Houdini 9 Wish List

[Jason]

Speed,

Until I built something serious I thought It's fast in most cases but it's not.

Especially in deformations  on complex  > 300k geo (not being a default sphere ) and standard operations like selection, switch display mode (repeating after Jason) so on.

Yes, with speed you need robustness and responsiveness. You need to be able to have confidence that Houdini is going to switch into selection mode and make the correct selection if you're working at the same rate as the package's speed. When you're experienced at using a package, you can move fast and with confidence that you are hitting the correct hotkeys and making the correct clicks and so the package should be work correctly at that speed. Mis-selections and dropped keystrokes make a bad, unproductive experience.

I've RFE'd this with SESI a few times but I wish that hopping in and out of SOPs/Objects mode should most of the time not even cause a viewport redraw - just change the pane frame colour, if: (1) the SOPs viewport would inherit the same lighting and shading as the object viewport, and (2) the See One/See All button was on See All, obvisouly.

I suppose the Viewer pane prefs for the Object viewer and SOP viewer should be linked to ensure that the viewport stowbars and options don't mess with the geometry of the window and thus force a redraw because the viewport is 10 pixels wider or something but I do wish SESI'd perform point 1's fix (above) regardless.

Another thing: the UV viewport in the Objects viewer. Currently it shows the last thing it showed while in SOPs viewer mode. I believe that the workflow of the UV viewport has to be changed so that a modeler can easily view the UVs of the currently selected object. A fast modeler wants to jump very quickly between objects in the scene and tweak the UVs - which means a single click. This is probably part of a bigger topic wrt to modeling but currently Houdini's design doesn't allow a modeler to easily model on several objects with the minimum of clicks and keypresses -and maintain a clear control of what is shown in the viewport.

[DaJuice]

I'm working on a model of less than 50,000 polys and granted, my processor is not very fast, Houdini seems incredibly slow when modeling. It seems very unusual, selections and all editing are extremely sluggish.

I could swear the Edit SOP used to be faster, is it just me?

Also a question about subdivision surface modeling. Anyone know if this is something that's planned for Houdini, or even needed? What is the difference to modeling as polys, I never understood that to be honest.

[pbowmar]

I'm modelling SubDs right now, and it's OK, but the Subdivide SOP is super-slow when the model gets heavy. The problem is, it isn't aware of deltas so it resubdivides the entire cage each time I move a point, which is horribly slow. It should be clever enough to see "oh, only 3 points moved, let me resubd only the affected area" and bingo, massive speed up!

Cheers,

Peter B

[DaJuice]

I thought true SubD modeling is different. It even says somewhere in the docs that Houdini only has subdivision surfaces implemented in the renderer, but not as a modeling type.

But I agree with what you said. Also I don't understand why having colors on your model causes a huge slowdown in viewport performance, really weird.

[Jason]

I thought true SubD modeling is different. It even says somewhere in the docs that Houdini only has subdivision surfaces implemented in the renderer, but not as a modeling type.

It should be a native type, yes. We should be able to see the limit surface templated in under the subd cage continually - and hopefully updated effeciently in a seperate thread so that we're never waiting for it. Once this is done, we shouldn't really need the "Render Polygoons As Subdivision Surfaces" render option - it should be "Geometry As Is".

The idea of being able to interact with the limit surface itself and causing the cage to adjust is a nice one too:)

Also I don't understand why having colors on your model causes a huge slowdown in viewport performance, really weird.

Yeah, this was reported before and has been sped up for future version of Houdini. *Not 8.0.x versions, the next incarnation.

[veeraa]

Thanks edward.Will see.I heard that the gnomon workshop's houdini tutorial dvd is also very good.

Houdini 9 wish list:

- Interface to ZBrush.

- support for both doo-sabin(non-quad) SDS.Is it already there?

Welcome to Houdini! The old vislab tutorials are good but they're more task oriented. You probably want to check out the videos on Houdini over at 3dbuzz.com as well if you're just starting.

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[peliosis]

Is it possible to improve divide SOP and cookie SOP?

They very often give strange results.

Brickering complex concave polygons with holes provides me with many errors, you can get clean geo with divisions from brickering only (no other edges like triangulation etc) if you are very lucky.

Say I have a wall with windows cut, as one planar polygon, brickering often makes my windows disappear ....sob..sob.

In xsi there is dice command which eorks so much better when it comes to precision.

Also stupid max booleans are much more firm than cookie SOP which gives everything but clean and predictable result. I know about triangulation and all other parameters/tricks, but that just doesn't solve the problem.

Extrude SOP used to create planar polygon from large amount of planar curves, forming the mentioned wall with windows, also omits some of them.

It would be good for modellers if SESI could do something about such drawbacks.

[sibarrick]

Do you have a hip file, just tried this and couldn't get it to break. I've generally found the cookie sop to be pretty stable these days. Boolean was always flaky but the cookie sop seems pretty good, (except for the extra triangulation it seems quite solid)

[peliosis]

Do you have a hip file, just tried this and couldn't get it to break. I've generally found the cookie sop to be pretty stable these days. Boolean was always flaky but the cookie sop seems pretty good, (except for the extra triangulation it seems quite solid)

24461[/snapback]

I'll dig up my scenes and cook something for this special purpose.

[peliosis]

What is going on, I can't attach hipnc file using "Add This Attachment"?

[craig]

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.

It is different. In DOPs, it's lower case both to name the channel (using the dopfield command, for example) and to reference the channel value directly in a dop expression field ($tx).

In SOPs, you write $TX in expressions, but you reference channels with (as in ch("../othersop/tx").

The DOPs way is more consistent and (to me) better, because it requires less thinking.

[Jason]

What is going on, I can't attach hipnc file using "Add This Attachment"?

24470[/snapback]

It should work now - but you should be able to attach .zip files anyhow.

[peliosis]

It should work now - but you should be able to attach .zip files anyhow.

24476[/snapback]

Ha! thanks, so there is my freakin' super easy wall with filled what should not be filled, read note pease.

Probably there is no solution for this problem so I wanted only to make it loud.

extrude_bricker.hipnc

[sibarrick]

Ha! thanks, so there is my freakin' super easy wall with filled what should not be filled, read note pease.

Probably there is no solution for this problem so I wanted only to make it loud.

24478[/snapback]

If you turned down the bricker size to 1.5 the problem goes away.

Also you can use a hole sop rather than an extrude, it doesn't help but just for information.

[peliosis]

If you turned down the bricker size to 1.5 the problem goes away.

Also you can use a hole sop rather than an extrude, it doesn't help but just for information.

24491[/snapback]

There are many values with good result but that doesn't mean there is no bug.

I can't be like I have to use certain brick (or any fasade tile) size because the software doesn't let me use another.

There are many such little geometry problems in houdini.

I decided to denote everything and post here.

Thanks for hole advice.

I hope someone from SESI is reading this thread or should I send them some buglist?

[sibarrick]

True, I think it needs a jitter value, and for more robust checks for coincident points, they seem to be what trips it up. I'd also like o see a LOD style setting as well as the step size we have now.

The other weird thing, is if you look at your example and just add a second bricker with more division the dud polys dissappear, so the bricker sop already knows they are bad it just doesn't clean up properly. I would post this off to support if I were you, when they have good examples of a problem they are much more likely to fix it.

[peliosis]

I would post this off to support if I were you, when they have good examples of a problem they are much more likely to fix it.

24493[/snapback]

I'll try if they are interested because I'm not a registered user yet.

[MatrixNAN]

Hey Guys,

Ok I have another crazy but really useful and cool idea for a feature I would love to see in Houdini 9. I would like to see RigOPs seperate section from the OBJ OPs for the Rigging. The Reason I ask for this I was thinking about it and it would be particularly cool and useful if we could then place RigOPs in like a SOP with DOPS and SHOPS so that you can actually be modeling, rigging, texturing, and seting up dynamics on the rig as you modeled. Basically you would create your own custom OTLS for modeling tools and then you could use them for repeated type modeling activities and fuctions to greatly speed up the artistic process. Also when you were done modeling with that part everything else would be ready to go. Of course it would be a good idea to pop the model back into ZBrush and just make things looks not so perfect on the detailing. But we could use the point clouds from Simon's flex to do the skinning on the fly without having to paint the weight maps. Etc Etc Etc. Hopefully this makes alot of sense. I am curious what other people think about this and or is there a better way to currently do this that I have not thought of.

Cheers,

Nate Nesler

[Leon Amion]

Here is my wishes for da next vurshun.

- Texture painting. Of course this would bring some cool new VEX texture projection operators and a paint operator to Halo. And in the spirit of painting textures it would be nice to have some sort of link between 2d-applications similar to zAppLink for zbrush that lets you paint onto a zbrush-screenshot in photoshop/gimp and when youre done zbrush projects the painted screenshot onto the texture. If not the link-tool then a 2d-paint pane, maybe both. These feature should be available from Select and above. Are there even any texture paint tools for Linux except for Amazon? SideFX.. fill the gap!!

- Edge distance option for Edit. And pre highlight selection with tweak.

- Isoline display for SDS with hotkeys for switching levels(the XSI approach). Not adding new operator for subdividing but instead built in ability to change subdivision on existing polygon. This means that editing points on Isoline means points on isoline and not on the Hull. Isoline makes modelling fast,fast,fast.

-Better realtime feedback. Make houdini handle large scenes in the viewport faster. If possible.

- More straight forward/easy import/export of channel data with other apps. Character animation transfer with binded surface. Perhaps FBX or some other solution.

-more presets,presets,presetsss... best way to learn and fast for getting something done.

[MatrixNAN]

Hey Guys,

I agree with SoulVector mostly. I don't think the presets thing is so needed because we are kind of doing that right now with exchange. Sidefx is building prebuilt tools to showcase the ability and strength of their tools in which you can then extend them to do whatever you want which is much better than any preset ppg page tool setup. I would like to see a paint tool that could be added to OTLs so that we can create our own custom OTL modeling operations with brush stroke capabilities. That would be really nice to have. We do have some current painting like functions but they need to be really improved to be more like ZBrush, Body Paint, Etc. The ZAppLink Feature in ZBrush is awesome.

Cheers,

Nate Nesler