Houdini Engine for Maya
|
Certain assets can now be connected directly as Maya Construction History. Typically a SOP asset fits well as mesh construction history, and an Object asset, with a more complex collection of possible outputs works better with the classic asset structure. But any asset with at least one geo input and one geo output can be applied as construction history
The history asset differs from a classic asset in the way that is gets connected to maya objects. We make certain simpliflying assumptions
We make certain simpliflying assumptions in order for this to work - if your asset does not meet these criteria it should continue to be used as a classic asset
Here are some additional menu items for manipulation of history assets:
The houdiniAsset node outputs both the information needed for Sync to create the output maya geometry shapes, and the maya geometry data to connerct to those nodes once they are created.
Applies a selected existing asset node as history to the selected mesh
The corresponding mel command, to add an asset as history to the selected mesh is:
houdiniEngine_addHistory($assetNode)
When a native maya history node is deleted, maya will reconnect the upstream and downstream history across the gap. Because Maya does not recognize plugin nodes as history, we provide this command to remove an asset node and and its associated inputGeometry nodes , and reconnect history across the gap.
The corresponding mel command is:
houdiniEngine_removeHistory($assetNode);
When the native Maya delete history command is used, Maya will only delete history as far back as the nearest upstream asset node, since it recognize plugin nodes as history. We provide this command to delete construction history including any houdinAsset nodes, and their history.
The corresponding mel command is:
houdiniEngine_deleteHistory($meshShape);
While history asset nodes are still derived from transform nodes, we are not parenting any outputs under them, so it may not be useful to see them in the outliner. Under the Show/Hide submenu are 3 options
These menu items set the hiddenInOutliner attribute on the asset node to control how it is displayed
The corresponding mel command is:
houdiniEngine_showOutliner(int $show, int $history)
It's convenient to have shelf buttons to apply your favorite houdini assests directly to meshes. Shelf buttons make this easy, but we can't assume that the plugin is already loaded when that first shelf button is pressed. Here's an example shelf button that will load the plugin and source some UI files before attempting to load my exampl extrude asset and connect it. This currently (17.0 Beta) assumes that the asset may located somewhere in $HOUDINI_MAYA_ASSET_PATH, as well as your default asset locations, however this may be subject to change depending on Beta beedback
if(!`pluginInfo -query -loaded houdiniEngine`) loadPlugin houdiniEngine; if(!`exists houdiniEngine_loadAndAddHistory`) source houdiniEngineHistoryAsset; if(!`exists houdiniEngine_findAsset`) source houdiniEngineUtils; $assetNode = `houdiniEngine_loadAndAddHistory "extrude.hda" "Object/extrude"`;