Jump to content

SideFX releases Houdini 14


robert.magee

Recommended Posts

Here is the video => https://www.mediafire.com/?hduq15t81c2b4tq

 

The biggest problem is difference in what selections return in H14 vs H13. This is unacceptable. Please tell me that this is only mistake and it will be fixed in next build?! :(

 

Thanks for the video. There are a few things going on here. First, you are making an edge selection in the viewport, but the SOP wants a point selection. When Houdini is doing that conversion from edge to point selection, we are doing it rather badly. It looks like we are not preserving the ordering at all. I'll submit a bug for that. The inability to specify the direction of an edge selection is a byproduct of the massive overhaul to loop selections. As always, we knew there would be some users/situations where the old approach would be preferred, so there is already an RFE to bring back the "f/R" keys for explicit building of selections using the keyboard.

 

As a workaround, could I suggest using a point selector rather than an edge selector to make your selections? Because you are selecting points rather than edges the "direction" is always explicit, and because there is no conversion from edge to point selection, Houdini won't mess up the ordering. You'll get the selection in exactly the order you specify. Further, you can still use the "Shift-A" volatile key to (reasonably) quickly select that interior border by clicking a few points. It will take a few more clicks than it used to, but it should at least make that SOP functional again...

 

Mark

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest mantragora

Thanks for the video. There are a few things going on here. First, you are making an edge selection in the viewport, but the SOP wants a point selection. When Houdini is doing that conversion from edge to point selection, we are doing it rather badly. It looks like we are not preserving the ordering at all. I'll submit a bug for that. The inability to specify the direction of an edge selection is a byproduct of the massive overhaul to loop selections. As always, we knew there would be some users/situations where the old approach would be preferred, so there is already an RFE to bring back the "f/R" keys for explicit building of selections using the keyboard.

 

Thank you!!!!

 

I was thinking that I'm going crazy!

 

I've been punching shoots with support today and since I do have unsupported graphic cards, I was thinking that this may be a reason for not working selections like in H13. But then I asked Magneto to perform the same test, and he also got wrong result. 

 

So what is the solution if I would like to have SOP that can take Edge selections and point selections, and convert them into one correctly ordered selection? I'm asking for solution in both, HDA and HDK.

 

In H13 I could start selection from edges, than switch to points and continue selection and it would create correct polygon. Right now we are back in dark ages of selecting only points, that means PolyKnitSOP. And it's not ideal solution.

 

As a workaround, could I suggest using a point selector rather than an edge selector to make your selections? Because you are selecting points rather than edges the "direction" is always explicit, and because there is no conversion from edge to point selection, Houdini won't mess up the ordering. You'll get the selection in exactly the order you specify. Further, you can still use the "Shift-A" volatile key to (reasonably) quickly select that interior border by clicking a few points. It will take a few more clicks than it used to, but it should at least make that SOP functional again...

Oh yeah, my tool is using selector set to Points :), so it looks that even than selections are handled inproperly and we should stay away from selecting edges. If you are interested I can give you access to HDK version of my tool to test it.

EDIT: Yeah, when looping points it does seems to work. But it's only little faster than using PolyKnitSOP, and definitely more cumbersome with those new looping methods. I will have to add couple more fingers to my hand to make the workflow as streamlined as it was in H13 :D

Edited by mantragora
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

So what is the solution if I would like to have SOP that can take Edge selections and point selections, and convert them into one correctly ordered selection? I'm asking for solution in both, HDA and HDK.

 

There isn't much you can do about most of these issues except wait for a new daily build with some of these errors fixed. I believe I have things working better in our development branch, I just want to do some more testing and cleanup before porting it back to the daily builds.

 

Even with these fixes there will still be some problems relative to H13. There will still be no one-click way to select the edges all the way around the hole. The loop selection algorithms were completely rewritten as I'm sure you can tell. If we do add back more keyboard-oriented loop selection commands, a way to "select boundary" would be a good addition. There will also still be no way to specify an edge direction when selecting a single edge. If you select a partial loop we will always orient the edge directions to go from the start of the loop to the end, but with a single edge we have no way to differentiate without further changes to the UI. These issues are unlikely to be addressed until at least the next major release.

 

Sorry to have hobbled the workflow for this tool. Using the HDK you could add functionality to make up for some of these limitations. For example you could add a toggle to "Find Boundary" given a single point or edge in the Group field? I don't know about the case of selecting individual edges though...

 

Mark

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest mantragora

These issues are unlikely to be addressed until at least the next major release.

With H14.5 already on the way (next month? ;)) I'm sure you will fix it.

Softimage guys + Halfdan, how in Softimage cases like this were handled? Did you had any tool like this for fast creating polygons?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In XSI (Softimage): select one border (unshared) edge, Ctrl+Shift+LMB click on opposite edge would add whole loop around border to the selection.

There are also selection filters (e.g. one to select only unshared (border) edges). So you will select border filter, hit Ctrl+A and you have all unshared edges selected.

 

In H14: Select all edges with N (why N ?) then RMB menu Select Borders. Just different workflow... opposite so little bit less intuitive to me.

 

H14 loop selection seems broken to me when comparing that functionality to XSI or H13 with L and edge walking, but I had to play with it more to sort out the workflow (that A key looping is really very strange and confusing to me and all that key combinnations remind me some iddqd.. combo that would better suits game then rapid modeling)

 

Removing Ctrl+A for Selecting All is biggest disappointmen for me. Could be done better.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest mantragora

In Modo loop = L (or double click LMB). Why do we need to have combo for it in H14?

If any application should be taken as example of good modeling workflow it shouldn't be Softimage but Modo. Shortcuts in it are really very intuitive.

I understand that many Softimage guys would like to see some Softimage things ported in Houdini, but out there there are better examples of workflows.

I feel in H14 like in Mudbox. When I compare sculpting in Mudbox vs Zbrush, Zbrush is soooo smooth/organic/nautral, Mudbox is like if some guy with ADHD made it.

The same feeling I have in Modo, its smooth. H14 feels again like guys with ADHD problems gathered in one place to make the best modeling workflow... and what's worse, they think that they succeeded.

Now watch what you lost:

https://vimeo.com/118613104

Now show me any as streamlined tool in H14 for making geometry. This is good, intuitive, workflow. I don't want to go back to PolyKnitSOP. I refuse to.

And no, what Alexey (VUX) shows on SESI forum is not how it should also look in Houdini. Marking menu place is in Maya , not in Houdini.

What surprised me the most is that there are guys working at SESI that spend their time in game development, didn't they had time to test H14? It's so obvious that workflow is bad that anyone that modeled anything game related would tell you that something has to be changed before release.

Edited by mantragora
Link to comment
Share on other sites

mantragora, widget that i showed in my video is not a marking menu. AD has patent for marking menus :)
Anyway, this widget is for show command items near the mouse for faster interaction.
It is more like this http://youtu.be/NSfyqDWOYG4?t=2m. It does not have any submenus (like in maya marking menus).
And It`s just UI and of cource can be changed in future.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest mantragora

mantragora, widget that i showed in my video is not a marking menu. AD has patent for marking menus :)

Anyway, this widget is for show command items near the mouse for faster interaction.

It is more like this http://youtu.be/NSfyqDWOYG4?t=2m. It does not have any submenus (like in maya marking menus).

And It`s just UI and of cource can be changed in future.

ADHD have patents on many things, one of them is makeing bad applications that SESI once for couple years tries to mimic ;)

Maybe instead of marking menu you could implement custom TAB menu for your tools? But please, don't use use TAB+A as a shortcut :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest mantragora

Maybe instead of complains we should just put some ideas here so SESI guys could think about them?

If anyone have some cool tips how this shortuct mess in H14 could be solved, or some other workflow changes added, post it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe instead of complains we should just put some ideas here so SESI guys could think about them?

If anyone have some cool tips how this shortuct mess in H14 could be solved, or some other workflow changes added, post it.

 

I've started a new thread for hotkey discussion, so it's easier for the devs and everyone to discuss hotkeys: http://forums.odforce.net/topic/21864-houdini-14-hotkeys-discussion-forked-from-h14-announcement-thread/

 

Let's continue hotkey workflow there!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just wanted to post an update here that several edge selection bugs have been squashed in recent builds. 14.0.235 and later should preserve the ordering when converting an edge selection to a point selection. Also, when selecting edge loops, the edge order should now be correct, with the edge directions going the same direction as the loop.

 

Mark

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest mantragora

I found another bug. If you make selection in counter-clockwise, it will create geometry correctly. But if you make the same selection clockwise it fails again. You can for example select three edges one by one, and then do the same three edges clockwise to see difference.

 

You can test this by grouping edges with groupSOP as ordered group and sending them to addSOP to create polygon. 

Edited by mantragora
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is it recommended to rely on component orders in Houdini? Are they ensured to be in a consistent order/direction? I thought it was non deterministic. There is also the user factor.

 

I assumed these have to be solved in code to reorder points in a certain way for a particular tool.

 

This also prevents the tool to be broken by changes done by SESI I think.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest mantragora

I didn't had to do this before in H13, so from my perspective it's a bug. We have no possibility to reverse edge selection like in H13. 

 

If I would select separate edges, that is something I could live with. But here I'm talking about connected edges.

I think that it should track which was selected first and then check if next ones selected are connected to it, and the next and so on. 

And I'm using point selector here, despite that I select edges, so I think that I should get my points ordered.

 

And seriously, at this point I think Houdini is the only application that I know of where I have to be so picky with making selections. But I also didn't touched scripting in any other app for more than 2 years, so I don't remember did I had mess with reordering anything when selecting clockwise vs counter clockwise.

 

BTW. I uploaded CreatePolygon tool to Orbolt, but it still awaits review so link doesn't work. It's weekend so i'm not sure that it will show up before monday. But you can find it on my vimeo under video that showed this tool. 

BTW2. I have new version of this tool also, but previoues review wasn't finished yet, so can't upload updated one.

Edited by mantragora
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...