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Houdini 18 Wishlist


Alexey Vanzhula

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On 11/24/2018 at 12:33 AM, Jaanus said:

Ok, have read a lot of great tips on these forums, this is my first actual post. I don't know if it's a good tactic to start by wishing something new and more, but seeing people generating future possibilities always makes me want to contribute.

I would second many ideas already mentioned ( reworked file browser, a faster - perhaps gpu-based renderer), but to add something new, my biggest wish would probably be a dedicated growth-solver and/or growth effects toolbar. I do think L-System and SOP-solver contain concepts and potential that hasn't seen it's fair share of attention from SideFX. The Cinema 4D particle plugin X-Particles has started to give the growth-effects side of particle effects some attention, but probably SideFX could make something truly unique and powerful to gain again some new ground in this territory and give Insydium a run for their money. I suppose a "growth solver" or a "growth effects" tab or a set of presets as such could take multiple intriguing forms, but my own over-ambitious imagination envisions a tool-set that would somehow allow the creation of both natural growths (trees and other plants, infections) and abstract shapes. The SOP-Solver is obviously really powerful and one could still do awesome things with L-Systems if he/she really took the time to learn it in depth, but to me these tools lack some of the excitement they should have. Ease of use looks like something SideFX has started to place value on and not having to make new users necessarily reinvent the wheel everytime. A dedicated button "grow inside" or "grow out of" would go a long way on that road, I'd think, especially if one could add nodes that define whether the growth attaches to a surface, avoids a surface or a force, changes it's behaviour based on the availability of light or space, or perhaps even if some simulation activity is happening inside it's vicinity, - imagine a growth slowing down or changing it's direction, based on whether something is moving, be it a character or some destruction simulation, all through some dedicated and well thought-out workflows.

That is an area I'd really love to see some developments made in and it's one in which Houdini has quite a good base for reaching new ground in, compared to other packages. It atleast seems that way to me.

As a second idea, I'd probably love to see something similar to Blender's Grease Pencil integrated.

Just build your grow solver ; ) 
I think you have to explore more the nature of houdini. The web is full of growth solver examples, you can build you're own, save it as an otl and by the time upgrade it. Just look at this talk from BenWatts youtube.com/watch?v=O4XC08Gd9uw , starting at 3:40'' he's showing his custom grow system tool, and he is using it all over his projects over the talk. It's more powerful to build little tools like those compared  to prepackaged node (like other software developers are doing) and wait years for features to be added.

There are already a lot of prepackaged  nodes in houdini, but they're are needed for bigger/complicated node structures.
So my advise for you is to spend more time with this very nice software and day by day build you're personal arsenal ; ) 

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On 13/02/2019 at 3:25 PM, abvfx said:

The groom tools are great but there is one massive caveat. We cannot paint on the mesh in UV space. This is a huge missing feature. By doing this one thing, it becomes more powerful than tool like Xgen and even some proprietary grooming tools ive used. 

It allows for so much control. Using point attributes is very limiting and having to go back and forth between mari/mudbox is just way to time consuming. 

Maybe I misunderstand, but can't you temporarily move P to uv space, paint and move back to world? 

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On 2/14/2019 at 12:55 AM, abvfx said:

The groom tools are great but there is one massive caveat. We cannot paint on the mesh in UV space. This is a huge missing feature. By doing this one thing, it becomes more powerful than tool like Xgen and even some proprietary grooming tools ive used. 

It allows for so much control. Using point attributes is very limiting and having to go back and forth between mari/mudbox is just way to time consuming. 

What do you mean by that? You can paint in uv space. there is no hack, with the paint tool activated, just switch to uv view and paint. 

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On 21/02/2019 at 10:45 AM, Hamp said:

Maybe I misunderstand, but can't you temporarily move P to uv space, paint and move back to world? 

 

On 21/02/2019 at 12:57 PM, davpe said:

What do you mean by that? You can paint in uv space. there is no hack, with the paint tool activated, just switch to uv view and paint. 

Maybe i mistyped what i mean. I mean the ability to pixel paint in uv space. Say i have an attribute and i want to control it with a map, i cannot paint a 512, 1k or 2k map on the mesh in Houdini. 

 

I can do this in Xgen and with proprietary hair systems, but Houdini i can only paint on points. It cannot easily create simple float textures at a resolution i specify. The grooming tools are great but this one feature would allow for so much control

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3 hours ago, abvfx said:

 

Maybe i mistyped what i mean. I mean the ability to pixel paint in uv space. Say i have an attribute and i want to control it with a map, i cannot paint a 512, 1k or 2k map on the mesh in Houdini. 

 

I can do this in Xgen and with proprietary hair systems, but Houdini i can only paint on points. It cannot easily create simple float textures at a resolution i specify. The grooming tools are great but this one feature would allow for so much control

oh i see... yeah pixel painting would be a handy feature to be added in COPs not only for grooming. 

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houdini v17 is so good but we wait for more improves!

-make mantra more faster and include GPU option.

-fix the RBD solver so it can work correctly with the concave collision objects.

-add another RBD solver like SC in thinking particles.. its gives more realistic results!

-make FEM solver much faster and take care of the plasticity and constraints.

-add a lot of vex functions to opencl.

 

 

 

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On 10/4/2018 at 11:26 PM, sebkaine said:

- COPS on steroid + UI enhancement of all CC tools Hue Curves / Curves / Histo

COPs seriously needs some love by SideFX, I keep hearing people lamenting about it.
My limited experience with it is very frustrating. I've found it slow and much more prone to crash than any other context. Also, it would be useful to have some kind of Cop Wrangle Node to store attributes and do some quick computation. Instead of being forced to go to Sop and back to Cop (which make things very slow and unstable)

 

On 10/10/2018 at 3:08 PM, neokovago said:

an escape button, which stop the cooking INSTANTLY. sometimes i (and i know others as well) switch up the copy node inputs and run out of ram.

That would be really useful. I can imagine using this feature a lot for overnight wedging: you set a cooking time threshold and as soon as the wedge iteration cooking goes past it, the wedger skips automatically to cook and render the next iteration.

On 10/21/2018 at 8:27 PM, Alexey Vanzhula said:

2. Add modern sculpting tools

*
Some volume sculpting tool with good performance would be super nice.

 

On 2/8/2019 at 8:31 PM, Alexey Vanzhula said:

2. Get mouse coordinates relative to the current viewport bottom left corner

I'm struggling these days to get the coordinates of the viewport when you have multiple sceneviewers and multiple displays..
I can't imagine that such a basic feature is not present in the hou module?

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- More integracion with SO, as thumbmails, rename, delete files and folders from the File Picker...drag and drop files over softwares fields.

- Better viewport,  actual viewport just show point colors, it could show material buildin too...actually it just show on Render View.

-  Mplay without bugs and export to h264 etc

- Mantra faster.

 

 

 

 

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On 20/02/2019 at 9:33 PM, majinpu said:

Just build your grow solver ; ) 
I think you have to explore more the nature of houdini. The web is full of growth solver examples, you can build you're own, save it as an otl and by the time upgrade it. Just look at this talk from BenWatts youtube.com/watch?v=O4XC08Gd9uw , starting at 3:40'' he's showing his custom grow system tool, and he is using it all over his projects over the talk. It's more powerful to build little tools like those compared  to prepackaged node (like other software developers are doing) and wait years for features to be added.

There are already a lot of prepackaged  nodes in houdini, but they're are needed for bigger/complicated node structures.
So my advise for you is to spend more time with this very nice software and day by day build you're personal arsenal ; ) 

Thank You, Paolo for the answer and super thanks to Ben for offering the solver! I will definitely give it a go.

I do sort of think I understand the nature of Houdini by now, but also think the creators' new way of offering presets and easier one-button/one-node solutions to complex ideas/workflows is positive not only in a way it makes the program easier to learn and more exciting to new users, but also by giving a speed-boost to new ideas and solutions developing inside the community.
I think I have learned Houdini to a degree where, although I am far from being an expert at anything yet, I do get a somewhat superior feel and begin to feel I would benefit if the program remained somewhat inaccessible to outsiders, sort of a secret society, where to get in to, one would have to really sweat. Because I have the will to do it and I've done it to a degree already. Perhaps I'm just weird in feeling that, but I think it's somewhat normal and understandable and good for the community if it remained that way to a degree. However, scientifically speaking, whenever processes are made shorter and more intuitive, both workflows and the generation of new ideas becomes faster. The creators didn't have to give Vellum presets for hair, balloons, cloth, for the hard-core users to appreciate this new tool, but I think that by doing that they also benefited those hard-core users, same as with all the other such moves in the program (material-based fracturing system, specialised attribute noise node), by helping them do some things in a faster, more streamlined/automated way, allowed for development of new ideas and options to reach new heights. By a growth-solver, growth nodes, growth presets-tab I mean exactly that - a shorter more streamlined way of doing things that are already perfectly doable in the program. People with stronger will will still go under the hood and create systems that novice users will have to sweat for months trying to wrap their head around, but perhaps on a new level and by having gotten some fresh new ideas on the way.

I don't doubt that when people start using these tools making things that mimic what Anastasia Opara, Ben Watts, Matt from CGWiki, and a few others are creating today, Anastasia, Ben and Matt will already be propelled to new heights by ideas these tools might have helped spark.

Alright, as an end note I will have to admit that I am still on Houdini Apprentice (most of the free money going for tutorials) and because of the limitation of use between versions, haven't yet gotten into building my own tool set with HDAs, and am probably doing much more of the "building from scratch every time" than I would if I were actually using the program professionally. I definitely benefit from the repetition in my learning, but perhaps this request would have lost some of it's meaning to me personally once I actually get the hang of what these tools offer, however by the point of benefiting the community I would probably still stand by, same as for, say, a specialised lightning/electricity tool set.

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I haven't read through all of the of the newer comments, but if it hasn't been mentioned, I think this new three-inputs-three-outputs node structure would be great for the rigging workflow. It would mean having to move some of the things thus far done on the object level to geometry level, but I personally imagine a single node structure with separate streams for say the geometry, bones, and capturing geometry could offer benefits compared to the workflow now.

 

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On November 18, 2018 at 12:43 AM, Masoud said:

I think :

- Improve 2D Curves and curve tools  (working with Houdini's curve is awful )...

- Improve Poly-Split SOP to cut along a infinite line like "Quick Slice" in 3dsmax... Sometimes poly-split doesn't works properly in when you set  path type to "Edge Loop"

- Add "Connect Selected Points" option to Poly-Split SOP....

- Add a "Show Edge and Half-Edge's Number" ... 

- Export camera and nulls to After Effects ...

- Add a "Collapse SOP ": when you want to make a 3d model in Houdini and you don't need that long queue of nodes ...

- Add a new  option to "Remesh SOP" that makes quads or triangles ...

- Add a new  option to "Transform SOP" : if you create a geometry far from {0,0,0} world coordinate, and add a Transform SOP, by pressing "Move Centroid to origin" it moves that geo to center of Transform SOP, but I need to move the Transform SOP to the geo's location.

- Ability to "Zoom In/Out"  in Camera viewport without changing camera's transform.

- In an Orthographic viewport (Top,Left,Right ..), Ability  to rotate view around the view center ((like Alt + middle mouse button in 3dsmax).).

- Add a "Place Hotspot" tool to lights , to quickly adjust light's direction.

- Add a "Polygonal Lasso Tool" selection, like photo shop  "Polygonal Lasso Tool" ...

- Add a selection list  option in " File/Merge",  to filter contents that you need to merge in current scene...

- In "File/Import/Export", ability to Import/Export selected objects...

- A way to selecting primitives that are between two other primitives. Currently I hide other primitives to select such a primitives.(and again in 3dsmax you can simply click several times on polygons and it selects such polygons)...

- Ability to changing object's opacity in viewport...

- Add a "Refresh folder" button to all file browsers … and show images bigger, in image browser

- Add "Render time of last frame", in render viewport (render sequence).

- Add file extension automatically(based on selected extension) to file name, when you forget to type the extension.

- Ability to lock a node as "last node" in network view.( this node always will be the final node) .

 

:lol: long list huh? ....

Actually there's already a SOP called Stash, works like your "collapse"

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