A Maya users wichlist desperately yearning for Houdini.
Actually it's pretty simple, just minor wishes, keep the core technologie but please change the frontend.
I know Side Effects itself and the Houdini usercommunity call Houdini the best 3D software ever but for me, who's looking at Houdini with a little distance, I see a good number of things that can be improved, easily.
- Get rid of the of the viewtool. Trust me, I worked with a few 3D packeges so far and none of them ever needed a viewtool. I just makes shortcut annoyingly unshort, by no benefit.
- Key-up / Key-down shortcuts, for snapping for example. In Maya it's super convinient to press down the V-key to get in vertexsnapping mode and when I release the key vertexsnapping mode is off. This just speeds up working.
- Speaking of snapping mode…snapping to one axis is another workflow accelerater. In combination with the already mentioned key-up / key-down shortcuts….it's like modeling in heaven
- Consistency throughout the TAB-menus. When I am at geomentry-level and press the TAB key there is no edgeloop, why?
- Don't constrain the user to volume geometry for things like particle collision or GI photons. Serriously, a software, that claims to be the best 3D software ever, doesn't manage to calculate particle collison correctly when the geometry has no volume. All other 3D software can do that, so why not the best of them? The same goes for GI photons.
- Improved rendercomparison would be handy. I shoudn't be that much of a problem to just show in the renderview how long the rendering took and not the time when it was finished because I coudn't care less about that information.
- Make “Keep position when parenting” default.
- Make “Lock camera/light to view” default or at least make it saveable as default in the preferences.
- Please use correct terms. For example: what you call “Group” is actually a “Component selection”, what you call “Subnetwork” is actually a “Group” (industry standard, deal with it). Another example: what you call “Refraction intensity” is actually “Index of refraction” or “Refractive Index” (industry standard as well, deal with it). Another example: What you call “Blast” is actually “Component delete”. There are probably a few more issues like that in Houdini, but I havn't found all of them yet (doesn't mean I'm searching). Things would be much easier to find, if they would be named probably.
- If there is time left, a Viewcube would be great because this thing's so handy and it just rocks!
- Oh and by the way, change the initial shading, it's just ugly. Apologize my honesty but that's just the way it is.
In conclusion, I really like Houdini and it really has the potential to be the best 3D software ever, but until then there are a few things the competitors are just handling better.
For those now, that wanna say: “But Houdini has a much better fluidsolver” or “Houdini has a much more better this and that….” How often, in my projects, do I use the fluidsolver? Maybe 3-4 times a year. How often do I use snapping? How often do I use GI photons? How often do I use grouping or parenting? Pretty much every single day.
- Oh I forgot, there's one issue that is probably one the most annoying to me. That every stupid little thing has to be ended/confirmed by pressing the enter key.
I open a new blank scene > TAB key > create a box primitive. Now I want to select some faces of that cube, so I press 4. Suddenly my viewport changes. I realize, my viewtool was active (WHICH IS COMPLETLY ANNOYING AND NEEDLESS!), so I wanna change to the select tool and press the s key. Instead of now just changing to the select tool, the infobar on the bottom says “Select geometry and choose an operation to perform” (I know how a select tool works, thanks! *rolleyes*). Now I have to press enter, to finaly get to my select tool. And this annoying procedure is true for everything in Houdini. I just want to create a scene with quick fluid test. To create the emitter I go to the particle shelf (because it is not listed in the TAB menu, for whatever reason!) I click on Emit Particle Fluid. Instead of just creating an emitter that emits particles, I now will be forced through a tiring precedure of “please first select this…”, “now select this….”, “now this….”, “press enter to complete whatever”. I know it is well-intentioned to guide the user through creation processes but it's to me more exhausting then helpful. As a compromise let's meet in the middle. When nothing is selected and I call whatever operation from whatever shelf, just create it!…please.
Cheers, the Clown
