How to blend shapes along an axis. Also, a chair!

Today, I modelled a chair!

Nadya just loves this chair. After spotting it in a second-hand store,

she worried that if we did not hurry, somebody else might buy it first.

Fortunately, she is the only one who thinks this chair is awesome.

Ok, so it's only a chair, but just because you see chairs every day doesn't mean it's easy to model one. The most challenging part, for me, was the seat. The front of the seat curves downwards in order to wrap the legs, while the remainder of the seat curves inwards in order to wrap Nadya's ass. Important stuff! But easier said than done.

Thanks to the SoftTransform operator, adding a single curve to a planar surface is straightforward. Adding the second curve, however, is harder because the curves can interact with each other. To bypass the problem, I decided to model two single-curve seats, assuming that I could somehow blend one variant into the other.

Well, turns out blending is complicated enough that I can write an entire blog post on the subject. Enjoy.

Which seat would you rather sit on?

Answer: Sit on your own damn seat. This one is for Nadya's ass only!

I love Houdini, but I was a bit disappointed to discover that its BlendShape operator isn't flexible enough to perform the blending I needed. I will explain why in a moment, but before I get to that, let me explain what it is that I needed.

Blending, you see, involves interpolating the position of each point so that it lies between the position it would have in the first variant, and the position it would have in the second variant. This interpolation depends on a parameter, the blending parameter, which can vary between zero and one. Animating the parameter from zero to one gives the impression that the first shape is morphing into the second shape, and Houdini's BlendShape operator clearly has this use case in mind.

Above: Sphericubes!

Being able to create intermediate shapes is nice, but that's not what I had in mind. An intermediate between my two curved seats would be a seat which curves both downwards and inwards, simultaneously. That's not what I want! The seat I want to model has a downwards curve at the front, and an inwards curve at the back.

To use a sphericube-style example, I don't want a cube with bulging faces, I want the left side of a cube, the right side of a sphere, and something intermediate in the middle, whatever that may be.

Above: A cubisphere, whose "something intermediate in the
middle" turned out to look a lot less awkward than I expected.

Sadly, the BlendShape operator can create sphericubes, but not cubispheres.

It's a shame, really.


Well, punchline! I found a way to create them anyway. Yes! The screenshots are real!


Houdini has a very flexible operator called, simply, "Point". It loops over all the points of your shape, manipulating them according to a formula you write. Or rather, three formulas, one per axis.

Suppose you wanted to translate your shape to the right by one unit. The formula relating the original point positions to the translated positions is as follows.

(x, y, z) ↦ (x + 1, y, z)

Using the Point operator, you would write this instead.

$TX + 1

$TY

$TZ

And your points would be translated. Of course, you wouldn't use the Point operator for a simple translation; you would use a Transform operator, because its interface is simpler and its implementation is probably faster. You would only use the Point operator when, say, the existing operators let you down. I'm looking at you, BlendShape.

Above: Math. Also, a blending operator which blends along the Z axis!

Maybe I am being too harsh with BlendShape. Its limitation is not surprising. In fact, most operators, including the Transform operator, share this limitation: parameter values cannot vary from point to point. For example, when I translate a shape, I cannot tell Transform that the top of the shape should move to the right, while the bottom of the shape should move to the left. Outrage! Cripplingly limiting! Annoying, perhaps, but entirely unsurprising if your favorite 3D software is something more conventional, like 3DS Max.

As a Houdini user, however, I am rightfully surprised!


You see, the parameters in Houdini are not mere numbers. They are formulas, computing the right number from attributes of other nodes. It's very easy, for example, to scale a hat so that its new width coincides with the width of a head you have already created. The idea is that if you change your mind about the width of the head, you won't have to also adjust the hat.

At Houdini's, we sell hats which fit heads of all sizes.

Parameter formulas are also convenient for creating animations, by writing equations involving the current frame number. The point is that in Houdini, varying parameters according to stuff is common and expected. One subtlety to keep in mind, however, is that the node can't actually see the formula; instead, the formula is used to compute a number, and the node can only see that number.


It's a bit as if you were ordering Christmas lights online, and you had to pick a color. You can (and must!) consult your girlfriend, the weather, compare with your other decorations... You can vary your answer according to any number of factors, but your answer still can't vary along the length of the light rope. You must distill all the factors into a single color, say, red, and select "red" on the online form.

It might be possible, in theory, to alternate red and green lights along the rope, but the light rope manufacturer won't ship you one, because all it knows about your order is that you clicked on "red". Similarly, it might be possible to use a 0.1 blend factor on the left of the cubisphere and 0.9 on the right, but the BlendShape operator won't ship you one, because all it knows about your order is that you clicked on "0.5".

The above is purely theoretical.

If you liked my Christmas lights example better than my sphericube example, be sure to check Nadya's post. She is texturing a light rope!

She worked on that labor of love right here, on the properly-blended curves of this very chair.