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Houdini 15 Wishlist


LaidlawFX

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So I was drooling on my teddy bear dreaming about Houdini, and you know... I woke up and my dreams had become real. So time for new dreams as I stumble around and break my work in this brave new world.

 

So with lots of love, once more unto the breach...

 

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USER EXPERIENCE

OMG!!!! The beginning has come, and don't let my L.A. high school street lingo fail me.... Tots! Amazeball! Awesomesauce! 

 

The button click are still up there, the mantra rop is way better for instance. But I'm still diving into an out of a lot of windows/panes to do my work.

The icons are slowly being non-dups like volume... and yes I understand its a VDB node.

There are still to many nodes that do the same thing... delete and blast, etc. Time to hide the old Pops, I've realized I hate them for being new and different, but it's time to move on from the old. An environment variable to hide redundant nodes would be great. Ala the shatter sop and many other outdated pieces of code. Maybe 14.1? 

Help documents and references on stuff like the sop - dopnetwork

Houdini in general could a flush of everything and clean up the dangling loose ends. Yes every software needs that, but this is why MS word is so robust compared to Google Word. Make sure every nodes shelf button pane has their help, rollovers, icons, underlying code optimized with all their parts. It's a lot of work, but it's not like I'm asking for some new cool dop tools. But I do feel that is easier for new feature to make it in instead of doing that last 10% on the old tools. You can only submit so many small RFE and bugs on the little things before you ignore them. 

 

 

Node Color Picker

A non math mathematically picked color range of strong colors. Honestly I hate pastels in user interface, there are so many wonderful colors to pick from... Whose uses 1,1,.8 color next to a 1,.8,1 on nodes.

My god they even have blue on the sliders!

I love the new color picker so maybe a baby version of it for the node picker.

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Even this crappy one has better dominant colors

colour_picker.jpg

 

Hou Module

I've finally started converting all my path tools to python... I know I'm slow... but it brings a tear to my eye when half the python help is crossed out and not implemented.

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A further tear to my eye is the non-inclusion of all the in use examples of their scripting examples like hscript and expression...

After-all I can't look up hou module support on stackoverflow.

Examples

opparm -l /obj/geo1 *
opparm geo1 t ( 1 2 3 )

 

Houdini Engine.

There is def years worth of work needed on it. The exception handling of the issues due to the host program need a lot of love. Houdini can handle so much you take it for granted until you crash Maya so easily. There still more stuff and not enough time to work on debuging and RFE the issues. But the same baseline that we take for granted in houdini nodes in how they work with basic parameter UI and options certainly needs to be translated over, ramps in maya for instance. Also the nuances of what works and how it works in the host program needs documentation. Houdini, HQueue, HDK have their links they need one for Houdini Engine, with the subpages for Maya and unity. The examples lessons I can get on Unity are weak to make it hard to work. Also it does seem some sidefx supported and created nodes need to be maintained inside Houdini for these tools, such as, standard attribute mapping.

 

Ok back to work, and breaking more stuff.

 

 

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Nah for the nodes themselves, not the parameter option. Yeah something like that at least for the box. The swatch selection should not be mathematical arrayed. This is a fundamental problem with coloring crowds, too. 

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Edited by LaidlawFX
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Guest mantragora

Nah for the nodes themselves, not the parameter option. Yeah something like that at least for the box. The swatch selection should not be mathematical arrayed. This is a fundamental problem with coloring crowds, too. 

attachicon.gifPastelColors.jpg

I think that Randomize button could be a solution.

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I think that Randomize button could be a solution.

 

That would be hell on earth for me, lol!  I can imagine the paint store swatch shelve fallen down on the network. My problem is I have become a CG Janitor cleaning up lots of people files, and I can just imagine the puke of colors I would have to go through on that, and the current issues is the minimal selection because the dominant RGB have all been selected, and are used differently for each artist. 

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There are inbuilt node colors using 'Show Shelf Tool Names' that override artists choices. That would make the node colors consistent 

Yeah those are ok... coloring nodes is a freedom of speech thing I've found out the hard way. And artist with history all have a certain color they use. Negotiable is the common colors and you have to option into using them, and each studio and team has a different preference on what color. And the workflow can be different, currently game output as opposed to render, so the important nodes all lives only in sops/obj so the color palette isn't as useful. I currently use one of Graham's http://houdinitoolbox.com/ color scripts for basic workflow, and the on creation scripts. 

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Awesome release. The workflow enhancements are a huge step forward.

3 thing I would like to see next...

 

-    Visual feedback on geometry for soft selections

-    a proper tweak tool (that works flawlessly with soft selections)

-    Edge sliding (that works flawlessly with soft selections)

 

last one would be a user setting to dial up or down the increments when using the scroll wheel to zoom in and out.

 

Well done every one at SideFX and thanks for brinning us enough to make our move away from Autodesk. :)

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I agree that if there is one area where SESI could take inspiration of Maya, it's for the Help Organisation.

http://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2015/ENU/

 

Having a Left Bar with Tabulations like :

- Help Chapters

- Bookmarks with possibility to organize them in folders subfolders

- Search

 

Inside The Chapters tabulation having Main subcategories

- Houdini User Guide

--> Modeling

--> UV

--> Rigging

--> Animation

--> Shading

--> Rendering

...

--> PYRO

--> FLIP

--> RBD

--> FEM

...

 

- Technical Documentation

--> VEX API

--> HOU API

--> HSCRIPT API

...

 

- Houdini SDK

...

 

For each section of the technical documentation having

VEX / HOU / HSCRIPT function classify by familly like

- Math

- Polygons

- Surface

- Shading

- Dop

- UI

.....

 

If you search a math function you just have to search in the one that are relative to this familly:

For each Function having an individual shortpage describing Method/Properties and some few EXEMPLES for each function.

 

I personnally don't like this small browser that POP inside Houdini. A Browser base help like the one in HDK

http://www.sidefx.com/docs/hdk13.0/

 

Is really more convenient, as you can create your own shortcuts directly inside the browser.

So merging all the help inside a clean browser base a la Maya could be really cool ... imo

Edited by sebkaine
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