Export Volume VDB from Houdini into Blender

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Houdini can generate sophisticated physical simulations with ease, however Mantra isn't known for it's speed. What would be the next best choice? Either spend another thousand bucks on a new rendering engine or give Blender a try! Blender being a free open source software delivers very high quality performance! Blender can render very high quality images and is done at extreme speeds with the new Eevee engine.
At the cost of being free, I think it's worth giving it a try!
#houdini
#sidefx
#physicalsimulation

[@cihankenar1]

Your videos are always very helpful and insightful. Thank you.

[@bubblepins]

Thanks!

[@TopsonNoble]

I really loved how you broke down all the steps... Very easy to understand... Thank you!

[@bubblepins]

Thanks for watching! It was fun to try playing around with pyro!

[@MaksChernykh]

That helps me a lot with exporting to VDB, thank you so much! ❤

[@bubblepins]

Thanks for watching!

[@serhiipesotskyi]

Thank you for your tutorials! I love it! And you have a really nice voice :)

[@bubblepins]

Thank you so much!

[@gauravnag2120]

Very informative stuff, Thanks for the vids.

[@bubblepins]

Thanks for watching!

[@chowyunfatty]

Your videos and explainations are very clear and easy to understand. Also something about your voice and accent that make your videos enjoyable to listen to! Thank you!

[@bubblepins]

Thank you so much for watching the video and complimenting on my voice!

[@SubirChowdhuri]

Great video! As someone with ADHD, I particularly like the BOLD, on-screen overlays/pointers. Helped me focus on the important bits :) You deserve more subs!

[@bubblepins]

Thanks for watching!

[@jairobraden3744]

I guess Im randomly asking but does someone know a way to get back into an Instagram account..? I stupidly lost the login password. I would love any assistance you can give me

[@javiercristiano6690]

@Jairo Braden instablaster =)

[@bubblepins]

@@jairobraden3744 lol I'm not sure. Have you tried the Forgot Password link on Instagram, maybe there's a chance you can recover it through it's Password recovery policies.

[@minhaj_khan]

@@bubblepins Don't bother with them. They're bots. I've seen these exact replies several times

[@user-ui7bs7ed2k]

thanks for sharing！

[@bubblepins]

Thanks for watching!

[@ivanibanez1273]

hey thks so much for the series!!

[@bubblepins]

Thanks for watching!

[@ivanibanez1273]

@@bubblepins this to you!! Any chance in explaining how to exprort whitewater to 3ds max/redshift? I'm having a hard time trying. But a big success failing?

[@bubblepins]

@@ivanibanez1273 Sorry I don't use 3ds max/redshift. I am switching over to a Houdini /blender workflow.

[@ivanibanez1273]

@@bubblepins ok ok i am almost there! thanks a lot for all this work!!

[@rewis3d]

OK this is fantastic, as I render in Cycles - thanks!

[@bubblepins]

yeah I love the Houdini to Blender workflow. There is only one thing to keep in mind, particles are not easily transferrable from Houdini to Blender, because we loose all the point attributes in Houdini, but I have been thinking of a solution for this for some time. I think it is possible to use the newly hserver node in Houdini to create a small server and send all that information back into Blender to create a more better experience and workflow.

[@rewis3d]

@@bubblepins Fantastic - anything on workflows to Blender are greatly appreciated.

[@bubblepins]

@@rewis3d Yeah I'm excited for this too!

[@user-us8wf6dn1x]

Thank You very much!!

[@bubblepins]

Thanks for watching!

[@3ssammaya]

Thank you 🙏🙏

[@bubblepins]

Thank U for watching!! 😎

[@mohammedgabali6745]

you're amazing .. Big like

[@bubblepins]

Thanks for watching!

[@daemonjofficial]

Can you please do a tutorial on exporting whitewater from houdini into blender? I export as USD or ABC and my volume data flickers. Theres only data every other frame.

[@bubblepins]

It's because Blender has it's own particle system, so it makes it hard to export Houdini's whitewater particles into Blender, you'll have to convert the particles into some sort of geometry to make it work and then the scene blows up so large, it's impossible to use anymore. Or you could export the whitewater as a volume in Houdini and then import it into Blender as a vdb, but I already ahve a tutorial on export/import from houdini to blender for volumes. There's no perfect way to do it. You may want to consider using Houdini's Karma instead if you were only interested in Blender's rendering engine. Hope that helps!

[@daemonjofficial]

@@bubblepins your insight is very helpful. I have a pretty hefty computer. It can handle the particles. The only reason I want to use Blender is because I’m more comfortable working in it. I try to get out of Houdini as fast as I can. I prefer to work with node based applications. But Houdini is a pain in the butt to wrap my head around. The learning curve is just so high. Skinning a cat 19 different ways isn’t really all that effective. But that’s my own opinion. How could tons of vfx artists be wrong? I put it’s learning curve up there with Mari and ZBrush. “Pro” applications made to be so open ended but take forever to learn. But I digress. Lol

[@bubblepins]

@@daemonjofficial I will admit Houdini is different, and this does require larger learning curve. Blender is box modeling based app, but also its new geometry nodes are getting blender closer to Houdini-like. If you are in Houdini inside the particle network, inside the dopnet, drop down a popinstance node and on the sop level, like come out of dopnet. In the sop level, drop down your dopimport node, which will extract all the simulation data into the sop level. Then drop down a instance node. You can then specify what geometry you want to instance onto all the particles. Then you can drop down a rop alembic node to export it as geometry, but it's very heavy and not perfect. But this is the only way I know how to get particles from houdini to blender. Hope that helps!

[@pfeffermartin642]

nice explained

[@bubblepins]

Thanks!

[@Hugomonvaz]

Ey thanks for this video!. I 'm struggling with exporting multiples volumes in a single vdb file?. I explain my self. I have a field of clouds geo node composed from one single volume cloud. This volume has been scattered over a grid. But when I export the cloud field geo node, just exports the single cloud volume, instead of the whole clouds field. How would you convert all this in a single volum witch coulb be exported has a single vdb file?. Cheers!

[@bubblepins]

You need convert each volume primitive to vdb like at 4:16 when I use the vdb convert node. Then use a file cache node or file node to write it out to disk. Hope that helps!

[@Hugomonvaz]

@@bubblepins Thanks for your answer! I've tried converting the whole structure in a separate geo node through Merge Object and then adding the Convert to VDB node and then cache it. But whether I can't make the volume show in blender or it just shows the original cloud volume but not the entire grid. I copy to points this volume in a scattered grid. Don't knowwhat I'm not understanding in the process. :P

[@bubblepins]

@@Hugomonvaz I wonder if its a lighting thing. Sometimes the volume doesn't render that well with low light, do you have a hdr env. map added to your Blender scene. And maybe try increasing the density on the volume shader and temperature values on the volume shader. Hope that helps!

[@joshalvarez9331]

Hey this is very useful but can you help me out everytime I render an image sequence in cycles blender render 2.83 it crashes after using houdini vdb smoke simulation. Pls and thanks you

[@bubblepins]

Try switching the render from Eevee to Cycles and choose CPU instead of GPU, just to test if it still crashes. If it doesn't crash, I suspect that it's running out of GPU VRAM. Because Eevee is pure GPU, but Cycles can use both. Hope that helps!

[@joshalvarez9331]

bubble pins thanks I’m actually testing eevee and it seems to be working thank you🙏

[@KIBAUSTATION1]

Thanks for video. Buuut i have some problem. 1. blender don`t open any VDB file and show error (Volume failed to load: IoError: could not get size of file ..) even those that open up to other people. I try downloading the newest version of blender or an experimental build but did not work. 2. in 5:08 you compare two volume, and in VDB node shows 6 those before and after convert cube=cube. But in my case VDB = 1. Whether it was necessary bake volume or do something else ?

[@bubblepins]

Oh I think I know what's wrong for your 2nd question. In the dop import fields node, there's a drop down list Presets. You need to choose Smoke and make sure this node populates the correct attributes. So after you select the Preset option from that dropdown, you'll see that it adds a bunch of field names. (shown in 1:42 ) As for the first question, that error message, I'm not sure what that means, but that use to come up in the old beta versions of Blender before the official 2.83 released I got that once, but I don't get that error message anymore in the official Blender releases. Double check if that VDB sequence files is corrupted? Because that error message sounds like it's saying the VDB files you're trying to import seems like it's missing some metadata. Hope that helps!

[@KIBAUSTATION1]

@@bubblepins thx for you answer. I check all, but still getting error. I downloaded some free VDB clouds pack for tests, but couldn`t open none of them in blender. In Houdini all files is working. Everything I found on this topic is dated 2016. There are some differences in metadata. I will try to find a solution further.

[@KIBAUSTATION1]

​@@bubblepins the problem turned out to be very specific and easier than I thought. Cyrillic type in the file address inadmissible, but this is the problem of russian-speaking users for the most part . I haven't come across something like this for a long time. But thx for your help, if there was an opportunity, then put 2 likes :)

[@bubblepins]

@@KIBAUSTATION1 I'm glad it all worked out! Thanks for the comment!

[@kg4135]

Stupid question but do I need to cache static vdb geo (cloud geo) for every frame? Because caching it for just one frame is not working.

[@bubblepins]

Yeah you do, I made the same mistake the first I cached vdb to import into blender. Remember to put a $F3 so that each file cache file will be different for each frame, otherwise it'll just keep overwriting that one file. Hope that helps!

[@kg4135]

@@bubblepins Thanks much for the swift reply!

[@BrandtBanger]

muchas garcias

[@bubblepins]

Thanks for watching!

[@bananaboy1100]

I cannot seem to get the 'heat' attribute to appear in houdini. Either in my pyro source or pyro solve. A lot of the tutorials on exporting from houdini into blender say that when shading the fire in blender, you'd want to use heat for the volume shader. But again, I can't seem to generate it in Houdini and therefore it doesn't transfer over the VDB. Any ideas on what could be wrong?

[@bubblepins]

You're not alone on that, I never could get the heat from Houdini vdb's into Blender either. But I can get the temperature, I had always wondered if heat was something that affects the surround because the volume doesn't really have heat, but gives out heat, like if you are near a fire, you would feel the heat, but would volume have heat in Houdini? I don't know that's what I started spinning my head around, but I never really investigated too much into the heat, since temperature was good enough for me. Sorry if this wasn't as helpful.

[@bananaboy1100]

@@bubblepins No Worries. I asked around a few other places. One person told me that heat is only available through the dense pyro solver (not sparse or open minimal). However, I didn't find it there either. Nor did I want to use those solvers. However I did sort of fix my problem of not getting a good shader in my blender volume by following a Resilient Pictures Company youtube tutorial on Axiom Houdini fire shader for Blender Cycles. This let me use Open Minimal CL gpu pyro solve in houdini, export VDB to blender cycles and get a good looking shader result by following their shader tutorial. I must admit I don't know why this finally works over whatever I was trying. If I was smart I would look under the hood more to see what is doing what. But for now, At least I have a decent Houdini to Blender Pyro Workflow. Didn't want to mess with rendering in Mantra, or paying for / learning Redshift. Cheers!

[@bubblepins]

@@bananaboy1100 That's really good debugging skills! I'm just throwing this idea out there, but I suspect the Houdini range values for the attributes like temp. density, and so on are really different from Blender's default values so it requires a lot of tweaking the range in the Volume shader. I remember changing random values in Blender for a vdb that I imported from Houdini and I had to change the values to something so extreme to get something to render on screen. But it could have been a tons of other reasons why that was so. I really wish there was some way to view the vdb attribute values in numbers so we can quantify what we're doing.

[@bananaboy1100]

@@bubblepins Yeah Like I said I have no idea what's happening under the hood of these programs. It's honestly a miracle you can export a volume with attributes between the two different programs at all. Oh well. Always something to learn!

[@cgtoon]

Is it possible to export simulation from Houdini to 4D cinema?

[@bubblepins]

I've never used Cinema 4D before, sorry I'm not sure.

[@stubblestudios9446]

Hey bubblepinsS. I really loved your houdini videos. Now i am learning some other plugins for fluid sims like fume fx, realflow and pheonixfd. I didn't get any problems to learn those plugins, thanks to your great houdini tutorials. I want to know which one is best for sims pheonixfd or combo of realflow and fume fx? What's your opinion on this?

[@bubblepins]

I don't know, I never used those software titles that you listed. The pheonixfd looks interesting, and it has OpenVDB exports for particles so that's a bonus. I guess the next thing is to figure out the simulation speed, because Houdini is pretty fast at cooking simulations. The one software on my wish list to try out is that JangaFX VectorRayGen, I have seen nice reviews on youtube. I saw scenes done in Realflow and they look reallly good, and I heard its a lot easier to use compared to Houdini's Flip sim, but spending $1k USD just for fluids seems a little too much for me. But Realflow is having a sale right now, 50% off, still will cost you $500, which still seems too much for me. All these software titles you list are really expensive, but I think they are all industry standard, so if you have a studio and want to impress clients on projects with a tight schedule I think the software titles you list will definitely help. Because on a short timeframe for a project, you may not have the luxury to slowly tune the FLIP solver or Pyro Solver in Houdini. If you have a large budget then its not a big issue. Houdini can do almost everything the software you listed above and more, so it makes it the best bang for your buck in my opinion, given that you are using the Indie license. The opposite goes for the Houdini commercial license, which is quite expensive, if you're studio is large enough to fall into the commercial license, I would definitely buy all the software titles you list above, because it make more sense budget wise. Hope that helps!

[@stubblestudios9446]

@@bubblepins yep. They really are more expensive than houdini. But i am a student, they all have their students license. The main issue of houdini for me is that it is really resource intensive. My gear isn't that kind of beast to handle it. Also, the main reason for learning those plugins are job opportunities. Many people on internet said that getting a good job is difficult in vfx and 3d industries, and most of them doesn't pay worth the money of the work . This things scares me, like seconds of clips took hours and sometime days to make and even then you don't get enough money you deserve. Well, it just people say on internet and i don't actually know what's the reality. What do you think about this?.. Also, as a student, i am learning this plugins to increase my skills and expand my knowledge to other software, maybe helps to find jobs easier.

[@IanSocolaiandres]

Can I do this with Houdini Apprentice?

[@bubblepins]

I don't think so, if I remember correctly the Apprentice version had export limitations. But things may have changed because this video is a little dated. Give it a try!

[@walter67435]

It worked for me with Houdini Apprentice 19, although the vdb I'm making is pretty chunky.

[@hasanbasryand6880]

Hello. I want to export a fire animation to Houdini den blender. However when I come to the volume-import button in the blender and call the vdb files I created, it gives the following error, I write the exact text: (volume ^^firesı m _0001^^failed to load i lo error: could not get size of file C:\users\msi\videos\VDB sequece \firem_0001.VDB.) this is the error. What should I do about it? It gives this error when exporting from houdını to blender .Have a nice day

[@bubblepins]

I wonder if the vdb was exported correctly. Have you seen the part in the video about Houdini Standard volumes vs Houdini VDB volumes, because Houdini has 2 types of volumes, take a look at 5:25 in this video, maybe this is your issue, or it could be something else. Also another thing to check is the actual size of the vdb file. Just take a look at how big the file is in windows explorer as a way to sanity check if the vdb volume has been written on or not. After we can confirm some things we can investigate further, because we need more information. We need to narrow down the source of the issue. Hope this helps!

[@hasanbasryand6880]

@@bubblepins I was getting this error even though I thought I did everything. I will look at the parts you mentioned and get back to you according to the result. Thanks a lot

[@ChaojianZhang]

4:30

[@plentynimrod6526]

what is selected meen?:

[@bubblepins]

I'm sorry, can you give me a bit more details, I'm not sure I quite understand.