Houdini 9 Wish List

[Jason]

Hi all,

Now the Houdini 8 is out of the door, what would everyone like to see supported in Houdini 8.5 and Houdini 9.0? Lets see what people want the most:)

Rank them in the order of personal preference and later we'll build a poll and vote on the popular choices. It'd also be interesting to get any thoughts on how you'd like a feature to be implemented keeping in mind Houdini's uniqueness.

Cheers,

Jason

[deecue]

CFD solver.. first thing that came to my head and prob something i'd be most interested in..

better/faster gi support would be nice as well. multi-bounce irradiance.. ya know, pretty much everything we talked about in that thread over at sesi a month ago..

more to come when i have a minute..

[pbowmar]

1. DOPs (fluid and proper hair solvers, specifically), optimizations etc etc. Years and years ahead with DOPs, which is very exciting.

2. Mantra. Man, it's so close!! Get the GI stuff polished (and sped) up, raytrace caching in IPR, multi-segment motion blur (though that I can fake now), deep shadow enhancements (specifically being able to save and extract the light's transform) and I'm not clear what I'd be missing. EDIT: Oh yeah, a geometry interpolation thingy so hair can be done easier.

3. COPs. Again, it's so close!!! Finish it! Tracking, vector paint (a good chunk of which is there in the Rotoshape COP), some more/better colour correction, decent chromakeying. Quite a bit to do, throw some resources at it!

3.5 Documentation!! I know this is ongoing, but now that the infrastructure is basically there, content content content. There are so many huge holes (look up "mcacclaim")

4. Scripting. I actually like Hscript (for the most part) but things like not being able to declare arrays, make your own functions (other than custom expressions, which doesn't cut it when you're scripting) and a bunch of other little things like that. Being able to scripting Perl/Python/Whatever is great, but there is nothing like having a native language for speed and consistancy.

5. VEX enchancements. Arrays, mostly Probably other stuff I'm not thinking of right now.

6. Other little stuff. Optype Properties still is kinda flakey, still can't copy/paste ref for Menus/Toggles.

Cheers,

Peter B

Hi all,

Now the Houdini 8 is out of the door, what would everyone like to see supported in Houdini 8.5 and Houdini 9.0? Lets see what people want the most:)

Rank them in the order of personal preference and later we'll build a poll and vote on the popular choices. It'd also be interesting to get any thoughts on how you'd like a feature to be implemented keeping in mind Houdini's uniqueness.

Cheers,

Jason

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[Marc]

The only thing that would save me from having to use maya every day would be CFD... so it gets my vote .

[keltuzar]

opening more echos to the textport

1) when I change a value or I connect two nodes, I want to see what variable is being passed. Some sort of way for me know know what are the custom variables of a node. This feature is available in maya, and sidefx must extend their commandecho on options to do more....

2) textport linking... when I move to a level I want my textport to follow, if I dont want to follow I simply unlink the window.

3) keeping variables consistent, if tx is small in sops it must be small in dops not TX... some sort of consistency must be made. And better documentation on the variables in dops....

[edward]

3) keeping variables consistent, if tx is small in sops it must be small in dops not TX... some sort of consistency must be made.

22996[/snapback]

I'm confused. "tx" is the parameter name, $TX is the local variable name. I don't see how this is different in SOPs vs DOPs.

[JohnnyBGoode]

1)COPS - Paint, tracking and keying

2)Better GI (multi-bounce etc)

3)Sculpt+Paint SOPs to be JUST like ZBrush ... although that might be pushing it a bit hehehe

4) DOCUMENTATION!

J

[TheUsualAlex]

I'll have to ditto Peter Bowmar here.

To add a few of my own (sorry, in no particular order):

-1) Optimize existing stuff.

0) Better generic shaders!

1) Ability to drag a node (along with a hotkey combo -- may be some numerical keys to hint which input) to the connecting lines in the network editor and automatically connect the source and destination of that node being dragged into. This would save us a lot of mouse clickings...

2) Would be nice if there's option to automatically sort the tab keys menus so that the standard Houdini OPs and the custom OPs are clearly differentiated. This may not be necessary when there's a standard naming convention, but more but it's still good to have when everyone have a different convention. Same thing goes for the help and exhelp list.

3) I know SESI can make CHOP even better and cooler. Keep hotkeys for the CHOP viewer and Jive consistent.

4) I3D is not bad, but definitely need better and more efficient voxel tools and voxel compositing tools to get nicer looking images fast.

5) A new Bend SOP?

6) Improve the file dialogue box and option to display more useful information regarding the files. Also allow for quick bookmarking on the file dialogue box would be nice.

Thanks, SESI!

ALex

[DaJuice]

Just a humble Apprentice user, but I'll give my two cents...

Major enhancements I'd love to see:

-Mantra, basically just better GI. We already had a thread about that on the SESI board. I would like to see the GI be at the level where you could do photoreal architectural viz if need be.

I will also second the multi-segment mblur. That would be good to see.

-Painting tools so I don't have to touch Photopoop ever again!

Minor enhancements:

-Maybe an overhaul of some default shaders? The i3d shaders are very limited. The glass shader doesn't work right. Mmm, and spice's hair shader is certainly more advanced than whats in H now.. maybe something could be worked out??

-Nesting of network boxes would be neat for making networks more organized and pretty. Also the ability to add comments to netboxes would be very welcome.

-Ability to attach images to comments. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.

Pipedream:

-Revised NURBS tools (not holding my breath on that one). Sometimes NURBS are just the better choice for a model, but honestly the toolset in Houdini absolutely kicked my behind. What I could not accomplish in Houdini, I could have done in 2 minutes in Rhino, no joke. Still kinda sour from my last try...

I'll write more if I think of anything..

[TheUsualAlex]

Pipedream:

-Revised NURBS tools (not holding my breath on that one). Sometimes NURBS are just the better choice for a model, but honestly the toolset in Houdini absolutely kicked my behind. What I could not accomplish in Houdini, I could have done in 2 minutes in Rhino, no joke. Still kinda sour from my last try...

lol. I remember back in version 6 or something I kept on saying that. But I kept on thinking, may be people don't care. Glad to know that there's still someone out there think so too.

[grasshopper]

I'd echo lots of the above, particularly support for arrays in hscript and a DOPs fluids solver. I'm also hugely in favour of texport linking.

In addition:

An integrated attibute visualiser for the viewport. Something like a pair of menus where one menu would select from the available attributes in the current node and the other the visualisation method (colours, normals/vectors, etc).

Better string handling in hscript including improved pattern matching (regular expressions) and better support for editing raw strings.

[edward]

5) A new Bend SOP?

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How would this differ from the Twist SOP?

[ykcosmo]

mantra is faster in houdini8, I hope in the next vision of houdini, raytrace and displacement can be improved , and the speed too.

[pbowmar]

Maybe make it intuitive? Primary and secondary and really, the whole Twist SOP, are just the most unintuitive things ever. Please see Lightwave's modeller for intuitive modelling deformations like this. Extremely interactive and intuitive.

Cheers,

Peter B

How would this differ from the Twist SOP?

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[digitallysane]

-Revised NURBS tools (not holding my breath on that one). Sometimes NURBS are just the better choice for a model, but honestly the toolset in Houdini absolutely kicked my behind. What I could not accomplish in Houdini, I could have done in 2 minutes in Rhino, no joke. Still kinda sour from my last try...

I quite like the NURBS toolset, I'd just want some more predictable and precise output (trim, bridge, profile...)

I would also like:

-- better and more usable and bug-free bundled shaders;

-- a way to exchange scene data (FBX, dotXSI, whatever); I see there are compositing packages (Digital Fusion) and matchmoving packages which use FBX and dot XSI as their transfer format. If these are not supportet, integration with this kind of packages is hard;

-- faster rendering; better and faster GI (GI should be a reasonable option for production, at least at video resolutions)

-- hair solver in DOPs, and a hair toolset

-- integration of CHOPs with the Channel editor -- one and only place for editing animation and channel data, keyframed or procedural; I think it's absolutely necessary to have a better workflow for CHOPs integration. The toolset is absolutely incredible but suffers because it is relatively hard to bring the data in and out of CHOPs

-- the possibility of having only one parameter pane on screen, which should switch its context depending on the network pane (or viewport) currently selected. I find it very strange (and screen consuming) that one should have a parameter box for each network pane in a desktop.

Dragos

[sibarrick]

How would this differ from the Twist SOP?

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The twist sop doesn't do a proper bend, that's why I wrote my bend sop years ago. Try this, make a long thin box with lots of divisions, then try and bend it into a circle with the twist sop, you can't do it. A proper bend sop would let you do that. Also, limits are important too, look at how 3DSMax do it, you can bend the box into an L shape by using limits. So normal limits on the box go 0-1 in the x-axis, bending with these limits makes a C shape, setting the bend limits to 0.4-0.6 makes an L shape with a nice curve at the corner of the L.

As to other enhancements for Houdini. Ditto on so many things already said.

Favourites for me are

1. Vector paint tools for cops - should also work in the 3D view to make it really useful

2. Texture tiling and texture synthesis in COPs - working on this myself at the mo.

3. Procedural Edge group support in sops - please please please

4. Tracking in cops

5. Better GI - with decent defaults

6. Fluids and Hair and Skin solvers for DOPs

7. Custom handles - make your own geometry for handles and be able to define limits on how far they can be moved in any axis or rotation.

8. Better support for mocap to ik solutions - what do you reckon Peter?

9. Textport linking - long standing rfe

10. Some optimised way of doing SSS for very large scenes. Point clouds are great but are no good for hundreds of objects, especially when they are also moving around and deforming.

11. User editable sops inside locked otls - you know my thoughts on this.

12. And what happened to metacapture or whatever it was called? Bring that back.

13. Still want to be able to minimize the Playbar for modelling, mplay has it.....

That'll do for now..... it all good though, Houdini is getting more and more solid which is excellent.

[sibarrick]

-- the possibility of having only one parameter pane on screen, which should switch its context depending on the network pane (or viewport) currently selected. I find it very strange (and screen consuming) that one should have a parameter box for each network pane in a desktop.

23014[/snapback]

Have you tried the parameter spreadsheet pane?

[digitallysane]

Have you tried the parameter spreadsheet pane?

23016[/snapback]

I see the parameter pane as a very useful tool for render pass tweaking, for example. But this has no link to what I wrote. I mean, the parameter spreadsheet can't take the place of a parameter box pane during a usual work session. And the parameter spreadsheet takes more space on screen than 3 or 4 parameter panes.

What I want is the ability to have a number of network panes (for example OBJ, POPs, SHOPs) in a desk, and only one parameter pane. The parameter pane would display the parameters of the last operator clicked, no matter what context it belongs to. In other words, instead of being linked with one of the network panes, is linked to all.

This was previously discussed here

Dragos

[sibarrick]

Oh I see, yes, that would be useful.

There's some other good stuff in that thread that is relevant here too.

[Lukich]

Tracking in COPs, Faster GI, I'd really love to see some sort of a more optimized project managment system, like the one in Maya where you set the project and it creates all the necessary subfolders for you. It's a minor thing, but it'd be pleasant to have.

And documentation, of course, especially for OTLs. It's a hot thing right now, but very little info is available aside from the most basic concepts. Also, maybe a faster way to connect nodes, it'd be cool if you could select two nodes, hit a button and a connection would be made. Or can you do it already?