Sorry for the deception I had to get you here no matter the costs
I have no knowledge about SESI's development cycles and whatnot, but I'm very curious did you guys start working on the new modeling/interaction tools? I know most companies avoid giving away any info beforehand (especially those gone public, which are bound to do so by law (in US? gotta love parenthesis within parenthesis)), but I'm thinking that since I ask for no specifics or promises, a bean or an olive can be thrown on the table for the hungry, right? Right?

We started in H14 and will continue in future versions. We are listening to everything being posted on these forums and the more people work with the H14 tools and let us know what is needed to complete the toolset, the sooner we can round out the feature set.

Likely it will take a couple of releases to get things where they need to be but with everyone's help we can speed up that process.

Robert

Thanks Robert for you reply, albeit it feels a little too “official” for this small (hopefully not for long) and cozy community.
I know you guys have started working on those things - I was “there” 8) and I know that the process will last a few versions before one can take a step back and draw a line. I was referring to this development cycle - whether the work started on those things yet.
Anyway, I appreciate to even have a reply to this, the big A has treated us badly and we're rather spoiled inhere when it comes to communication directly with the devs.
Keep up the good work!

When it comes to talking about future development “official” is the best way to answer your question. We will always listen to suggestions for improving Houdini and consider them in our plans but it is best if the details are “officially” released much closer to their shipping date.

Robert

Got it Robert. I'm glad things continue to be this way and looking forward to what will come out in the near future.
Cheers!

I'll take the opportunity while there's “official” statement, and the modeling topic has arisen.

During months I've been wondering about marking menus. I think they would streamline so much the modeling process and the general Houdini workflow, so my questions are:

- Has SideFx seriously consider implementing them? If so,

- Is the patent held by the big A preventing you from doing so ? If so,

- Has SideFx contacted ADSK to work out an agreement ? If so, has this been a dead end ? If so,

- What about pie menus or similar ?


You get my point, so can we have them ? Should we just bite the dust ? Assume we'll never have this kind of functionality as long as ADSK exists ?

Hey there donkeylong,
While for obvious reasons I can't answer your questions regarding SESI's plan with marking menus and whether there's a patent held and preventing anyone from implementing them, I'll have to disagree with this statement:

I think they would streamline so much the modeling process

Really?

Imagine ctrl + RMB + gesture North/NW/W/South/etc to execute a shelf button of your choice, or custom command, while inside the viewport.

Or the same but inside the network view to append a node.

With the current method ( TAB ) it takes at least one, often over three seconds, for each action. With a gesture it would take like an instant.

So now you can imagine how much more efficiently we'd work.

Really

I don't have to imagine anything because I've used Maya (mainly for modeling and a bit for animation) and shortcut based actions for modeling (like Softimage and Houdini) beats marking menus by a long shot in terms of accessibility (which is something we ought to not ignore) - marking menus become tiresome after a while if one has to do modeling operations by the thousands per a session.

This as far as viewport interaction goes. Regarding the netview, being a newbie in this area I'd probably do best to just shut up about it, however I could see a problem with that also considering the huge number of nodes. Yes, I know that one can customize the marking menus, but I don't think (again from my newbie perspective) that there are a few most used nodes like it is the case with modeling operations so that one can just put those and for the rest use the Tab feature.
Also, one doesn't go berserk in the Netview like modelers often go in viewport, there you'll spend most of your time thinking and tweaking params not laying down nodes.

Anyway, bottom line is that like with many things, I don't have something against as long as it is extra/option and not a replacement, I'm just arguing why IMO is not an improvement over the current workflow.

IMHO marking menues is one of the big failures of UI/UX, great for demos, extremely poor for production.

Tab is not perfect either, having to put both hands on the keyboard is not great, may be some tweaks to bring some of the good ideas from Nuke into Houdini will do a much better job.

my 2 cents
jb

donkeylong
Really?

Imagine ctrl + RMB + gesture North/NW/W/South/etc to execute a shelf button of your choice, or custom command, while inside the viewport.

Or the same but inside the network view to append a node.

With the current method ( TAB ) it takes at least one, often over three seconds, for each action. With a gesture it would take like an instant.

So now you can imagine how much more efficiently we'd work.

jordibares
…may be some tweaks to bring some of the good ideas from Nuke into Houdini will do a much better job.

I'm curious what you have in mind regarding nuke in this context.

Happy weekend,
Andy

jordibares
IMHO marking menues is one of the big failures of UI/UX, great for demos, extremely poor for production.

Tab is not perfect either, having to put both hands on the keyboard is not great, may be some tweaks to bring some of the good ideas from Nuke into Houdini will do a much better job.

my 2 cents
jb

Absolutely. The main big advantages of Hotkeys is mappability.
You just can't configure radial/Quad/marking menues to work in every software you use the same. With hotkeys you can if you want.

On the other hand there are different levels of commands. The ones you use all the time, the ones you need for specific not so common tasks and some you almost never use.
For efficient Tab menues you'll need to know the vocabulary of your software anyway.
Much more important for second and third level commands is a good, clean structure of the software itself, the a simple rightclick context menu will do.

Wow that's very much a surprise to me. Can a developer back this up ?

I feel it's still fair to get an answer to my questions though.

Andy58

jordibares
…may be some tweaks to bring some of the good ideas from Nuke into Houdini will do a much better job.

I'm curious what you have in mind regarding nuke in this context.

Happy weekend,
Andy

I particularly find useful nuke shortcuts to do the very common tasks you do 1000 times a day super direct.

Like putting down a read node, or write, or merge, or transform… they are direct shortcuts and makes the workflow much faster.

This could probably be done by mapping these ourselves but I believe if the software by default promotes this kind of workflow without breaking the current approach it may be much more comfortable to use. Specially for those of us that use tablets.

my 2 cents

McNistor
Sorry for the deception I had to get you here no matter the costs
I have no knowledge about SESI's development cycles and whatnot, but I'm very curious did you guys start working on the new modeling/interaction tools? I know most companies avoid giving away any info beforehand (especially those gone public, which are bound to do so by law (in US? gotta love parenthesis within parenthesis)), but I'm thinking that since I ask for no specifics or promises, a bean or an olive can be thrown on the table for the hungry, right? Right?

I believe SESI has been for a while (at least H8 onwards) improving in parallel both their core tools (aka FX) and also interaction and UX at a major speed.

Specially with H14 there has been a bigger impetus on the UX part and with the new wave of artists and developers it is clear the software will become even better.. Can't wait for H15.

jordibares

Andy58

jordibares
…may be some tweaks to bring some of the good ideas from Nuke into Houdini will do a much better job.

I'm curious what you have in mind regarding nuke in this context.

Happy weekend,
Andy

I particularly find useful nuke shortcuts to do the very common tasks you do 1000 times a day super direct.

Like putting down a read node, or write, or merge, or transform… they are direct shortcuts and makes the workflow much faster.

This could probably be done by mapping these ourselves but I believe if the software by default promotes this kind of workflow without breaking the current approach it may be much more comfortable to use. Specially for those of us that use tablets.

my 2 cents

It's currently a lot of effort but I wrote a standalone app to do this. The workflow is as follows:

1. Fill in your hotkey excel spreadsheet, one hotkey per key, per context.
2. Save this as csv.
3. Run the standalone app to spit out a shelf file containing all hotkeys.
4. Bind hotkeys to these shelf buttons (once).

This allows me to create the most common operators without using the TAB menu. So F for Fuse, E for Foreach, T for Transform, etc.

I can share the app if you guys are interested, but it's not very user friendly