With learning quite a few different simulations we can make in Houdini, I played around a little with what we learned about in class. Just testing out different nodes such as scatter, the different attributes of these simulations, including the bounciness of an object. I ended up with some spheres with a scatter node attached that fall and bounce around a bit which I would like to incorporate these in my full simulation in some way.

In Week 10, we learned about making fluid simulations. I still don’t have a clear idea for what I want to do for the entirety of my own simulation, however seeing all the different examples of creating and using fluids, I was definitely inspired to go more in depth with water simulations in my project, making it a main focus.

I had the idea of having the water fall into a container, which would fill up and eventually overflow off the sides. I created a very simple oval container model in Maya, loaded it into Houdini and made it a static object, so that the water interacts with the container. I created a sphere above the container and made it emit particle fluid. I finally added a sphere in the container that was to be pushed around by the water as it pours in.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a very powerful computer, so playing the simulation took forever to do. I eventually fixed this by keyframing the particle separation so that the water would stop forming at a certain point. After this, simulating it again was still pretty slow, but it was a definite improvement. I tried to cache the sim for faster play through but it didn’t seem to work for me. Houdini created a file for each cached frame, but for some reason, it just didn't load no matter what I tried. I instead just rendered the sim in several sections of frames.

Instead of doing just one 10 second simulation, I decided to create a few different ones, and put them together in the final video, sort of similar to assessment 2. This would allow me to create the different simulations that I want while being able to cache the sim quicker and for a shorter time if I wish. It also allows me to make changes to it if it doesn't turn out right more easily, cutting down on time. 

I went back to the bouncing balls sim I made back in Week 9, and incorporated the container I modelled in Maya into it. I then made two other simulations including one with a cube that breaks apart as it lands on the ground using the Make Breakable Rigid Body. The last one was a container filled with liquid that was keyframed to rotate so that the water would spill.

Overall, I’m pretty with how it all turned out, although it does seem a bit simple. The water pouring simulation just took too long to simulate for me, and didn’t turn out as great as I originally hoped, with the water forming differently very rapidly as it interacts with the ground plane. Going through with changing attributes in order to fix I believe would just take up too much time. I did still enjoy playing around with simulations and I enjoy seeing what Houdini is capable of.