Is there a method or documentation concerning how to control the way Houdini Engine outputs geometry/geometry names in Maya? For example, if I have a simple /obj level OTL with a single Sphere /obj node inside, and then in SOPs if I assign two prim groups to the sphere geometry, my Maya heirarchy looks like so:
Anything in bold was created or added to the name of the Houdini node/group. There are several things I would like to have control over or change:
Not have Object prefix my otl nameNot have numbers appended to my group namesHave the actual prim group be exported as a mesh, instead of as an empty transform with the geometry parented underneath. I find the last point particularly irksome in Maya because I can't easily modify the meshes using mel, or in the Hypershade, because Maya complains about their not having unique names: More than one object matches name: mesh
Is there something in place already to control this, or is there a plan to add it?
The “Object_” portion of the name corresponds to the full name of the asset. There's probably no benefit in having the “Object_” prefix. I can probably remove them completely.
Christopher Hendryx Not have numbers appended to my group names
The “_0” is more of an implementation detail of Houdini. Unfortunately, it got exposed through Houdini Engine. And from the user's perspective, it's hard to predict when the number are incremented. It's certainly a common annoyance. Let me see if we can do something about it.
Christopher Hendryx Have the actual prim group be exported as a mesh, instead of as an empty transform with the geometry parented underneath.
Yeah, the “mesh” transform is probably unnecessary. Let me look into removing this too.
It took a bit longer than I thought, but I've made the changes to get rid of the unnecessary “Object_” prefix and the extra transform above the shape. The changes should be in the next build (13.0.680 and 14.0.237).
We can't remove the “_0” suffix at this point. For example, it's needed to distinguish cases where the group has both mesh and particles.
