Visibility surface node

Shows/hides primitives in the 3D viewer and UV editor.

All Parameters Example files

See also: LOD

This operator changes the visibility of primitives (such as polygons) in the viewer. It is similar to the nondestructive hide/show functionality in other modeling and illustration software. You can use this node to hide part of a model to get it “out of the way” while you work on another part.

Unlike other packages where you use a menu command to hide polygons and then another to show them again, the Visibility SOP is part of the network, so to show hidden polygons again you can just delete or bypass the Visibility node.

Because this operator only changes the visibility of the primitives, topology, point numbers, primitive numbers, and so on are not affected.

Note

This operator does not affect rendering. It only changes the visibility of primitives in the viewer.

Using Visibility

  1. Select the primitives to hide or expose.

  2. Click the Visibility tool on the Model tab.

    You can edit the visibility settings in the parameter editor.

This tool does not delete the selected area, it merely hides it. This is useful because the remaining points do not change as they would if the area was deleted and it does not affect rendering.

You can get primitives to reappear by choosing Expose Primitives in the Action drop-down menu in the parameter editor or by deleting or bypassing the visibility node in the network editor.

Parameters

Group

A subset of primitives to hide/show.

Action

Sets the visibility of the input primitives.

Hide primitives

Hide the input primitives in the viewer.

Expose primitives

Show the input primitives in the viewer.

Apply to

Controls whether this operator hides/shows the input primitives, or all other primitives except the input primitives.

Selected primitives

Hide/show the input primitives.

Non-selected primitives

Hide/show all other primitives.

Viewport

Controls which type of viewport this node affects.

3D Viewport

Hides/shows the primitives in the 3D modeling viewports.

2D (UV) Viewport

Hides/shows the primitives in the UV editor.

All Viewports

Hides/shows the primitives in both the UV editor and the 3D modeling viewports.

Apply Cumulatively

Applies the changes to visibility without changing the current visibility of unaffected input primitives. If this option is off, all visibility is reset according to the options above.

For example, say primitive 2 was hidden in the input geometry and this node hides primitive 5. If this option is on, both primitives 2 and 5 will be hidden in the output. If this option is off, only primitive 5 will be hidden.

Example files

VisibilityCheckers

$HFS/houdini/help/examples/nodes/sop/visibility/VisibilityCheckers.cmd

Load | Launch

This example demonstrates the how the Visibility SOP can hide or expose selected primitives in the 2D or 3D view ports.

Usages in other examples

Example name Example for