Hi

- I never got over of how Houdini shades simple meshes with smooth shaded. Is there anything I can do to improve that?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2J9V2XnNnE [youtube.com]

- In version 13 I edited the file 3DSceneColors.wb to get the viewport backgroud color the way I wanted following this thread [sidefx.com] . But I can't find those files for this version only for 13:
http://prntscr.com/8t9qey [prntscr.com]
I remember it was a gradient parameter and I basically set both to the same color. Where is this now changed?

#1. Turn on “Use Vertex Normals” on the box sop, or use a Normal SOP to cusp the edges on general models.

#2. The names of the files are now 3DSceneColors.light (blue gradient bg), .dark (black) and .bw (grey gradient).

Hi twod thanks for the help.

#1
In the video I'm talking about the actual look of smooth shaded, not that I want to cusp its edges.
Here it is a cube with “Add Vertex Normals” in the box SOP and then a “Normal SOP” added to make it look smooth again.
http://i.imgur.com/19AIn4t.png [i.imgur.com]
Not only I don't know how to control the shading so it never goes to black, but the 2.2 gamma augments the “clipped” look. And I want to control that so, low poly meshes can look reasonable even if they are smooth shaded like below:
http://i.imgur.com/2ccJpfe.png [i.imgur.com]
So my question is how do I control the lighting/material combo, so I have no clip at all, or at least not black.
One thing that hints to me that Houdini solves smooth shading very differently than other applications is the spec hit. Even though it's a low poly mesh it's a localized round hit. This coupled with the ugly glazing black suggests that it's trying to smooth them almost like a sphere wrap and not linear interpolated. And if that's the case and Houdini works very differently than the others, maybe my tweaking attempts are a lost cause.

#2
http://i.imgur.com/1s4ObC9.png [i.imgur.com]

Cheers

You can add an ambient light, or increase the default material Emission color (Display Options, Effects tab) to get a brighter shadow area.

and where is or which is:

1. the option for changing “Animation Editor”, “Motion FX View”, “Render View”, “Composit View”, background color.
in my overall fully grayed color scheme these editors' harsh black BG, teases me.

2. also i want be able to save “Motion FX View” and “Animation Editor”, “Grid Line Density” option set to high for all houdini sessions. so every time i pope it up again, would not see, it has been reset again.
is this possible?

3. and the same for permanent saving of “Network Editor Display Options” to hold my favorite grid line display, for all houdini sessions.
what about this one? is this possible?

4. and regarding viewports grids, is there any option for changing the color and thickness of 3 center lines of world coordinate system grid.
when we are far from world origin, their easy tracking is handy for proper placing of objects, snapping vertexes, and … as first major reference lines. specially we get lost in orthographic views currently.

5. also after doing some actions in the viewport, sometimes my custom grid color changing to a bluish tinted color and overrides my defined color.
is there any option to prevent this?

twod
You can add an ambient light, or increase the default material Emission color (Display Options, Effects tab) to get a brighter shadow area.

Hi twod, thanks again.
- Adding ambient light is not the intended, specially because I was looking into using headlight.
- Increasing emission is also not desireable as it changes all the shading.

If I delete the polygons on the other side it gets better.
http://i.imgur.com/x7Zdd2J.png [i.imgur.com]
http://i.imgur.com/KAuiNzE.png [i.imgur.com]

So I would guess the problem is in both how Houdini does smooth shading, where it seems to show the shading of the hidden polygons in a wrap around way; and how the lighthing is (0, black for view incidence >90º. So, trying to show neighbor polygons normal when they are facing back = black, 0.)

I am sincerly curious of how/why Houdini does the smooth shading it does here, like no other application. They usual linealy interpolate between vertices.

Is this maybe something of feature request level? If the shading was from 180º incidence to 0ºincidence there would be no black areas as of now where it seems the shading is from 90º incidence to 0º incidence.

Cheers

since i saw @probiner has started another thread for this long time mentioned weird shading story (which personally pray to be solved one day), i put my second post here without to be worry about hijacking his thread.

after doing some search i could only customize the “Animation Editor” which has some options in the .hcs files and haven't found anything else, so i take your silence to my late post's multiple demands, as multiple loud “NO” shout. it is clear that SESI devs never post multiple “you can't do this in houdini now” in just one reply.

which leads me to a non urgent RFE:

making decent interface for any customization of UI colors, shortcuts, etc.
a simple scene view BG color change, calls a series of other changes. scene view overlaid slider color, info texts colors, different selection mode colors, template mode color, and list goes on, so that every thing be completely clear. searching multiple text files for finding each one of them and changing some floating point numbers and running houdini every time to see the visual feedback is hassle.

some dedicated interfaces in software packages for any customization is the feature many software vendors ship at their first version release, and we haven't it yet in houdini. while we have just passed release 15 :!:

i understand that you are working hard always on your next generation breath taking features, but at the same time these simple things must be addressed too. specially these days which houdini hardly looking to be more artist friendly.

Did you see the Python panel ‘Viewport Color Editor’. You can customise viewport colours there more easily.

thanks @MartybNz
seems it wasn't as much loud “NO” as i thought

but the problem still exists.
this interface as the title says, deals with just viewport color options.
my main interest regarding color changes were those which i asked at first post. this interface doesn't cover any one of them. and couple of them even are not relevant to color customization.

look at maya 2016 “Hotkey Editor”. an elegant design
look at its “Color Settings” and see how much detail it is. an all around solution.

probiner
Hi

- I never got over of how Houdini shades simple meshes with smooth shaded. Is there anything I can do to improve that?

Wait for two more version :wink: