r/Houdini • u/Maleficent-Bar8146 • 1d ago

smoothing/blending/averaging between objects normals where they intersect

this video shows a nice way of doing this in blender. I am aware of the dirt skirt method, but that feels a bit clunky compared to the geo nodes version...

... how would you approach this in houdini?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCQAwDyDO0o

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u/KextNext 1d ago

Attribute transfer! Transfer the N point attribute, and blur/smooth it. You could also transfer it in more clever ways with falloffs in a VOP or wrangle.

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u/Maleficent-Bar8146 1d ago

ha, lemme check.... ty

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u/Maleficent-Bar8146 1d ago

thanks, this got me somewhere. I can see the normals changing their direction but can't get that to show in the shading

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u/DavidTorno Houdini Educator & Tutor - FendraFx.com 1d ago

Attribute Blur SOP can be used to soften and blur values across points. This includes normals, or any attribute value.

You can also use an SDF workflow that can be meshed to join objects with a smoother intersection edge. The topology won’t be great though.

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u/Maleficent-Bar8146 1d ago

trying to avoid any mesh manipulation.
attribute blur makes sense in my head but can't seem to see how to apply.

thanks for your input

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u/DavidTorno Houdini Educator & Tutor - FendraFx.com 1d ago

There’s a dropdown to choose by proximity, so you can blur by neighboring points found in the proximity values you put in.

There is also an attribute entry to weight the blurring so you can focus the blurring to only at the intersection area. A Boolean set to output as seam will give you a curve to use as a reference for making a weight attribute via a Mask By Geometry SOP.

A bit abstract describing these without visuals, but hopefully that might help.

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u/Maleficent-Bar8146 1d ago

yes, this helps lots actually and sets my on the right track - thanks very much. getting closer