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Maya workflow/hotkeys in Houdini


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Hi, I was wondering if any of you guys would have hkeys configured such to match Mayas? (ie. change to 4 view viewport through tapping space instead of space+t etc.)? Also are houdini's keyboard/mouse bindings for camera manipulations hard coded as in Maya or can they be customized? If so does anyone have a config scrit for Maya-like workfow? (im sure studios use this approach for Maya users in Houdini-only shops if it can be done at all).

Thanx!

p.s. please don't start a "my proggie is more intuitive than yours so learn its hkeys and workflow" thing I'm just trying to get into houdini as fast as possible :P

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Well, I'm sorry to dissapoint you, but alas the changing of the viewports as well as the mouse bindings are hard coded. There's a bunch of other things that can have their hotkeys changed though, just ctrl-alt-shift on the button you want to assign a hotkey to.

But if you're worried about workflow, then I think the hotkeys are the least of your worries :P . For better or worse Houdini's is very much different from any other traditional 3D package.

Cheers

Marc

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Ok thanx for a swift reply! Yeah Houdini's quite different in terms of workflow than Maya (other pckgs I'm not into anyway save a bitsy of Soft)... Both Alias and Sidefx keep bragging how their apps are the most customizable ever, yet you can't change these most basic things :( (proggies like Wings3d are gonna win the battle when everything goes open-source one day:))

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Hi Mayadini, I do think that Houdini is customisable without any need of programming -- in the GUI front, that is. If I understood correctly, one may have to write all the MEL out to program your custom interface.

In the past (7 months ago...?), I have been using Houdini/Maya so much that hotkeys isn't an issue for me at all as the switch time probably happen within 1 minute. I don't think I can really say the same now, tho...

EDIT: on second thought, I thinking about apple and oranges in terms of workflow.... d'oh! Stupid me.

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but you don't have to write "all that mel" to customize maya, its as easy as window>settings>hotkeys/markingMenus. I know same stands for Houdini (though no hotbox/hotkeys, tab falls short to hotbox methinks, in maya I live in hotbox/markingMenus). Iwas just originally wondering if anyone has had all those things setup when they started maya>houdini learning curve switch so I don't have to do that myself :D

reminds me of someone saying once "everything is possible to a man who doesn't have to do it himself". Now thats great phylosophy!

another thing I haven't found in Houdini (but than again I'ma big newb) is the equivalent for invaluable maya mel script output for every single command you use while working. Does such thing exist in Houdini's "expression language" or anything similar besides the graphically drawn graphs of the "history" (which are awsam!)

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Heheh. I was speaking of the GUI-end of things.

I think that once you understood Houdini's workflow, it will all change in your perceptions of Houdini workflow. With Houdini, you do have to change your mode of thinking as it is unlike all the other packages out there. If you keep on adhere Maya's philosophy to Houdini, Houdini's workflow will never be "fast" or "intuitive" for you. However, this is not to say that Houdini is a be-all-end-all software -- just as all other packages are not. There are just things that are faster done with Houdini than other packages and vice versa is applicable. It can be boil to, "what can get my job done in the shortest amount of time without sacrificing quality and flexibility." (By flexibility, I mean when your client want serious changes made, it would not involve reworking from scratch as your set up is adaptable to changes --- this is the one of the awesome nature of proceduralism.)

One thing I am going to tell you from experience thus far, as well as being taught by my professor in particular, is that "thinking" is a requirement in Houdini. (You'll understand what I mean by this when you have more experience. :D )

The learning curve for Houdini may be steep on that very first step taken, but after than, you will find that Houdini's workflow adhere to the UNIX environment extremely well. It is not an impossible task to get used to both package's interface to a point that it becomes a second nature in your brain that switching back and forth will no longer be a problems.

I remember reading from some UNIX book (I think it was "Mastering RegEx", but I can't remember exactly) that has an interesting chart. The left side of the chart shows "Steep Learning Curve". To its right shows "Low Learning Curve". And the quote at the bottom "As you can see, steep learning curve shows that you learn more in a short amount of time than low learning curve." (rough quote from my memory) I think that's very true. :D

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Hi Mayadini

As for your question :), no there is no equivalent to maya's command output. Its been requested often though....

But its also a different thing. Mayas whole interface/command set is basically made from mel, whereas Houdinis expressions/scripting/VEX are added extras (if that makes sense). So while there is a vague equivalency between what you do and some of the scripting commands, its not always so.

Hope that helps :D

Cheers

Marc

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from experience, I would agree that you should not think of houdini in a maya workflow, or any other workflow kind of way (I actually think the workflow is closer to Max than maya...) I learned maya before I learned houdini, and the workflow is just too different to try and treat one as the other.

At least it was in my day (houdini 3.1... fixed workspaces, couldn't zoom nodes... those were the days...), when we had no viewport handles of any sort. I guess it's getting to be a bit similar now, but when it comes down to it, if you want to get to the meat of houdini you'll have to kind of shed what you currently think about a 3d package, and immerse yourself in houdini, in a houdini sort of way... I found that a lot of people who don't tend to never really 'click' with houdini. But the good news is that once you do get into houdini, you'll feel as though you understand more about 3d in general. Or at least that was my experience, and it's the impression I get from a lot of peple.

:ph34r:

Of course, there's more than one way to kill a gungan, so maybe you'll have success your way too :)

Anyhoo, best of luck!

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wow thanx for all the input.

No, I'm going through tuts and stuff and I like Houd so far. It does have that unix-ish feel to it (i'm doing it on linux slackware distro, been doing maya on irix originally and miss it ever since, save speed:). I'll observer though that there are some things in maya which are so intuitive that i simply can't imagine a better way of moving around (especially the moving around part and switching between object/component etc. modes). In Houdini I love the tab>key thing which narrows down options to the ones starting with given letter/string. Ok i'll just give up in customizing stuff and try to get used to default first.

Otherwise, what do you guys preffer maya for to houdini and vice versa, those of you that use both on a regular basis? The general talk has it houdini is dee package for particles/dynamic simulations. What about modeling? What are houdini's advantages? I like its support for bezier curves and surfaces (which maya "sort-of" supports but i could never really edit it like in say illustrator, never really found out the difference between that and simple nurbs spline curve). Also the "primitives" are exactly that - primitives, not any type of geometry. That sort of brings me to a renderman way of thinking. renderman native support kicks ass, never saw a faster ribgen i must admit! That brings me to a question: does any shader you create in Houdini translate to a sl/slo for rendering automatically or do you still have to convert vex/mantra staff manually?

thanx again

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