Nowadays tablets getting up there in performance, and I recently got myself a Surface Pro 3 (i7, 8gb edition)

sadly.. its missing one of the most important buttons known to computer kind. Middle Mouse Button.

has anyone else tried to use Houdini on a touch device and thought of some clever solutions? would love to hear about it!

what? you can't add a mouse to it?

I was looking at the surface pro as a portable option too.

How are you finding performace?

I did end up using a mouse, but would love to use the pen as an input device but it turns out I have to wait for Microsoft // n-trig to open up remapping first


as for performance, it depends if you are using a lot of multithreading or not, I am still relatively new to Houdini so my “complex” graphs are not what I would call demanding

but I7 dual core with HT, can boost its speed as high as 3.3ghz so its no slouch I find it to be just as responsive as my desktop, faster on single threaded processes

I have used Houdini for basic stuff on an even older tablet. It's not a MS Surface Pro, but it's the knockoff pseudo-tablet “ultrabook” that Sony makes. (Vaio Duo 11.) It has a very slow CPU, but 64-bit OS and plenty of RAM.

The Intel video hardware sets you back a bit. I found a few of the fluid visualization types didn't display well, or were too heavy for the gpu hardware to display. It would work, but unusably slow even for very small sims when using fluid data visualization modes other than points. That may be better in newer models.

There were a few odd graphics glitches, but nothing deal-breaking. Can't think of specifics, but I do remember they were really just oddities. Things that didn't really get in my way, just was used to them looking different on fully qualified boxes. I didn't try all features, not by a long shot, but the basic everyday display necessities worked well enough to get things done with little hindrance. The more picky and demanding visualization stuff for sim data was the only thing I found that was a no-go. Procedural modeling stuff works great. High poly counts don't seem to bother it much. Not silky smooth, but not slow either.

Simming was of course slower than it could have been, but it would do it. The tiny form factor isn't very good at managing the heat, so I would not recommend it as a good solution for simming things overnight. Simple stuff is fine, but anything complex you'll want to farm out to your main box back home.

What's fantastic about the Houdini / Surface combo is you can set it up with cloud sync for your project files, and if a client wants something while you're on the go you can load up your scene and do some network tweaking right there on your hotel bed. Even on that underpowered 1.9ghz CPU, I always found I had enough CPU power to make some tweaks and see whether they were working. Not nearly as fast as the main workstation of course, but hey I'm doing Houdini work on an airplane, in coach. The thing fits on the tray, and doesn't even sacrifice screen real estate.

So, all said and done, it's a really great combo unless you're doing very complex geometry or more than basic complexity fluid sims. The experience isn't perfect, but the ability to carry everything you need for work in a device the size of a thick magazine more than makes up for it.

One warning though. Do not get the ones from Sony. This Vaio Duo 11 has been, by far, the worst device I have ever purchased. (The keyboard double-taps keys, the built in mouse nub has a loose solder joint or something that makes it randomly fail for a few weeks at a time, the screen burns in images after only 10 minutes, I had to factory reset it five times in eight months due to their bloatware killing the OS, the stylus is not Wacom and mostly useless, and those are just the main complaints.) So, stay away from Sony. Love the portability with Houdini, but I really regret not waiting for the actual Microsoft-brand Surface Pro when I purchased.