I'm trying to figure out some workflows in Houdini and since I' coming from XSI, I have some habits and expectations some of which I'll probably have to ditch, but not before making sure there's a good reason to do so accompanied by some advantages.

Right now it looks like when extruding some faces, that is when creating an extr node, nothing is created as far as geometry goes. Not unless you modify either distance or inset.

My question is obviously, why is this? I will show why I'd prefer to have it the other way and what I have to do as a work-around with the current behavior, but I'd prefer to know first so I won't waste time with gifs and whatnot.

with the polyExtrude's default settings there is no geometry created because the data coming into the polyExtrude isn't modified…
it's the same as passing the data into a Null SOP…

this just happens to be true for the polyExtrude's current defaults…but isn't true for may nodes.

what so you expect to happen?
if you want the polyExtrude to have, say, 1.0 as the default Distance amount, you can set it to 1.0 and then click the ‘gear’ icon and select Save as Permanent Defaults - now every polyExtrude you use will have 1.0 in distance.

arctor
with the polyExtrude's default settings there is no geometry created because the data coming into the polyExtrude isn't modified…
it's the same as passing the data into a Null SOP…

this just happens to be true for the polyExtrude's current defaults…but isn't true for may nodes.

I see. Is there a reason for this? As in, important for some workflows using the extrude in a procedural way? I'm asking because if there isn't, I can make a case for how having polys created at the creation of the node can benefit a traditional modeling workflow.

arctor
what so you expect to happen?
if you want the polyExtrude to have, say, 1.0 as the default Distance amount, you can set it to 1.0 and then click the ‘gear’ icon and select Save as Permanent Defaults - now every polyExtrude you use will have 1.0 in distance.

Like I said, I'd like new polys to be created even if the distance/inset is 0. I know I can set a value and save it as a default, but this wouldn't solve my problem since I want the values to remain at 0.
Having polys created w/o modifying any values, allows me to transform those polys in different ways than what you get from distance/inset.

Enabling “Transform Extruded front” does the trick but it's not “modeler friendly” because one has to check a box therefore leaving the viewport for a simple transform.
To solve this workflow slowdown - it might not seem like it is, but probably more than 90% of the time, I extrude polys and transform them manually rather than displacing them by their normals - we either have that check box hotkey-able or to create polys at node creation to allow a quick transformation via auto-creation of an edit node.

Do I make any sense? Let me know if I can do something to better explain it if it's not clear.

If you want to have duplicated primitives with zero extrusion (to keep number of points/prims constant) just add primwrangle with:
f@localzscale=0;
before polyextrude and set polyextrude's distance to 1 and allow Z Scale attribute.
Then use Front Transform instead of the Distance or modify @localzscale directly for amount of extrusion.

ah I see…

you can check “Transform Extruded front” and make it the default…saves you a click

we have plans for a hotkey for this.

arctor
ah I see…

you can check “Transform Extruded front” and make it the default…saves you a click

we have plans for a hotkey for this.

Great, a hotkey is much better than saving a default, since you want to change it at some point and then you're dealing again with a checkbox.
Also, at some point, if there's no reason to not do this, please consider creating the geometry at node creation… if anything, it makes more sense.

I'm still used to the old poly extrude workflow…. is there a reason that the option was removed to do both Local and Global Transforms on the Poly Extrude? I'm not entirely sure anymore how to both do local transformations, and scale the extruded geometry outward.