Good stuff I miss from other software..

[Jason]

Hi all,

Just curious; what are people feelings about what they'd love from other packages in Houdini. I'm talking more about the smaller things, say Lightwaves default shaders or Maya's SetDrivenKey or something, not large architectural things like RBD or PaintFX or such. Write down a hit-list and let us all know whats missing.

Einstein said that success comes not to the creator, but to the creative imitator. (And with Side Effects, you know it'll be creative:))

[digitallysane]

Hi,

a small list with some things which I think would need more tweaking:

-- better / faster CHOPs integration (a faster way to bring animation channels into CHOPs and arrange / mix them);

-- more screen space (Houdini's interface takes TOO much space on screen). I would especially like a "contextual" mode for a parameter pane: you have just one parameter pane on your desktop, and it displays the parameters of whatever operator you click, no matter in which editor; while I find the actual way of working quite useful (each editor with its parameter pane), in many cases I think it's just a waste of screen space;

-- better / more complete ready made shaders, as SHOPs and also as VOPs, ready for development;

-- better way to asign / create shaders. It just takes too many steps now: create a VOP, then create a SHOP from it, then assign it. I want to the Material Operation to have an option to create a VOP and its SHOP and assign it to the object I select;

-- better selection options: a kind of edge loops for polygons;

-- ripple mode for the dope sheet.

That's it for the moment...

Dragos

PS: Very important -- an easy and fast way of dealing with render passes.

[Stremik]

-- more screen space (Houdini's interface takes TOO much space on screen). I would especially like a "contextual" mode for a parameter pane: you have just one parameter pane on your desktop, and it displays the parameters of whatever operator you click, no matter in which editor; while I find the actual way of working quite useful (each editor with its parameter pane), in many cases I think it's just a waste of screen space

In regard to that.

I think there REALLY should be an "Minimize" button in pane controls

(next to a "Toggle pane to maximum size" button).

Such an option would allow one to quickly dedicate more space to an

adjacent pane window(network view, for instance) and than reclaim it with the click of a button.

And since I've started talking about space, I wanted to mention one more thing

that I think could use some improvement.

I'm talking about "Operator Toolbar" in the geometry view pane.

To my taste, there is only one usefull thing in that toolbar and it is

"Favourite Operation" button. All the rest only takes up space.

The icons to the right have no descriptions. Given the fact that they are not very descriptive in the first place, those buttons are useless.

I say this toolbar should be removed and only "Favourite Operation" button should be kept and moved somewhere else. Maybe, to "Operation Controls" toolbar.

[michael]

I get rid of this toolbar right away...and I just use 's' to envoke the last tool used

[ResidnT]

I've been using Silo for a few days now, and I really enjoy the way that they deal with the User interface. The way that Silo does it is they have buttons that remain on screen but are somewhat in your way, so you can turn them off in an option. When you need to use the buttons again all you have to do is hold the space bar and they will reappear until it is released again. Maybe if the minimize function for the parameter and network windows were tied to a hotkey this will free up alot of space for the User

residnt

[Stremik]

Almost forgot!

Soft Radius selection!!!! That'd be very nice.

PS. The heck with "Operator Toolbar"

It's just another unnecesary thing that potentionally could break.

Get rid of it.

Backspace or Tab keys work just fine.

[TheUsualAlex]

I am kinda behind on Houdini at the moment. But just curious (and kinda OT a bit), doesn't H 6.1 or 6.5 or something that now support pressure-sensitive tablet on paint weight (?) or something?

[Mcronin]

I am kinda behind on Houdini at the moment. But just curious (and kinda OT a bit), doesn't H 6.1 or 6.5 or something that now support pressure-sensitive tablet on paint weight (?) or something?

Actually all the brush tools are pressure sensitive and have been for a while. I didn't find out about it until 6.0, but apparently it was in there prior to that, according to either Ed Lam or Steven Ong.

[hoknamahn]

I want much easier process of building the render passes. For example, if i want to create a global illumination pass i must to add occlusion or irradianse function for all shaders in the scene. It's not easy.

[TheUsualAlex]

Couldn't Deep Raster be used in one of the ways of handling passes as well?

Also, there's always that HScript for pre/post-render job.

Alex

[edward]

-- more screen space (Houdini's interface takes TOO much space on screen). I would especially like a "contextual" mode for a parameter pane: you have just one parameter pane on your desktop, and it displays the parameters of whatever operator you click, no matter in which editor; while I find the actual way of working quite useful (each editor with its parameter pane), in many cases I think it's just a waste of screen space;

On screen space, it's mostly configurable. For the operator toolbar, look in the pane menu under Pane > Toolbars and Controls. For a "contextual parameter pane", just look under the pane menu again of a network editor: Operator > Show Parameters. Now you can ditch the whole parameter pane altogether.

-- better selection options: a kind of edge loops for polygons;

Try hitting lower or upper case L after selecting an edge.

-- ripple mode for the dope sheet.

What's a ripple mode?

[digitallysane]

Yes, I know about the 'p' key in a network pane. But what I want is to have only one parameter pane on screen, and many network panes. The 'contextual' parameter pane displays the parameters of the last clicked operator, no matter in what network. I attach a manipulated screenshot to show what I mean.

I also know about edge loops. What I meant was "facet" loops: you select a polygon (facet), the enter into facet loop mode, you select an adjacent facet and the software selects all the facets in that direction.

Ripple mode: when I manipulate a bunch of keys in the middle of the timeline, I want the dope sheet to shift the keys following my selection. That is, if I shift my selected keys upwards in time, I don't want them to be stopped at the firt key they encounter, but I want all the animation to also shift upwards. (the XSI dopesheet has this functionality).

Dragos

[athomas]

The ability to turn off VOP nodes, so they don't get evaluated, this may help a great deal in managing render passes. Or a context sensitivity within shaders.

[edward]

Ripple mode: when I manipulate a bunch of keys in the middle of the timeline, I want the dope sheet to shift the keys following my selection. That is, if I shift my selected keys upwards in time, I don't want them to be stopped at the firt key they encounter, but I want all the animation to also shift upwards. (the XSI dopesheet has this functionality).

Ah, I see now. Would you really want it to be a mode though? Why not just have it work that way all the time?

[digitallysane]

Why not just have it work that way all the time?

Maybe you just need to locally adjust some timings, so you don't want the rest of your animation to be affected. However, when doing some major modification to your animation, a ripple mode is excellent. Maybe it can be activated by holding a key while manipulating the keys, or a switch in the channel editor toolbar?

Dragos

[Jason]

This made me think of having a soft-radius when sliding keys about to gently nudge the neighbouring keys near the selected key(s) around in time. This sounds like it'd be fun and intuitive way to modify animation. The Radius on zero would just bump the keys over like the ripple mode thing.

Jason

[michael]

yeah..soft radius on keys would ne cool...but you'd run into the 'non-integer frame' thingy...

[meshsmooth]

What about the ability to move in the X, Y or Y, Z or X, Z plain when using a handle in a perspective view.

Also to chose the coordinate space to move in, local, world, parent, screen

max's translation gismo in local coordinate space reddy to move in X, Y.

[Mcronin]

All Translations performed in OBJ are in World Space.

All Translations performed without the aid of a construction plane are restricted to screen space when you click drag on the box in the center of the handle. Look through a camera, and you are in camera space.

Enabling a construction plane will perform a translation restricted to two axis (the plane). The plane can be oriented however you want and you can orient it quickly (in X,Y, Y,Z, or Z,X) by right clicking on the construction plane icon in the bottom of your perspective viewing pane and selecting the orientation you want from the menu.

All Translations performed in SOPs are in the Object's local space.

To translate an object in relation to it's parent, all you have to do is link it in the network editor, and make sure keep position when parenting is off. No the object's cooridinates are in relation to it's parent. Check out the tranformation tools. Extract Pre-transform and being able to easily clean transforms is super handy. It's something I sorely needed in Max when I was using it; by now I'd hope they've implemented something like that.

Additionally, holding ctrl while click dragging on the box in the center of the translation handle will snap your translation to a 45 degree vector about the object's current origin.

I had mentioned this elsewhere, but it's one of the things I really like about Houdini, it's the only application I know of that makes a clear and decisive separation between object and world space

Hope this helps.

[Jason]

I do agree with the angle-snapping very much. Good one!

The translation stuff I'm going to have to read again in the morning:)

Cheers,

J