to be built upon.

Geometry Population

Begin filling the city with buildings, utilizing the OSM data. It is very important to mention that this data does not contain everything; in particular it does not contain all the buildings, a lot of them will be missing. To resolve this problem, the implementation of another Open Street Map export type will be utilized to extract the missing buildings using Houdini’s COP’s and customize the contour shapes if needed. The city will then be filled completely with the respective buildings.

Finalization
When the city skeleton is nearly ready the final data you have will be ready for part 2 in this series. (To be released in 2 week increments) In less than 2 hours you will learn how to take raw data from an internet map website and transform it into a full 3D city!

This is my latest Houdini tutorial, in collaboration with cmiVFX. As the title says, in this video I talk about python in Houdini in general and about taking the digital assets to a next level by empowering them with Python. the example I will be working on is a Rubik’s cube rig, a fully functional animatable rig. The Rubik’s cube rig subject has made its way many times into forums, and many competitions were made about it, so after doing my Rubik’s rig for Maya here’s an explained Houdini version, so it’s a very nice brick to add to your video tutorials library!

click on the cmiVFX logo to visit the product page for more details and how to buy.

This FREE desktop application allows you to convert nuke Camera.chan files into either Autodesk® FBX® or Autodesk® Flame® .action files with the simplest of controls. It began as an idea of Chris Maynard based on the research for the NukeX tracking system. Justin Israel and me sorted out the code in python then ported it into individual desktop applications for convenient use. This is a python based solution that will provide extensibility to those interested in expanding its features. cmiVFX supports the open source growth of this application and is willing to share its source code to participating members of this community. The Autodesk® FBX® plug-in allows all types of data to be packaged into one file format that can be used by most of today’s 3D authoring software.

So we are distributing it for free, as part of the cmiApps. And there is a version for all three major operating systems, that you can download using the following links :

download: Linux 12.2 MB.
download: Windows 9.1 MB.
download: OSX 29.8 MB.

for more infos please visit this link:
more infos

The example we will build is the ‘Juice Cup’ scene, so we will create the light setup, the materials, some from scratch, and others based on Houdini’s built in ones … etc.

Click on the thumbnail to see the result of the render at the end of the tutorial, or on the cmiVFX logo to visit the product page for more details and how to buy.

As long as we advance through the tutorial we will build, step by step, the ‘water glass’ scene.

Click on the thumbnail to see the result of the render at the end of the tutorial, or on the cmiVFX logo to visit the product page for more details and how to buy.