meshsmooth Posted June 22, 2004 Share Posted June 22, 2004 GUI for Operator Bundles - Operator bundles are a heterogeneous extension of the Operator Groups. Houdini 7 now provides an accessible and intuitive user interface to bundles. ...what are they talking about Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
old school Posted June 22, 2004 Share Posted June 22, 2004 Bundles are very similar to groups but with some important differences. Essentially bundles have a full path for each operator entry whereas groups only has the name of the operator. e.g.: group in /obj contains: geo1 geo2 light1 light2 bundle contains: /obj/geo1 /obj/geo2 /obj/my_char/skin /obj/lights/light1 A single bundle can contain any type of houdini operator contained anywhere in the houdini session. Groups are local to the current folder in which they reside. This single feature allows a bundle to grab objects, lights and cameras from inside any subnet and provide that information to say a render output driver. With groups that is impossible. That is the main reason why bundles exist. This is why bundles have their own pane as they are global. Groups still have a place but have been reduced to localized collection of nodes within a specific path. Groups are not too useful in the more flexible universe that Houdini is quickly becoming hence bundles. In H6.5 bundles were there but without a ui. In H7, there is now a specific pane. This feature alone is huge for lighters and render monkeys. Definitely worth a 7.0. -jeff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
meshsmooth Posted June 22, 2004 Author Share Posted June 22, 2004 This feature alone is huge for lighters and render monkeys. That is why I didn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
old school Posted June 23, 2004 Share Posted June 23, 2004 If the rigger manages bundles in to their character set-up properly, they can be used to toggle the display of all the different bits of the character instead of directly promoting display flags all the time. This means that if an animator wants to add his or her own display options, they can do that easily by adding or modifying bundles. In H6.5, that would have required an asset modification. Anything that loosens up locked assets is a very good thing. Now bundles don't live with a particular operator or network so this means using scripts to set this up when the characer is first added to the scene, a setup script is run by pressing a button when the asset is first loaded, or some other way. In H7, there is a new parameter added to all subnets and assets called visible children that is managed by the bundle manager and that is what controls the visibility of objects inside the locked asset. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fromage_robotica Posted June 23, 2004 Share Posted June 23, 2004 I played around the Bundles UI yesterday and occures to me that the with the advent of Bundles that there really is no reason to use Groups anymore. Is this the case or am I missing something? If this is the case I wonder if SESI will disable the accessiblity to Groups through the UI, leaving the functionality in the program for the sake of backwards compatibility. That would seem to clean up the redundancy of the two similar editors in favor of the more powerful one. I also noticed that right now that you can only add to Bundles through the actual Bundles Pane where with Groups you can "cntrl+RMB" to add selected items in the Network Pane to create a Group. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
old school Posted June 23, 2004 Share Posted June 23, 2004 That is the big question that I am asking. Why use groups any more? I have completely stopped using groups. I have converted 100% over to bundles. I don't see the x key in a network view working for bundles either. Is this a big handicap? Bundles are global and do deserve to live in it's own pane IMHO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fromage_robotica Posted June 23, 2004 Share Posted June 23, 2004 "Why use groups any more?" That is kinda what I was wondering. If that is the case then there seems to be no use for Groups anymore, but I just wanted to confirm that thought. The "X", "shift+G" and "cntrl+RMB" features are real nice UI touches. I wonder if there is anyway SESI can keep that functionality even though they are context sensitive and the Bundles editor is global? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Guest Posted June 23, 2004 Share Posted June 23, 2004 I don't think it would be a good idea to completely do away with groups. They are very useful in their local context for handling objects and sops in large networks without the need to have yet another pane open just in order to expose/display/template/footprint etc... Why bother dropping it when it works and needs no extra support. It's like presets are to takes. Please don't say they are going to drop presets, just cos takes have arrived. We've only just got them back. I think you have to remember that not everyone uses Houdini to set up rigs and re-usuable stuff, some of these other little tools like groups and presets are very convenient for general ui workflow. But I very glad they now have their own interface, makes them much more useful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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