Polygon visibility

[McNistor]

Yes, another visibility thread.

The problem is this: in Softimage for example (Maya 2016 too since they've worked on UI improvements and ripped many XSI usefull features, which is a good thing BTW) one has to simply select a few polys and hit 'H' to hide them. ctrl + 'H' to unhide all.

This is very convenient as you work on a complex model you often have to have access to various part of the geometry that might be occluded and in Softimage this is very straighforward.

Right now the only way to do it (that I know of) is to use a visibility node and that in itself is cool, but as you model and consequently add more and more nodes unhiding the previously hidden poly is to hunt down (or up rather) the visibility node that hid them.

I don't have to explain why this is a problem from a fast viewport interaction PoV.

I hope that there's another way to do this. Is there?

I mean you can add another visibility node as the last and delete the group and set 'Action' to Expose Primitives, but can you automate this and how.

Edited June 11, 2015 by McNistor

[acey195]

you could create some python shelf tool if you really want to, one with a hotkey,

to automatically append such a node to the currently selected node or something,

and remove the last one you created this way, using a specific node name or something.

 

Alternatively, you could just color your visibility nodes, so its easier to find them afterwards,

or just ctrl+F to find by node type.

 

Or if you have a hierarchy with many layers, you may again want to create some python,

that can do the above search recursively through the entire network.

[McNistor]

you could create some python shelf tool if you really want to, one with a hotkey,

to automatically append such a node to the currently selected node or something,

and remove the last one you created this way, using a specific node name or something.

I will submit a RFE for this since this functionality should come with the package.

 

Alternatively, you could just color your visibility nodes, so its easier to find them afterwards,

or just ctrl+F to find by node type.

No, this is actually even more work outside the viewport, a thing I'm trying to avoid for (non-procedural) modeling. A model from start to finish will accumulate thousands of nodes and finding them doesn't mean you'll know which polys are affected w/o changing something to it and you can't rename every hide/unhide operation you do, it's crazy - it's really a no-no.

[acey195]

Ok, I see, I also usually avoid non-procedural modeling myself in Houdini,

but while working, its not bad to just throw in some debug view nodes,

you can and probably should delete them anyway at the end.

 

Furthermore, if you are not doing non-procedural modeling, I'm pretty sure you can do the same thing with a lot less nodes.

Depending is you count all the nodes contained into native Otls like the "Clean" and "Color" SOP, if you do, you quickly run into thousands of nodes, that's true.

May I suggest you look into wrangles a bit, its a really good way to speed up processes, and it usually reduces the amount of nodes needed, a great deal.

[pezetko]

Just create new shelftool e.g. named "Unhide All". On it's Script tab set Script Language to Python and insert this code:

import soptoolutils

visibilityNode = soptoolutils.genericTool(kwargs, 'visibility')
# up to this line it's same as Visibility SOP

# Set Expose Primitive
visibilityNode.parm("action").set(1)
# Set Group to include all polygons
visibilityNode.parm("group").set("*")

This tool will unhide all polygons.

 

 

You can also set up it's icon to:

SOP_visibility

So it will have same eye icon as Visibility shelf tool.

 

Then you can assign shortcuts to both of them. (e.g. Ctrl+H for Visibility and Ctrl+Shift+H to Unhide All).

 

That way you can have same fast shortcuts to hide/unhide polygons during modeling as is in Maya.

[McNistor]

Thanks guys.

 

@pezetko I was counting on you to come with a block of code

 

I guess I'll use this for the time being for the test modeling I'll do in Houdini.

 

It's not like I do modeling in Houdini and I badly need this tool. Until the other modeling tools are fixed I won't touch H for non-procedural modeling.

Right now I'm investigating to see where Houdini might lack in functionality and submit RFEs so that the artist doesn't look around for scripts but has the basics from factory install.

Part of improving Houdini's user experience and all that jazz.

[Guest tar]

Visibility menu seems to have all those options. Simply assign hotkeys.

[McNistor]

Ah, that's great. Good find Marty. One issue solved n more to go.