Align: Aligns a group of primitives to each other or to an auxiliary input.

this is all the information there exists about what align node does in houdini documentation(there is actually some more, but those cover technical points). is it possible for someone new to 3D to understand it?

isn't the above sentence written with a professional user in mind and not a beginner?

I know there maybe tutorials covering this node, and there are some nice videos in 3dbuzz, but i am talking about the help of houdini.
in every software; you don't understand a tool.. you press F1 and you find out in no time what the tool is supposed to do. there is also a tutorial section in the documentation of all notable 3d packages.

1. is this ever going to be fixed? i mean is there some plans for improving the documentation to cover the needs of noobs?

2. doesn't houdini lose so many 3d beginners? for not paying enough attention to such matters?

ramin22
…
in every software; you don't understand a tool.. you press F1 and you find out in no time what the tool is supposed to do. there is also a tutorial section in the documentation of all notable 3d packages.
…

I pressed F1 and there is help page for Align tool as you already know so you can't say it's not explained, but if you don't understand the explanation you can look at the example file which is at the bottom of the page called AlignTube which I think is better than a tutorial, there is plenty of example files in the docs and on the forums for not only nodes but some pretty crazy usages
and if you still cannot figure out how to use some tool you can ask on forums or just browse them

thanks tamte. i know that F1 brings up the help in houdini, my point is that the explanation is not enough. i am sure i can learn more about align using the example file and asking in the forum but that is not the point.

what i am saying is that the harder the process of learning, more beginners will quit. so if if the process of learning align is “study example file and ask in the forum next time you are online” (instead of press f1 and read the help) then many will quit.

Lots of people share your pain. Docs could be better, sure, many topics are roughly touched, some missing, some obsolete. Best you can do is to send SESI issues you have found. They'll be happy for that. (won't they?)

I actually find Alain SOP docs surprising complete. They even have sketch (indicating someone had a problem with it before ).

But lets not confuse two things here. Some part of your problems come from the fact, that OPs in Houdini have by design general usage, and as such, it's much harder to explain its purpose in a two simple sentence.

This is a common across many fields. If you ask mathematician what is a vector, he'll be happy to explain and draw one for you. Now ask him what is a tensor, and I assure you, he will need much more time to explain it to you, not to mention, he will have problem with drawing it. But hey! In a context of computer graphics they are roughly the same thing! How is that?

The same goes with Houdini's OPs, you can write a book about almost any of them, often seeing its purpose from the perspective of much wider problem. Quite problematic for novice.

Above doesn't mean I don't have my hard moments with docs. I do

cheers,
skk.

thanks. uh… i feel so much better now. and thank you for explaining why it is hard to explain houdini's nodes.

actually i am a mathematician myself and know what you mean. and know how hard it is to have a feel for more general and as a result more abstract things.

Best
Ramin