Hi there,

Im using the Houdini and Houdini FX apprentice.

When I press the tab menu my list is different to those I see in various tutorials. my list does not contain things like, edge, attribute, character etc?

For some reason it contains things like Auto rig, dynamics, fur etc.

ops:

Please see image I have attached excuse the capitals.

Please assist ASAP…God bless whoever does.

Thanks and bless you in advance.

your tab menu is at the scene level, before you go inside a node.

If you put down a geo node, then double click it, you'll be inside the node and your tab menu should be the same. Hope that helps

Hi Marty,

It has indeed helped, thank you very much for the speedy, problem solving response. I anticipated it would be something ridiculous.

Cheers again.

This is a critical thing in Houdini and is what makes it quite unique. You are in fact working in a “directory” when using Houdini either in the viewport or the nodes.

The different thing about Houdini is that you can only do certain things when you are in a particular type of a directory. Such as an obj type directory where you get your tab menu of tools and a “sop” type directory where you can create and modify anything to do with geometry from polys to volumes. You end up navigating the interface a bit to do various tasks.

And even crazier, a node in itself can be both a tool and also be a folder. And Houdini currently doesn't have an indicator of this in the network DAG node network. You can use an additional tree view pane linked to follow your selected nodes.

The Tool Shelf has a bunch of various tools that place nodes in various directory types throughout the scene file. As a tool designer, the idea is to, after finishing with the tool, leave the user at a spot with a specific node selected and viewport handles if available that they would intuitively wish to tweak next, then pray that they know how to traverse the network to find the other nodes. With time it becomes second nature in Houdini but at first it can seem over the top.

This is why I would encourage you to open up a tree view pane so you can view your entire scene file as a proper folder tree. You get a pretty good view using the Technical desktop. To match the Build desktop just press the switcher widget on the bar separating the parameter pane from the node network. That and turn on the view network by colour option in the preferences.

Hope this helps.