3D Widgets and Manipulators in the viewport for Custom SOPs

[Jack Fractal]

Hello everyone!

 

I'm a technical director and I'm really new to Houdini. The ability to write new SOP's quickly and easily in python is extremely fascinating, but I haven't been able to find any examples of custom SOP's that include widgets or manipulators in the 3D viewport. 

 

A lot of the built in SOP's have visual feedback or custom manipulators in the viewport. For example, the PolyExtrude node has a line that, when clicked and dragged, changes the depth value. It also has two layers of highlighting (green for inset, red for depth) as well as three sliders in the viewport.

 

There are other nodes that override the default transform manipulator's functionality. For example, using the interior scale lines on a Tube node will change the upper or lower radius depending on the axis selected.

 

I'm really interested in making nodes that do this kind of thing, but I haven't been able to find any tutorials on how.

 

Can someone point me in the right direction? Is this even possible in a python SOP?

 

Thanks!

[dedeks3000]

In Houdini 15 , inspect the Bend SOP for example, it's an hda.

In the type propertie look at the handle tabs.

[Jack Fractal]

Aha! That is helpful. It looks like handle's will do almost everything I'm looking for, and "Guide Geometry" will do the rest. 

 

'Guide Geometry' is in the Node panel and lets you put apparently arbitrary geometry in as non-interactive visual feedback. 

 

Do you know how to setup multiple handles? The Bend SOP has a single multi-part handle, while things like the Camera object can have multiple handle sets you can swap through with the "Y" key. 

 

While the list of handle types looks extensive, I'm wondering is there is a way to create a custom one? I'm guessing that's a question more suited to the HDK forum. 

 

Thanks!