TOPIC:

I am doing a test with animated cache and wanted to add a fluid quality to the movement, making the character feel like its made out of water.  Would love to use Carbon Tissue to retain the volume better but not sure how to hook it all up with animated input and creating tetras efficiently.  Any help?

Hi  vturchin ,

In Houdini, I would suggest using the Tet Conform node to create your tetrahedral geometry.
After that, most parameters are the same as for the Carbon Cloth node.
If you want to preserve most/all of the Volume, you need to set Volume Compression and Volume Extension close to 1.
So for example Volume Compression to 0.9 and Extension to 1.1.
If you want something quite deformable, reduce Stretch Stiffness and allow for Stretch and Surface Compression and Extension.
I have attached a file with a quite deformable Tissue that is driven by a goal pose and slammed against walls to deform.

We have several Tissue examples in our documentation.
None are doing quite exactly what you are trying to achieve but they should hopefully help you get a good understanding for the parameter setup.
If you look at example_tissue_and_volume_deformer_rubber_toy.hip, at some one point we melt/liquify the character. There isn't much volume preservation going on, but it's a neat effect.
You can see it in this Youtube video:  Tissue and Volume Deformer Test: Ragdoll

I hope this helps.

Cheers,
Sebastian

Thanks Sebastian

I think the problem i am having is that the geo is an alembic cache so its trying to generate tetra on every frame and its changing topology of the setup not allowing animation to persist.

Hi  vturchin ,

Thank you for clarifying.
There are two different approaches I would try:

1)
Use the Carbon Mesh Deformer (with a suitable Radius) to create the tetra goal pose at every frame.
Have a look at the file attached: goal_posed_tissue_test_mesh_deformer.hip
There are a variety of built-in Houdini deformers as well if you prefer to work with those.

2)
Another option would be to turn the animation into a Collider, filter collision to the Tissue, and bind all points of the Tissue to the Collider.
See file: goal_posed_tissue_test_binding_collider.hip

I hope this helps.

Cheers,
Sebastian 

Let me take a look ... thank you