Houdini 16 Wishlist

[LaidlawFX]

3 hours ago, pezetko said:

Just a bit more about unified (context-free) network (maybe this could be just a joke than anything else) :

I think you can recognize this (and it's clearly not the best piece of the procedural node based system out there):

And this is almost empty scene...

context-free doesn't mean you can't use subnets and other methods of organization. It just means you are not defined by only putting out nodes in an out context.

If you write any code, or build any nodal network, unless you have an organization method it's not going to be comprehend-able. 

[Guest tar]

Yep - I'll maintain that data flowing between contexts is the hardest part in Houdini currently. i.e. it requires more thinking as you can't really visualise it well, and the brain is mainly a visual computer.

[edward]

One the things that makes SOPs useful is that one can easily jump around and look at things with the display flag. As soon as you go into a flat network, that gets harder to do.

[amm]

On 8/26/2016 at 1:00 PM, pezetko said:

Just a bit more about unified (context-free) network (maybe this could be just a joke than anything else) :

I think you can recognize this (and it's clearly not the best piece of the procedural node based system out there):

 

And this is almost empty scene...

I think this really depends of what someone is doing. When it comes to rigging, probably the best graph is skeleton itself. It's 3d representation, having a nicely distributed, selectable elements. Maya has nice built in helpers for isolated selections, like pick walk, highlighting. So, navigation starts from 3d view, that's it. On other side, even just a little ambitious rig has two, three or more parallel structures (rig, deformer carrier, constraints, whatever). It's almost impossible to display all them at once in one 2d graph and keep the graph easy to understand. Not easy to make decision in advance, what should be nested. But, yeah, this is about rigging.

By the way, why 3d apps are insisting on 2d graphs, only. How about 3d representation of everything, let's say to have a typical Houdini SOP - DOP network as two 3d structures, where networks are connected by sort of 3d 'cables'. Something similar to molecular visualization. I know this is a lot work to implement, but, we can thinking about...

Edited August 27, 2016 by amm

[Guest tar]

7 hours ago, amm said:

By the way, why 3d apps are insisting on 2d graphs, only. How about 3d representation of everything, let's say to have a typical Houdini SOP - DOP network as two 3d structures, where networks are connected by sort of 3d 'cables'. Something similar to molecular visualization. I know this is a lot work to implement, but, we can thinking about...

 

How about the whole UI being repurposed:

 

 

Edited August 27, 2016 by tar

[symek]

/out2, which actually expresses by connections and objects' flags the render-state of an objects. Current mix of takes, bundles, groups, Display Flags, OBJ Display parms, per primitive overwrites, ROP Object selections with wildcards, Parameter spreadsheets, light bank, light linker editor, subnets makes really hard to maintain complexity of a scenes specially in a team work. The only weapon to handle complexity are HDAs, and they are great, but they are in constant tension with expressive and explicit nature of node based procedural workflow.

/obj context is an exception from a general rule of other contexts design, but you can actually see, that it is in fact a network of mesh containers connected to a given ROP driver, along with lights and cameras. Bundles are merges grouping nodes together before final connection to ROPs. etc. 

[jordibares]

OBJ import like the one on Keyshot (the best I have seen so far), that would make me very very happy indeed and save a ton of time on a daily basis.

[Guest tar]

On 8/30/2016 at 7:49 AM, jordibares said:

OBJ import like the one on Keyshot (the best I have seen so far), that would make me very very happy indeed and save a ton of time on a daily basis.

Hey Jordi, out of interest is Keyshot rendering fast enough for you that GPU rendering is necessarily needed? 

Cheers!

[jordibares]

On 30 August 2016 at 9:55 PM, marty said:

Hey Jordi, out of interest is Keyshot rendering fast enough for you that GPU rendering is necessarily needed? 

Cheers!

I was only referring to the OBJ import in Keyshot but now that you bring the rendering speed it is certainly awesome to the point that look development is a pleasure and of course, this is the reason so many designers and product designers are using it.

The speed difference is so great I would say yes. I have clocked insane speed differences between Arnold/Mantra vs Redshift, to the point I don't even dare to put them on writing for the fear people may think I am crazy.

[abvfx]

On 8/29/2016 at 8:49 PM, jordibares said:

OBJ import like the one on Keyshot (the best I have seen so far)

Have you checked out Pixar's USD (Universal Scene Description). It is some interesting stuff. 

I thought it was just some super efficient scene viewer but it seems integrated with presto.

There are a bunch of other videos on that channel on USD workflows in a pipeline etc. And since USD and the viewer(hydra) have been open sourcedm i doubt  SESI won't be taking a look at it. 

[jordibares]

37 minutes ago, abvfx said:

Have you checked out Pixar's USD (Universal Scene Description). It is some interesting stuff. 

I thought it was just some super efficient scene viewer but it seems integrated with presto.

There are a bunch of other videos on that channel on USD workflows in a pipeline etc. And since USD and the viewer(hydra) have been open sourcedm i doubt  SESI won't be taking a look at it. 

I love the fact they promote the artist to see the character, not it's controls, I love the fact they aim to evaluate the whole thing so you can see reflections which is a car is critical...

What I take from it is that having a solid viewport display that does 90% of the job will make our look dev, animation, prerviz, layout, modelling for non-vdx work really much better and knowing SideFX is working on that (as stated on their videos) makes me very very happy indeed.

The whole USD seems to be truly scalable... amazing effort Pixar has done.

Edited September 2, 2016 by jordibares

[Atom]

Many apps allow you to change the way time is displayed.

Houdini seems to only display frames.

I would also like to see where I am at in seconds.

Even a little widget or just populate the tool tip when I hover over the current frame field would be a nice simple feature.

[Guest tar]

On 9/17/2016 at 2:14 AM, Atom said:

I would also like to see where I am at in seconds.

You can put `ceil($T*100)/100` into a fontCOP and use it as a viewport background

[ciliath]

Have the timeshift node work per point and not necessarily on the whole geo.
(So we can have different timeshifting on different points in the geo)

Or at least have It work in the For loops. Any of those 2 would be awesome. 

[luoqiulin]

about the fur, pgYeti has some really nice features I'd like to see in Houdini:

1.fursegmets should not defined as a uniform value, it should count by length, long fur has more segments.

2.now guide and clump influence radius is uniform, can every guide curve has it's own influence radius?

3.curvegroom with twist and curl tool.

[mawi]

On 27 september 2016 at 4:00 PM, luoqiulin said:

about the fur, pgYeti has some really nice features I'd like to see in Houdini:

1.fursegmets should not defined as a uniform value, it should count by length, long fur has more segments.

2.now guide and clump influence radius is uniform, can every guide curve has it's own influence radius?

3.curvegroom with twist and curl tool.

2. Yes f@clumpradius as primattrib works as multiplier. Havent tried guideradius but it might work. 

[sebkaine]

ability to specify multiple for_each_end in one for_each_begin in order to get several output from the same branch

Edited September 29, 2016 by sebkaine

[luoqiulin]

17 hours ago, mawi said:

2. Yes f@clumpradius as primattrib works as multiplier. Havent tried guideradius but it might work. 

oh yes both clumpradius and guideradius works!

and here is another request, for paint such as density or any other attributes we can only paint on points or primitive, can we paint a texture directly in houdini ?

[Hamp]

Pretty please? This speed in softbodies http://pellacini.di.uniroma1.it/publications/vivace16/vivace16.html

[sebkaine]

Bring back the exemple files in the help.

For exemple Constrain Network give this 

in h13 http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini13.0/nodes/dop/constraintnetwork#idm47102868623408

this 

in h15 https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/nodes/dop/constraintnetwork

'strength' give no output in h15 while h13 give you an output + an exemple file

 

Edited October 11, 2016 by sebkaine