Houdini's new boolean fail??

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hi i just saw a demo of mash boolean for maya and i thought “hmm..its pretty cool but i think houdini's new boolean is also capable of handling that” so i went off to try it in houdini
it turned out some time houdini's boolean doesnt work correctly in that situation,
sometime creates an open mesh like in the picture bellow, sometimes it create weird geometry.
this situation can be fixed if the subtracting box is scaled a little big than the original.
but this situation is not always doable ( changing the actual geometry )
is it possible to make houdini's boolean more bulletproof than it is now im sure lots of people can get benefit
from this. as i also think that one of the greatest features of houdini 16 is the new boolean.

best regards
Patar

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https://vimeo.com/230275140 [vimeo.com]
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Reversing normals should fix your problem.
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no its not… just tried.. beside the normal is already in the right direction if its needed to be flipped then its the bug in the algorithm..
Edited by patar - Aug. 25, 2017 04:55:50
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I had did what I said in Houdini 16.0.705 (Latest Production Build)
Here is what I did:
Add a reverse sop right after box1 node (both transform1 and boolean are connected to reverse node)
Change the operation option to (B-A) in boolean1.
See attached image.
Although it's fixed with just a reverse node but please submit a bug with sending maya's mash boolean plugin video.
https://www.sidefx.com/bugs/submit/ [www.sidefx.com]

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Hi patar,
i think you found a new bug. This used to be very stable.
It works with polygons but not with poly mesh…

greetings
Edited by Olaf Finkbeiner - Aug. 25, 2017 06:12:25

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If it is indeed a bug it should be reported via the usual bug reporting channels:

Report a bug/RFE [www.sidefx.com]

Or simply by sending an email to support@sidefx.com

With all the social media channels SideFX operate in, you can't guarantee the support team will see a bug report from within this forum. That's why the support team request that bugs are reported through either of the above.
Edited by Jonathan Moore2 - Aug. 25, 2017 14:04:17
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Are you on Windows by any chance? What result do you get when you set “Detriangulate” to “No Polygons”? I can't seem to be able to reproduce this on Mac. There is an outstanding bug with similar circumstances that only surfaces on Windows, but I have only a single example of. The huge overhead of tracking this on Windows (need to have Windows dev setup and compare against another platform side-by-side) under the current development load has kept me from investigating it in absence of more failure cases.

As a side note, normals have nothing to do with Boolean's output. The winding of the polygons determine inside and outside but reversing polygons should only fix problems if you have made a mistake about the semantics of the operation. Most importantly, perturbation of the input should never be required or be a workaround. Please report failures to us through the bug database and preferably lock the inputs to the problematic boolean node in your submitted hip files.
Edited by bardia - Aug. 25, 2017 10:59:47
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yes im on windows
Edited by patar - Aug. 25, 2017 11:37:00

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Try adding a divide on the B side. Then clean.

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To avoid platform-specific differences in the input geometry between different platforms, it's the input geometry that needs to be locked, so here's the file with the input geometry locked. I can repro the bug on Windows; hopefully it'll be reproducible on other platforms with the inputs locked. It also happens with Intersect mode, i.e. it's missing the sides of the intersection.

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Writing code for fun and profit since... 2005? Wow, I'm getting old.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_HFmdvpe9U2G3OMNViKMEQ [www.youtube.com]
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UPDATE:
Just got a mail from support:
This is fixed in Houdini 16.0.772

and i tested it and it should work now as expected.

THX a million!

now i love the boolean again!

greetings

Olaf
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*whew* Glad to hear it's working for you now! It turned out to be a very subtle Windows-only bug in this case. Both the box and cylinder examples above should hopefully work now.
Writing code for fun and profit since... 2005? Wow, I'm getting old.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_HFmdvpe9U2G3OMNViKMEQ [www.youtube.com]
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