Houdini 14 Wishlist

[abvfx]

I am very surprised i have not seen anyone mention procedural texture support in the viewport?

To have a vop network generate some sort of shading or texture response in the viewport would be amazing. Remember the VEX Viewport mode. Tell me it isn't impossible.

[Guest mantragora]

I am very surprised i have not seen anyone mention procedural texture support in the viewport?

I just did. Substance is a Procedural Material Editor for realtime solutions (mostly). You can then use those substance materials in Modo, Maya, Unity in similar fashion like Houdini Engine.

Their viewport support is really good and fast.

Edited November 29, 2013 by mantragora

[abvfx]

Ahh, i checked them out a while ago. I thought you were talking about its editor features (which i a not familiar with) and out right buying them and integrating it into Houdini seems like more of a challenge then getting VEX/VOPs to work natively, no?

One of the problems with the VEX Shaded mode in H8 (i think) was speed. Saying that a lot of our woes have to do with speed.

[Guest mantragora]

They just released v4 and I'm digging it. Never before I had so much fun doing materials and it's all because of fast viewport feedback (and their materials reuse system). It's so refreshing when you can see changes in split of the second.

There is a ton of things SESI should rip from them . That's why I think they should buy them.

[LaidlawFX]

It be cool with Menu parameters in folders, such as, Multiparm Block (list), Multiparm Block (scrolling), Multiparm Block (tabs), to be able to rearange the order of them by drag and drop, like firefox and chrome browser tabs. The + and -, and parameter field are clunky when I constasntly go from my browser(s) to my houdini session.

And yes my youtube and e-mail are for work.... fb not soo much....

Edited December 9, 2013 by LaidlawFX

[LaidlawFX]

A Houdini license cheaper than the "houdini" formerly houdini/escape that just does lighting/shading/rendering and ifd gen(for instance, obj, rops, and a very limited sop for shading options(less than 50 nodes of usability)). That way small studios could easily justify the cost of having houdini just for a lighter. It would be amazing if they "undersold" them to flood the market with availability. It would def increase the amount of FX licenses, as it's easier to pitch a houdini project when you don't expect the fx artist to do the whole show in houdini.

[jordibares]

What about a 2d tracker and fixing the compositor? that will free quite a bit of money for all my slap comps that need to be done in nuke at the moment.

Also would be great to add a structure from motion tool and modelling from photos as in the latest version of Nuke (8)… that would be nice..

[kev2]

Hear hear on the comp tools. I rather wish they'd buy Eyeon. Great tools and with an understandable, consistent node-based UI (just don't judge them by their web site).

[lisux]

It be cool with Menu parameters in folders, such as, Multiparm Block (list), Multiparm Block (scrolling), Multiparm Block (tabs), to be able to rearange the order of them by drag and drop, like firefox and chrome browser tabs. The + and -, and parameter field are clunky when I constasntly go from my browser(s) to my houdini session.

+1

[lisux]

Hear hear on the comp tools. I rather wish they'd buy Eyeon. Great tools and with an understandable, consistent node-based UI (just don't judge them by their web site).

That would be a very smart movement from them. Although SESI is not the of company that uses to buy others.

They usually don't have the money to do this, but yes would be great to have a strong compositing module.

[symek]

That would be a very smart movement from them. Although SESI is not the of company that uses to buy others.

They usually don't have the money to do this, but yes would be great to have a strong compositing module.

You guys are kidding, right?

[0rr]

Better procedural modelling tools. And I am not takling about "make houdini more like modo etc.". The Houdini Engine has some potential to become a good middleware for non-runtime procedural content Generation in games, but to succeed the SOP-context needs some attention.

[LaidlawFX]

Wish houdini shipped with a default $PROJECT, $SEQUENCE, $SHOT, $DEPT, in addition to $JOB as a preset example script in 123.cmd/py and 456.cmd/py where you can just mod the variable command. Every company reinvents the logic and the names of how to implement it. It be nice if there was a sidefx standard to fall back on just kicking in the scripts folder.

 

Plus having more example scripts in $HH/scripts/ especially python ones like 456.py. The help just leaves you curious http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini13.0/hom/independent

 

[twelveplusplus]

@Orr:  I agree.  I wonder if you could be more specific though. also, why stop at non-runtime?  everyone knows deep down that houdini is the ultimate game engine.

 

One thing i would like to see is some realtime interaction between 2D and 3D viewports.  I wish I could paint on a bitmap with a wacom or touchscreen (or an android tablet, somehow maybe??) and then see the result shown in realtime in the 3D viewport as well.

[sebkaine]

What would be cool is to have an option in the paintSOP which let you choose where you want to Bake your paint :

- Store in Point 

- Store in Primitive 

- Store to Texture

 

From an UI persp houdini force you to use tab menu when you build your OTL or shader UI. i would like to have the choice beetween 

- Tab menu 

- Unfolding Panel  

I like to put key part of a tool into tab but i like to organise subcomponent of the same tool inside unfolding panel instead of tab

Edited December 17, 2013 by sebkaine

[0rr]

@Orr:  I agree.  I wonder if you could be more specific though. also, why stop at non-runtime?  everyone knows deep down that houdini is the ultimate game engine.

 

One thing i would like to see is some realtime interaction between 2D and 3D viewports.  I wish I could paint on a bitmap with a wacom or touchscreen (or an android tablet, somehow maybe??) and then see the result shown in realtime in the 3D viewport as well.

 

For one I think it should be part of the r&d departments job to come up with novel ideas for procedural modelling tools and I believe they know better what’s best for their software, but here are some of my wishes.

 

Raw access to the underlying data structures. I read somewhere that Houdini uses a Quad-Edge data structure so I not sure what keeps them from giving users access to edges. I want iterators and circulators over Vertices, Faces and Edges to properly navigate and traverse a mesh without using the viewport. It would also be great to have all the basic euler operators. And it would be nice to have all this without writing to much code myself. I know there are addvertex, addprimitiv functions now in vex, which I am quite happy about, but compared to a decent mesh data structure these are a little bit old-fashioned.

 

Also we need better high level modeling tools. A procedural polygon bridge tool. A decent bevel tool. A procedural edge-split tool. A procedural polygon-split tool. A procedural loop-polygon split tool and so on.

 

Of course houdini-engine as runtime procedural content generation middleware would be great. The reason I wrote non-runtime procedural content generation was simple because I don’t believe that it’s possible, within the given timeframe in which H14 will be released, to advance to that point. It’s not that I don’t want a “ultimate runtime content generation machine” .

Edited December 17, 2013 by 0rr

[Guest mantragora]

A procedural polygon bridge tool.

Make your own. I made one in the dark ages of H8, just with nodes, and it still works quite well in H13. Well, if you close one eye to some bugs. Since then a lot of things where added to Houdini so it's a lot easier to create one.

BTW. Just for fun as one of three projects i'm writing one in HDK at the moment .

Edited December 18, 2013 by mantragora

[Guest mantragora]

Here is video that shows node version of BridgePolygon tool:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/bcnxlucpybk20cq/bridgePolygon.wmv

I made it around 2008, I think. Before 3DBuzz made this whole set of tutorials for Houdini 9. I knew shit about Houdini, programming or 3D at that time. Houdini was my first 3D app that I learned. I could barely handle expressions but hey, I even used some VEX there . Later I learned programming and I promised myself that I will redo it with Python, but it worked so good thru all this time that I couldn't force myself to do it. Now I want to do this in HDK because I'm interested in adding viewport feedback to my SOPs, so I needed some material that I could work on.

Edited December 18, 2013 by mantragora

[0rr]

Make your own. I made one in the dark ages of H8, just with nodes, and it still works quite well in H13. Well, if you close one eye to some bugs. Since then a lot of things where added to Houdini so it's a lot easier to create one.

BTW. Just for fun as one of three projects i'm writing one in HDK at the moment .

 

Don't worry. I made my own polygon-bridge tool some time ago. The problem I have is that there's no standard one. I mean come on, it's almost 2014 every polygonmodeller has one it's not like it's some kind of novel idea.

 

Also if you ever want to rework your bridge-tool you should try to resolve the twisting errors you have automatically, maybe by projecting and spatial sorting.

Edited December 18, 2013 by 0rr

[lisux]

You guys are kidding, right?

Nope, not kidding