Houdini Tutorial | Blooming Flowers | Model, Rig, and Animate | Part 3

Support on Patreon: / dannylaursen
Download HIP file for free: dannylrsn.gumroad.com/l/jttwdp
Flower Animation Part 1: • Houdini Tutorial | Blo...
Flower Animation Part 2: • Houdini Tutorial | Blo...
In the first two parts, we went over procedural modeling for a single petal, procedural rigging, and how to animate and deform a single petal. Then we distributed the single petal onto a phyllotaxis point setup and created a procedural animation system for the full flower.
In this part three of the Houdini flower tutorial series, we will make some final tweaks to this flower setup. The ultimate goal here is to add realistic flower petal detail and run the animation through a vellum simulation. This is the final part of setting up. You can use this setup to model flowers from reference or make up your own flower shapes.
Before getting to a vellum setup, we need to ensure that the flower is properly de-intersected, so no petals are overlapping.
Then I'll go over how KineFX motion clips can be used to sequence animations together, and I'll give a brief overview of my asset that does the same thing, only faster.
Once all of that is done, we will prepare the flower for the vellum simulation.
At the end, we'll do a few fixes and edits throughout the setup to finalize it.
In the next video, we will model a flower from reference using our now finished setup. Hopefully, we will also manage to shade and render using Karma and Solaris.
These methods are a mix of things I have seen from John Kunz on Patreon, Entagma, and some things I figured out together with Simon Reher.
Resources:
Flower Garden | Carl Krause | Paris HIVE 2023
• Flower Garden | Carl K...
Flower Projects | Paul Esteves | MucHUG
• Flower Projects | Paul...
My KineFX notes on Notion:
dannylrsn.notion.site/KineFX-...
My VEX notes on Notion:
dannylrsn.notion.site/VEX-cb3...
Feel free to ask any questions or leave feedback in the comments. Would be happy to see any flowers people create.
Instagram - / danlrsn
Behance - www.behance.net/dannylaursen1
Artstation - www.artstation.com/dannylaursen
Chapters:
00:00 - Overview of Lesson
00:16 - 1. Deintersection
01:57 - 2. Animation Sequencing
02:50 - Time Management
04:33 - Close Flower Animation
05:35 - Motion Clip Sequencing
06:05 - Custom Animation Sequencing
07:33 - Fixing Missing Attribute
07:46 - 3. Vellum Sim
09:04 - Vellum Rest Blend
09:52 - Retaining Animated Attributes
10:40 - File Cache
11:00 - 4. Misc Extra Shaping Control
11:29 - Extra Petal Surface Detail
13:10 - Ramp Stretch Stiffness
13:55 - Keep center_mask Fix
14:00 - Add Wind to Sim
14:19 - UV Fix
14:42 - Next Steps

[@JasonMillerJMTechArt]

Using a wrangle as a controller instead of a null made me scream at my monitor. There's nothing wrong with what you did, but my brain just wasn't ready for that. It's funny how production workflows get embedded in our brains. Great job with the videos. Thanks for finding the time and putting in the effort to share it.

[@DannyLrsn]

Haha yeah I know. I just hate having to enable that thing on the null that allows you to add spare parameters on it. Hope you found some useful info despite my blasphemy.

[@Somethinginvisible1]

awesome. recently i've stuided flower case in houdini for like 3weeks. i couldnt wait till your last flower series ! So Thank you!! love it

[@DannyLrsn]

Glad to hear it!

[@antoningabolde4345]

Kunz's and Paul's tutorial were very technical and long to watch, you made it simple, thank you !

[@DannyLrsn]

I'm glad it was useful for you!

[@philippwelsing9108]

This animation sequences tool you made is pure GOLD! Thanks so much for giving it to us.

[@DannyLrsn]

Glad it's useful!

[@MrLinvalT]

Can't wait for the next part. It was really easy to follow, thanks for making these !

[@DannyLrsn]

Thank you for the kind words!

[@nashwatarek1804]

That was a lot to take in as a bigenner, but it was great to get a closer look on each detail !! thank u so much. waiting for the next tutorial

[@DannyLrsn]

Yes, at this point this series isn't exactly beginner friendly. Hope you found it useful anyway!

[@DannyLrsn]

Yes, at this point this series isn't exactly beginner friendly. Hope you found it useful anyway!

[@marinaan5728]

This is gorgeous! Please, keep going. I can't wait next part

[@DannyLrsn]

Thank you! I'm working on it :)

[@punmije]

This is gold bro, thanks for making these and explaining it for us dummies

[@DannyLrsn]

Thanks for your comment! I'm sure no one here is a dummy 😅

[@whocares6302]

your input into these is awesome. can not wait for part 4 :)

[@DannyLrsn]

Thanks!

[@lemmen7420]

thank you so much for this knowdelge! i'm excited to see the next part!

[@DannyLrsn]

Me too. Can't wait to finally show how cool this system is!

[@purplelight2947]

thank you for the amount of knowledge you share!

[@DannyLrsn]

Glad you found it helpful!

[@G1NJO]

Amazing !

[@DannyLrsn]

Thank you!

[@justpsyho522]

this is incredible, thanks!

[@DannyLrsn]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by invisible, but I hope it's a good thing!

[@justpsyho522]

@@DannyLrsn I mean “this is incredible”, sorry for my bad English 😅

[@DannyLrsn]

@@justpsyho522 haha, no problem. Thank you!

[@ChilligerHund]

Been loving this series so far! I learned so much thank you mate! Is it possible to also show a growing stem ? i would love to know how to do that

[@DannyLrsn]

Thank you for your comment! I'm looking into creating a paid course where I go through the theory in a slower and more structured way. This would be more of a unified plant rig containing a stem, leaves, and petals. The knowledge is here in this series to set something like that up. It will just require a good understanding of the concepts we're working with.

[@ChilligerHund]

alright i will keep my eye open^^ I`m still a beginner in houdini unfortunately but i will try to make a stem myself :D@@DannyLrsn

[@MaMaKacyu]

Awesome.I can't wait for the next part.

[@DannyLrsn]

Thank you!

[@robertogonzalez4948]

Amazing tut and thank you for share the hip file! do you have an estimate of when part 4 will be released?

[@DannyLrsn]

Hey Robert. Thank you for the kind words. I plan to have it ready next week. There might be a part 3.5 in the middle to explain some changes in layout and such.

[@sjm418]

Hi Danny, I've been working through this series with a cherry blossom with really good results compared to other tutorials. For my flower I am only using 5 petals, and for some reason when I am closing them they don't close in a logical order and they intersect. This gives my vellum sim some ugly collisions. It looks like the growth solver, moves the points based on point order (0 then 1 then 2 etc) however in the phyllotaxis wrangle the order of the points is random, so a petal that is on the bottom will close before the one on the top. I've tried a sort node and various methods but I still can't figure out how to close them in order from top to bottom.

[@AndreRosh]

Thank you!

[@DannyLrsn]

You're welcome!

[@ronak8637]

Thank you so much man

[@DannyLrsn]

Glad it was useful :)

[@iucoc7711]

The best one！！！！

[@DannyLrsn]

Thank you!

[@zhart5409]

Good tutorials, but I'm new to Houdini and don't understand how to create this dl animation thing. Can you explain how to create them or suggest a guide where they could explain this to me? Thanks for the tutorial, but for now I'm stuck at this point ;)

[@DannyLrsn]

Hi, thanks for your comment. I'd recommend that you download the hip file. It's free and linked in the description. You can simply copy paste it from there.

[@Joeitah]

Hi Danny, loving the tutorial series! Can I ask if there's anything I need to do to get past this error on the dl_merge_animation_sequences node? I'm seeing this error: This node is using an incomplete asset definition. It will not function properly until the asset library containing the full definition is installed.

[@DannyLrsn]

Hi Joe, thank you for your comment. Does the asset do what you would expect it to in spite of the error? If yes, disregard the error, it all works as it should. If no, let me know and please tell me if you see a grey padlock icon next to the node or a red unlocked padlock. Thank you!

[@Joeitah]

@@DannyLrsn It does indeed work as expected! I managed to recreate it in my .hip file as well so feel like I learned a little bit of HDA asset creation too. Thanks for this incredible tutorial - can't wait for the next part.

[@DannyLrsn]

@@Joeitah happy to hear that, Joe!

[@suboer]

Can I do without the "dl merge animation sequences" node? My houdini version 19.5 probably doesn't have it.

[@DannyLrsn]

Hi, DL Merge Animation Sequences is a node that I created. I vaguely explain how it works in the video so you can either reproduce it yourself or you can download the project files and grab the node from there. Note that when you open the project file it will say something about a missing asset definition, but this error doesn't actually mean anything because the asset is unlocked. Hope that helps!

[@suboer]

@@DannyLrsn Okay, thanks for explaining! I'm sorry, I don't understand English well, so I didn't understand what it was about in the video. Now it's clear, thanks again!

[@DannyLrsn]

@@suboer No worries! Happy to help.

[@fluffypoochie11]

Hello! rewatching the tutorials fo rthe 3rd time and I don't know why but I can't seem to get these animation pieces to function properly. I got stuck around 4:35 - 5:30 I downloaded your file, followed it and I'm not sure what I'm doing incorrectly 😓 My Flower close animation doesn't want to animate through the time line. if I turn off "set from attribute" to "no mask" in the blend mask node, then I can see it deform when I move the weight bar but when I move the timeline it doesn't move. this inhabits me to blend all the animations together. Any Idea what could be happening?

[@DannyLrsn]

Hey! So if I understand correctly, your flower close animation doesn't work when you try to drive the skeleton blend node with your mask attribute? If that's right, I would look at the "set_mask_from_frame" wrangle and visualize the mask attribute from there and scrub around the timeline to check that it works as expected. If it doesn't, compare that node to the file you downloaded from me. I hope that helps!

[@fluffypoochie11]

@@DannyLrsn ok yup, I see that. when I visual the mask attribute it doesn't change colors like yours does. GOing back in the chain, any idea what could've inhabit the change of color? Any way you could see my file?

[@DannyLrsn]

@@fluffypoochie11 yes, check the "set_mask_from_frame" node and compare it to my file. Check the geometry spreadsheet to see if the attribute exists. We're creating the attribute at the "set_mask_from_frame" node so it can only really be that node causing you to not have the expected attribute. I can't check your project file unfortunately

[@fluffypoochie11]

@@DannyLrsn somehow got it by redoing the wrangle, I could've pasted something incorrectly. But the mask attribute works now!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

[@DannyLrsn]

@@fluffypoochie11 That's great!

[@abhijithsjayan9575]

❤

[@DannyLrsn]

❤️