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Houdini 16 Wishlist


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Small thing I'd like is timeline markers. I mean, being able to place visual and text markers in the timeline to help with choreographing events. I know not a lot of people animate in Houdini, but if you are one of the few, something like this is very helpful. I use them all the time in After Effects and C4D.

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10 minutes ago, bandini said:

Small thing I'd like is timeline markers. I mean, being able to place visual and text markers in the timeline to help with choreographing events. I know not a lot of people animate in Houdini, but if you are one of the few, something like this is very helpful. I use them all the time in After Effects and C4D.

Yup this would be cool, currently there is a wacky cool option in MPlay:

Flipbook animation previews and blocking

http://archive.sidefx.com/docs/houdini15.5/anim/flipbook

 

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25 minutes ago, Skybar said:

I could do with no new features at all for H16, even H17 - if only the viewport problems with stuck geometry and shit was fixed.

Try a workflow where you don't swap tabs - in general the stuckness comes from when the refreshing viewport is trying to work out which tabs to update from and if the viewport is hidden or not.IIRC.

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4 minutes ago, marty said:

Try a workflow where you don't swap tabs - in general the stuckness comes from when the refreshing viewport is trying to work out which tabs to update from and if the viewport is hidden or not.IIRC.

The only thing I'm doing is working normally in a single Network View, with a single Scene View to display what I'm doing. Nothing fancy at all really, just switching display flags here and there as you normally do. Seriously, this problem has been a pretty consistent problem since H12 at least. I've learned to live with it but today the viewport is really getting on my nerves.

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5 minutes ago, Skybar said:

The only thing I'm doing is working normally in a single Network View, with a single Scene View to display what I'm doing. Nothing fancy at all really, just switching display flags here and there as you normally do. Seriously, this problem has been a pretty consistent problem since H12 at least. I've learned to live with it but today the viewport is really getting on my nerves.

Yup - when I was helping debug these I would record the screen and notice that subconsciously I was flipping between tabs much more than I realised.  It would be worth doing the same just to confirm that isn't the case.

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On 5/30/2016 at 10:33 AM, marty said:

Try a workflow where you don't swap tabs - in general the stuckness comes from when the refreshing viewport is trying to work out which tabs to update from and if the viewport is hidden or not.IIRC.

That's not really a solution, when the UI allows you to work like that. You can clear the issues by closing the scene view pane, and open a new scene view pane and the problem goes away. They really should fix the refresh issue... only one network tab can be dominant with one scene view, as per the path in the scene view defines it. They need to clear the cache in the scene view, or even as simple as make a button on the scene view pane, that dumps its cache. It's clearly not an easy bug to pin down, but at least give an alternative solution than change workflow.

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29 minutes ago, LaidlawFX said:

That's not really a solution, when the UI allows you to work like that. You can clear the issues by closing the scene view pane, and open a new scene view pane and the problem goes away. They really should fix the refresh issue... only one network tab can be dominant with one scene view, as per the path in the scene view defines it. They need to clear the cache in the scene view, or even as simple as make a button on the scene view pane, that dumps its cache. It's clearly not an easy bug to pin down, but at least give an alternative solution than change workflow.

I think this viewport bug will be fixed when the FEM/Cloth solver is competitive with http://www.numerion-software.com/

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39 minutes ago, LaidlawFX said:

That's not really a solution, when the UI allows you to work like that. You can clear the issues by closing the scene view pane, and open a new scene view pane and the problem goes away. They really should fix the refresh issue... only one network tab can be dominant with one scene view, as per the path in the scene view defines it. They need to clear the cache in the scene view, or even as simple as make a button on the scene view pane, that dumps its cache. It's clearly not an easy bug to pin down, but at least give an alternative solution than change workflow.

I put in a request to have a general scene refresh function for the viewports... haven't heard anything though. Would love just a 'refresh' button that completely clears out the gl cache, and rebuilds it all fresh, but without having to switch tabs or recreate a tab and lose your settings.

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1 hour ago, Solitude said:

I put in a request to have a general scene refresh function for the viewports... haven't heard anything though. Would love just a 'refresh' button that completely clears out the gl cache, and rebuilds it all fresh, but without having to switch tabs or recreate a tab and lose your settings.

you could make a shelf button that finds the viewport, switches to wireframe, clears all caches, then back to the previous view settings....

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48 minutes ago, michael said:

you could make a shelf button that finds the viewport, switches to wireframe, clears all caches, then back to the previous view settings....

^Yes. I have a script to do that -- written by another guy. The script is up here on odforce somewhere. It was quite a bit of work for him to write it properly. It's still not addressing the root issue however, and is a hacky workaround.  I know it's not easy to fix on sidefx's side.   Overall the stuck geometry issue has gotten a lot better I've noticed, but I did run into it the other day.

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3 hours ago, LaidlawFX said:

That's not really a solution, when the UI allows you to work like that. You can clear the issues by closing the scene view pane, and open a new scene view pane and the problem goes away. They really should fix the refresh issue... only one network tab can be dominant with one scene view, as per the path in the scene view defines it. They need to clear the cache in the scene view, or even as simple as make a button on the scene view pane, that dumps its cache. It's clearly not an easy bug to pin down, but at least give an alternative solution than change workflow.

 

Yeah, this continue to happen to me, too; usually when hopping in and out of DOPs. I'm pretty sure SideFX don't have a reliable repro for the problem or they would have fixed it. So if anyone has a repro, please submit it!

 

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1 hour ago, michael said:

you could make a shelf button that finds the viewport, switches to wireframe, clears all caches, then back to the previous view settings....

Yeah there are scripts to do it. However this is a very clear bug. I may take it for granted, but through the years SideFX has all ways fixed bugs in a timely manner, when a presentable repro case can be defined, "that is not a design feature". This is one of the many great things about the company. There are many thing I can rant on, but finding clear bugs that persist through generations of the software such as this there is only this one.

I actually have a harder time thinking why SESI has not put a clear cache button in there, outside the fact they have fixed the many fringe cases that have been presented to them trying to eliminate the issue, and they just need a few more. However, there are instance in the UI where they already have cache clearing options. It would be no different to add it to those areas, even if they did continue to fix the fringe cases over time as they do with the other cachign mechanism i.e DOPs and blue/orange bar. In the Menu Bar: Windows > Cache Manager: COP Cook Cache, COP Flipbook Cache, Image Cache, Object Transform Cache, openGL Texture Cache, OpenGL Vertex Cache, SOP Cache or in the Menu Bar Render > Update Textures, or in File Sops - Reload Geometry, or on a DOP - Reset Simulation. IMO, the Cache Manager, or the Viewport Pane > Display Options would be an excellent place to put it. This way you wouldn't have to add it to the stow bars around the Viewport pane.

In addition the shelf tools have traditionally been for setups and tools, it's not a "common" place to look for those type of fixes. So to create studio tools that break that mold would be out of place/context, for most Houdini users to go looking for them. I could place this in the MainMenuCommon.xml which would be better, but it's not a studio specific bug/workflow still. It's a bug that affects every user. 

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18 minutes ago, marty said:

You're assuming it's in the cache. Why?

A memory buffer for the GPU or CPU is a cache yeah? 

Edit: When it happens you can rotate the openGL 3d representation of that last displayed object that it gets tripped on. This type of data is stored in a memory buffer somewhere that is not being refreshed, whether this data is currently internal to Houdini or in an outside memory buffer on the many types of graphic card architectures, or CPU etc... There are many points, where you would want to store this data so as not to cause a recook unnecessarily. So on the xbox for dirext X we store this in a GPU buffer, it could be a pointer file or a few other terms, my openGL terminology isn't on the same page, which is why I call a cache.

Edited by LaidlawFX
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I meant the reason why you think it's the cache - AFAIK from months of helping debug the horrible stuck geo in H13/14 is that Houdini does not know to un-draw the object - it gets confused as what is meant to be un-displayed. So the cache is fine, the knowing what to de-draw is the problem.

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