MADjestic Posted December 17, 2006 Share Posted December 17, 2006 Hi there, I was afraid that would sound a bit off-topish or at least I had no good excuse of where to stick this thread to. Please, Marc (or Jason) – transfer it to a more appropriate place if you think necessary. It is the CHOPs that I wanted to talk about with you. You see – I’ve been using Houdini since 2004 and I deem that I am using it at a more or less good level (don’t wish to sound showing off or something) and I am generally using every aspect of it – particles, dynamics, shading, vops’n’vex, modeling, HDK, etc… except CHOPs! Not that I never used them – I did a bunch of stuff but… - learnt to use other tools to achieve similar results, not involving CHOPs. I am _not_ a character animator, and never planned becoming one – and probably that is one of the reasons. Maybe some of you will find this partially true about yourselves… Nevertheless I feel as if I was missing a portion of Houdini power that I (as well as everybody else) could include into his personal spell-book. We had a talk at IRC channel with Edward and digitallysane the other day about CHOPs and discussed some problems with those - yeah they could’ve been integrated better, yeah they could benefit from SESI paying more attention to them, yeah they could be more intuitive and high-level to become more popular among animators, etc… What I was thinking is to start a couple of threads here, at odforce, that could bring the power of CHOPs more to the surface. Maybe you, guys, have an idea about a good topic for a challenge (mini-challenges) that could show off some aspects of CHOPs? Some cool tasks that would require much more efforts to achieve, if not using CHOPs? CHOPs has traditionally been something peculiar to PRISMS and Houdini – now other applications are starting to develop tools similar to CHOPs (not sure how successful they are, but that’s what I hear). Could we start some killer-threads that would demonstrate this aspect of Houdini at it’s full shine and glory - and bring Houdini foes, who still look at it as if it was some historical and technical ridicule, to their knees? (ok, that sound lame, but I hope you know what I mean). What do you think, folks? rrr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digitallysane Posted December 17, 2006 Share Posted December 17, 2006 Opening Pandora's box... I'll complement some of your post with my opinions. First, as a general statement, I really think that the "state of CHOPS" at this very moment is simply _unacceptable_. Really. This is the most powerful channel manipulation module on the market yet it's simply "tolerated" inside Houdini, without any upgrade and attention for years. Nobody can expect people being interested in CHOPs with the documentation available at the moment, because new users can't even get what CHOPs are from that documentation. Compare the online Houdini help for CHOPs (simply an operator reference) with the docs provided for the other editors (tutorials for everything: characters, POPs, DOPs, shading etc) and then compare it with this and this and this. I was using CHOPs first with Touch 101, years ago. That was around Houdini 4. And now, in Houdini 8, the toolset is identical, while there's no other editor in Houdini left in the state it was in Houdini 4. I think it's unacceptable to see competing packages coming in 2006 with CHOPs like features (motion re-targeting) which Houdini lacks, when, considering the foundation laid by CHOPs, those features should have been there since Houdini 5 or 6. (this could be the subject for a nice challenge). I think it's unacceptable not to be able to pack a bunch of CHOPs in a HDA and promote their handles and then being able to manipulate them in the CHOP viewport at the top level. Madjestic, you said that you didn't use CHOPs because you are not a character animator. Well, that's another misconception about CHOPs, favored by the lack of docs and examples. CHOPs are as much an effects tool as they are an animation tool. D2 used them to great effect for "controlled dynamics" (remember "The Grinch", maybe Jason can give more details). Another example here. (doing a dynamic "simulation" in CHOPs could be the subject for another great challenge). Another under-promoted aspect is the use of CHOPs as a replacement for expressions. What's easier, typing "abs(sin($F)*5)" or placing 2 CHOPs and adjusting them visually in the viewport? (BTW, I searched all the docs for a mention of the fact that one can export a channel by drag 'n drop from the CHOP viewer to a parameter. Found none.) There needs to be an easy way to save "actions" (the current selected channels) to CHOPs for further manipulation, the workflow now is too complex and time consuming. And of course, CHOPs and the channel editor should be fully integrated. I lost hope for that. Well, kinda off-topic angry ranting, but I tried to rise some ideas for challenges (those are things I'd like to see explained by some CHOPs geniuses). Dragos Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Visual Cortex Lab Posted December 17, 2006 Share Posted December 17, 2006 my little contribution here is just to say that i agree with Madjestic... my own CHOP experience is also much smaller compared to others context.. but I'm building all my last otl using chops to drive pop nodes... or similar.... lately I'm starting to use VOPSOPdefinitions much more than expression or "pointSOP".... and Chops much more than expressions again..... but that's my only use of chop yet.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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