Houdini 9 Wish List

[Wolfwood]

Vex Context for Objects,

(Global Variables would be Input Xform Matrix, Pre-Xform, Inverse, etc and your single output would be Matrix.)

Yea...I know VEX really shines for doing SIMD type of stuff. And processing a single matrix may seem overkill, but there are some really handy VEX functions along with other hackery.

[Jason]

VEX support for full viewing matrices / coordinate systems so that it becomes easy to do "live" texture projections.

Please could viewport interaction be made solid? Houdini chokes on even the simplest stuff sometimes wrt selection and movement. We're on version 8 and it still freaks out!

[peliosis]

VEX support for full viewing matrices / coordinate systems so that it becomes easy to do "live" texture projections.

Please could viewport interaction be made solid? Houdini chokes on even the simplest stuff sometimes wrt selection and movement. We're on version 8 and it still freaks out!

23268[/snapback]

How many polys is "the simplest stuff"? For you it could probably be a few millions:)

I've found houdini is way better on linux with just everything. What system is DD houdini on?

It's frustrating when I try to load up 2 million polys building model under windows houdini and it returns "memory asertion..." error (on linux polycount can be a bit higher). I work on M70 2,26 2 gig and no other software have similar problems.

Is it common or can I improve basic setup somehow?

I'm able to load 8 million polys (perhaps more) in 3ds max and render it.

P

[MatrixNAN]

DOPS:

Fuilds and Hair Solvers. I know about the wire but a full blown hair solver would be nice. Oh yeah and a DOPS solver for Character Rigs. So that minimal input is needed to get good animation on keys.

Mantra:

Scripted Instances Speed Improvements in the Mantra Renderer. I would almost consider this first on my wish list. That is such an extremely powerful tool and it just needs to go a bit faster.

Displacement Baking for Polygons and not just NURBS. I guess Faster a Ray Tracing and Displacements in Mantra. Its a good choice to go with.

Modeling: I would love to see a tool for converting triangles to Quads. I would also would love to see better control over when I add an op it does not turn my all quads model into triangles. This is really important when it comes to modeling for keeping a model in all quads for the purpose of subdivision. Its a really big waist of Nodes and Time to have to go back over the model and remove all of the triangles for every op. Also it would be cool if there was an extrude quads along a L-System. I know there is Polywire a really cool tool but I would like to see quads along an L-System to avoid triangles. ZBrush does something like this with their ZSpheres. So that is really useful in many ways. Some of XSI's Modeling Tools would not be bad. Like the Nudge polys along the curvature of a surface. The multiple Knife tool where you can slice a model along some angle a number of times with a spacing control. Their is the Spin Quad tool from Lightwave that made it into XSI also. That is a great tool for controling Poly Flow for Models. Also a Jitter Modeling tool would be nice to just add noise into a model that is controlable although that one is not high on my list because you can pretty much do that with the VOP SOPs.

Cheers,

Nate Nesler

[edward]

I would also would love to see better control over when I add an op it does not turn my all quads model into triangles.

What SOPs are you talking about here? Offhand, I can't think of any except for SOPs which are supposed to do this (like Divide).

Their is the Spin Quad tool from Lightwave that made it into XSI also.

Is that like the EdgeFlip SOP?

Also a Jitter Modeling tool would be nice to just add noise into a model that is controlable although that one is not high on my list because you can pretty much do that with the VOP SOPs.

Er, VEX Mountain SOP?

[digitallysane]

Also, Python or JavaScript instead of HScript.

[altbighead]

Is that like the EdgeFlip SOP?

yep .. EdgeFlip..

my only request .. smooth subd mesh in viewport

kidding

- key+mouse combination to show only gemotry specific type funtion .. (ie.. only show Poly related OPs , edge related OPs)

-edge sliding on a surface.. :you select a edge.edgeloop and slide between two nearest edges

-in VOP .. when you export displacement to surface shader.. will be nice to get the feedback instead of balnk sphere.

[robrtt]

I wont be originally.

Better += faster Mantra

[Jason]

I really wish that that the using the "Select Primitive/Point groups" interactively in the SOP viewport would attempt to use the group names instead of expanding the groups to their poly numbers, etc. Very often we get models from other sources and from other Houdini artists and if there are a lot of groups in objects, it becomes really hard to keep the selections procedural. There is no way to point at a poly on a complex model and find out what group membership is belongs to. To at least allow us to find out the name would be soo useful and easy to do, no?

The first prize would be to maintain group names in the selection.. and some operations on the little Group field pulldown menu to "Consolidate numbers to group names" and so on.

PS. Recently I received a model car from a car manufacturer that is modeled down to the finger grip on the dials of the car radio. About 60 objects, each with at least 100 groups, totalling around 30m polys. This is a rare case, but we're using this car almost as is - just a little Facet here and there and some custom modeling, but there you go. You try and figure out which the headlight brace is from 100 groups named things like "PART233_AS_HAL_98X_CHRO_B".

[michael]

perhaps an expansion of the tools already there :

in addition to Select Point/Primitive Groups...Select Point/Primitive Group From Selection

it seems that many of the modeling tools people are looking for would be better served with the return of the old Model SOP....imagine a Silo/Modo/Wings SOP...all the fancy edge loops and what not that these apps have but contained in one SOP...the drawback of this is that you will loose proceduralism - but frankly for 90% of real world organic modeling tasks you're not really helped by proceduralism much...

thoughts?

[altbighead]

perhaps an expansion of the tools already there :

in addition to Select Point/Primitive Groups...Select Point/Primitive Group From Selection

it seems that many of the modeling tools people are looking for would be better served with the return of the old Model SOP....imagine a Silo/Modo/Wings SOP...all the fancy edge loops and what not that these apps have but contained in one SOP...the drawback of this is that you will loose proceduralism - but frankly for 90% of real world organic modeling tasks you're not really helped by proceduralism much...

thoughts?

23350[/snapback]

exactly.. I think we should have like Organic OP(silly i know) section where all the setting and viewport are like silo/wings/modo mode.

you just switch to OOP section and do organic modeling freely.

[Guest Guest]

Or, rather than SESI waste resources on something like that, just buy Modo (or Wings3D, it's free!) and model outside Houdini, like everyone

If something is in Houdini it should be procedural, full stop. Frankly, the modelling _can_ be done procedurally, but the focus (rightly) has been on DOPs and other FX stuff.

I'd rather see SESI work on COPs than Modelling, frankly. COPs has a shot at competing, but the modelling has very inexpensive alternatives.

That's not to say SOPs and modelling type tools should be ignored, because they are very essential to FX work, but a return to the old Model SOP would not, IMHO, be time well spent.

Except for metaball modelling, I miss that a lot

Cheers,

Peter B

exactly.. I think we should have like Organic OP(silly i know) section where all the setting and viewport are like silo/wings/modo mode.

you just switch to OOP section and do organic modeling freely.

 

23351[/snapback]

[Jason]

I do think solid viewport interaction, speed, robustness and some added handle features (like snapping along a single axis only and such - George and I have spoken about this one) would be far more important than COPs.

Until Houdini's UI is completely threaded - ie. no locking up the GUI while (COPs) rendering is taking place, COPs is going to be a slow and frustrating place to work. I have the same opinion wrt to COPs as you do to modeling: Shake and Nuke (and D.Fusion) provide all of what COPs attempts to provide. That said, I'd love there still to be more intrinsic support for layers all throughout Houdini: i.e. have the texture/colormap() calls in VEX and the pic()/tex() calls in Hscript be able to access layers- perhaps with a "/job/mypic.exr:Diffuse" nomenclature or something. I'd rather focus remained in 3D.

Oh, and a 187th vote on putting a Camera in the POPs Viewport.

Or, rather than SESI waste resources on something like that, just buy Modo (or Wings3D, it's free!) and model outside Houdini, like everyone

If something is in Houdini it should be procedural, full stop. Frankly, the modelling _can_ be done procedurally, but the focus (rightly) has been on DOPs and other FX stuff.

I'd rather see SESI work on COPs than Modelling, frankly. COPs has a shot at competing, but the modelling has very inexpensive alternatives.

That's not to say SOPs and modelling type tools should be ignored, because they are very essential to FX work, but a return to the old Model SOP would not, IMHO, be time well spent.

Except for metaball modelling, I miss that a lot

Cheers,

Peter B

23352[/snapback]

[edward]

it seems that many of the modeling tools people are looking for would be better served with the return of the old Model SOP....imagine a Silo/Modo/Wings SOP...all the fancy edge loops and what not that these apps have but contained in one SOP...the drawback of this is that you will loose proceduralism - but frankly for 90% of real world organic modeling tasks you're not really helped by proceduralism much...

What tools are you thinking of in particular? If you maximize the viewport and do straight ahead poly modelling right now, what are the differences between using the old Model SOP? Not very much. Maybe some hotkeys to bring up a particular tool (which can be created right now).

In my mind, there seems to be the misconceived notion that the Model SOP paradigm would somehow bring about tools that can't be done in the current procedural representation. Does anyone remember picking edge loops in the old Model SOP?

The problems that people who want organic modeling are having with the modeler in my mind have nothing to do with the fact that its procedural. One can simply ignore that nodes are being created underneath. In fact, new modelers like Modo sport some form of proceduralism.

[sibarrick]

What SOPs are you talking about here? Offhand, I can't think of any except for SOPs which are supposed to do this (like Divide).

23344[/snapback]

Cookie sop.

[edward]

Hmmm ... triangles are well-defined. Would you prefer quads to triangles even if the quads were non-planar?

[MatrixNAN]

What SOPs are you talking about here? Offhand, I can't think of any except for SOPs which are supposed to do this (like Divide).

Is that like the EdgeFlip SOP?

Er, VEX Mountain SOP?

23344[/snapback]

The Cookie OP use to do it but it seems that is not the case in 8. The last time I must have used the Cookie OP was in 7 then. This is really great because that drove me crazy. The Polyknit OP still only does Triangles should be an option to do Quads also. This might sound strange but a Quad option for the Corners on the Poly Bevel tool. This would be really useful for Subdivision Surfaces modeling.

EdgeFlip SOP

Thats neat but I don't think it is the same thing. I just tried it and didn't get anything near the same results. This is different it changes the flow of the model for that particular face by spining it. I am not really sure how it technically works. So I appologize for that but I think its quite a bit different than the Edge Flip. That is a cool tool though.

Vex Mountain, ummm and lots of other ones besides that one. Like a fractal or anything of the sort. Basically to just move points around on the surface of the mesh to so that they are not perfect and even to make more organic surfaces more life like. Vex Mountian is not usally one I use for this but I guess it could be.

Cheers,

Nate Nesler

[Jason]

PS. Recently I received a model car from a car manufacturer that is modeled down to the finger grip on the dials of the car radio.

Just for fun, check this out. This is a Mantra rendering of ambient occlusion, against ~10million polys. Mantra chewed it up in 9 minutes, doing 32 AO samples per, er, sample. There are even models of the screws holding in the back of the ignition unit.

Mantra rules OK!

(Now it just needs great support resources for more casual users)

[MatrixNAN]

-edge sliding on a surface.. :you select a edge.edgeloop and slide between two nearest edges

23346[/snapback]

This would be a lot like the Nudge Tool. Basically I think the Edit SOP could be extended to have an option for slide between the nearest points, edges, or polygons based on which is selected and then a second option to have slide between points, edges, and polygons along the curvature of the surface.

Cheers,

Nate Nesler

[MatrixNAN]

Just for fun, check this out. This is a Mantra rendering of ambient occlusion, against ~10million polys. Mantra chewed it up in 9 minutes, doing 32 AO samples per, er, sample. There are even models of the screws holding in the back of the ignition unit.

Mantra rules OK!

(Now it just needs great support resources for more casual users)

23360[/snapback]

Pretty cool but I suspect that is without Raytracing? I can get the same results with Mental Ray with Ray Tracing in about the same time. The thing is that Mental Ray chokes on Displacements where as Mantra does not. So there is always a trade it seems. If Mantra could become a faster Ray Tracer then that would certainly help when it comes to what renderer to use.

Cheers,

Nate Nesler