This one came out of the blue. I was editing UV points in SOP UV Viewport, using UVEdit Op. It was working fine, then badda-bing-badda-boom, out of the blue, the Handle Group x-form gizmo stops working. It no longer transforms the UV points. The ‘Handle Group Follows’ got turned OFF. I turn in back on in properties, but as soon as I try to move a multiple UV points, it stops working. The option ‘Handle Group Follows’ gets turned off automatically, as soon as I drag the handle, it moves but selected points do not. So I am reduced to moving UV points one by one or using Properties Panel.
You can only imagine my frustration. I don't know what I did to make it so. It just happened by itself. It was working then simply stopped. Houdini is a PIA to learn.
I am not enjoying the proccess at all.

Dave Rindner

Sounds like you hit the ' (back tick) key (beside the enter key) by mistake in the viewport which detaches the handle. You should be able to see if the handle is “attached” or not by a solid or wireframe centre. If that happens, just hit the back tick key again. The reason for detaching handles is so that you can move the handle to a new pivot point and then you re-attach to use the new pivot.

Sorry. Its not working as you are describing. Hitting the ‘ key does indeed toggle the handle as you describe, but its still not transforiming the points as before. Actually pressing the ’ key has made the situation worse.
Now Houdini is no longer allowing to move UV points at all. I select the points, the press RMB to validate so I can drag the selection. Upon press of RMB the transform handle appears (with solid center) but points or vertices get deselcted and do not move. Whereas before I could, at least, move points individually, now I can't move anything at all. I am sorry. The ergonomics of Houdini , at least on Windows, don't work for me. It way too confusing. Its behaving independently of the user, and I am not getting feedback. Also many of the icons, do not have pop-up help text, whenever a pointer floats over them. Worse, Houdini, seems to save all these preferences automatically, so I can't undo anything by restarting. This is all very frustrating and making a negative impression.
Is there an option for larger icon display? On 1280X1024 the icons are just too small. :cry:

Dave Rindner

Sorry, David. I'm a bit lost here. So are you saying that you used to be able to use UVEdit to move texture coordinates but it no longer works? What happens if you try on a different file?

Which specific icons are you referring to when you say that there is no pop-up help for them?

Also, which area of the icons are you finding too small? You can adjust the resolution of Houdini's interface via the HOUDINI_UISCALE environment variable. Try making this environment variable have a value of something larger than 100, eg. 200. To access environment variables on Win2K, it's Control Panel > System > Advanced > Environment Variables.

As for you comment about not being able to “undo anything”, which actions are you referring to in particular? I suspect you're talking about desktops. to disable auto-saving of desktops, look under the Dialogs menu and choose “Desktop Manager”. Under the Options menu of the Desktop Manager, there's an option to disable auto-saving of desktops.
If you really want to wipe all your autosaved options and start from scratch again, you can (backup first and then) delete your $HOME/houdini5.5 directory.