Hey, I noticed (on accident) that H17 added a lot of cool new SOP nodes such as “Capture Metaball,” “Convex Decomposition,” “Falloff,” “Winding Number,” etc. Why weren't these included in the “What's new in Houdini 17” highlights? There isn't any indicator in the docs that these nodes didn't exist before the release of 17, either (though that may just be a Firefox/browser-extension problem)…

They were mentioned in the launch, albeit very briefly - just didn't have time to present everything:

Scrolling List @ 1hr 22' 40"

https://www.sidefx.com/community/h17-launch/ [www.sidefx.com]

I would like to see video tutorials over the new sop's if possible in the coming weeks.

There are detailed lists in the release news:

https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/news/17/index.html [www.sidefx.com]

HongMao
Capture Metaball

That one's been opdeprecated since 15.5, so it shouldn't show up in the tab menu unless you've removed the entry in OPcustomize. Is it showing up in the tab menu for you?

HongMao
“Convex Decomposition,” “Falloff,” “Winding Number,”

Convex Decomposition is mentioned here: https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/news/17/rbd.html [www.sidefx.com]
Falloff and Winding Number are mentioned here: https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/news/17/geo.html [www.sidefx.com]

There's also an HDK example in $HFS/toolkit/samples/SOP/SOP_WindingNumber/, and some open source code on GitHub (https://github.com/sideeffects/WindingNumber), for the Winding Number SOP.

ndickson

HongMao
“Convex Decomposition,” “Falloff,” “Winding Number,”

Convex Decomposition is mentioned here: https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/news/17/rbd.html [www.sidefx.com]
Falloff and Winding Number are mentioned here: https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/news/17/geo.html [www.sidefx.com]

There's also an HDK example in $HFS/toolkit/samples/SOP/SOP_WindingNumber/, and some open source code on GitHub (https://github.com/sideeffects/WindingNumber), for the Winding Number SOP.

Ah, I wasn't looking at the rbd notes since I'm more used to seeing the phrase “convex decomposition” used in papers and articles written on the themes of automatic skeleton bone/joint placement/extraction, and/or matching/partitioning/transferring regions/deformations/other stuff between Buddha™ and The Stanford Armadillo™, etc…

All I've only ever heard of winding numbers through Alec Jacbson's/IGL' publications using the term…

ndickson

HongMao
Capture Metaball

That one's been opdeprecated since 15.5, so it shouldn't show up in the tab menu unless you've removed the entry in OPcustomize. Is it showing up in the tab menu for you?

Capture metaball showed up in the online docs page, and I assumed it was a new thing since when I looked for it in the 16.5 docs nothing showed up. I found the page on 17's docs through google; The capture correct node mentions metaballs and I was searching for a reason why it's there…

v78t
I would like to see video tutorials over the new sop's if possible in the coming weeks.

Also blog tutorials for ADHD brains like mine, if possible, please….Especially for the new scriptable 3D-manipulator tools I saw shown briefly in the teaser trailer…

trolling through the change-logs has taken on a new importance in H17 - from snappable bones to interactive viewport crops. These are super important updates that don't seem to be listed as ‘Improved’ or ‘New’.

The viewport crop region can now be set through the display options and through the view state with Ctrl+Alt+RMB drag.

…back to scrolling…

Hi, this webinar is for you guys:
Upcoming Webinar: Jeff Wagner's Top 10 Features of H17 Banshee [www.sidefx.com]

What if we collect some questions here? Then others can vote with thumbs up/down.

Also, the Entagma guys have done some nice quicktips on Vellum, including detangle which is hugely helpful, and one on geo packing with the revved UV Layout.

xilofoton
What if we collect some questions here? Then others can vote with thumbs up/down.

Public bug tracker - Foundry now have an open bug tracker… time for SideFx to level up.

Public RFEs with public voting - like Algorithmic. Right now it's a dark-art of throwing in Rfes to support where the success rate is close to 0% chance of success.

fuos
Public RFEs with public voting

nah it'll just get flooded with stupid ‘make it like Maya’ votes.
popular != good

@cpd bet UX would be voted way up before making it a faux-Maya.

fuos
bet UX would be voted way up before making it a faux-Maya.

Possibly, but whenever I see a minority tech open its doors to users of majority tech it usually gets hounded into becoming a imitation which nobody is happy with; killing two customers with one stone.
Great example recently was BB10. Keep it together Canada.

So, in regards to the falloff node, I just released a new video that talks about that a little bit. Check out it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qakwg7sAjpo [www.youtube.com]

Today, I plan on making another quick-tip video, so I'll let you know if I end up adding another one about the other new sop nodes

Anything out there on the “quasi-static” setting for the vellum solver(s)?

Oh, and I forgot about the “interactive python widgets” teaser that appeared for a few seconds in the promo video. It gave me the impression that I could script custom manipulators with custom geometries, and event+context handling…

HongMao
Anything out there on the “quasi-static” setting for the vellum solver(s)?

it just runs vellum sim as quasi quasi-static sim, so that each frame it will run several iterations on the input from scratch

HongMao
Oh, and I forgot about the “interactive python widgets” teaser that appeared for a few seconds in the promo video. It gave me the impression that I could script custom manipulators with custom geometries, and event+context handling…

docummented here:
https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/hom/python_states.html [www.sidefx.com]
there is a dropdown with all related pages to Python viewer states

or you can see all links here under Python viewer states headline
https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/hom/index.html [www.sidefx.com]

Thanks, I found the python scripting guides shortly after I posted, but it's just all code and no examples/images/video of what's going on with every step. It's pretty overwhelming.

The thing about the quasi-static feature is that it appeared to only be available when you manually created a Vellum solver SOP. The vellum solver setup/node that gets made via the vellum shelf tools is a DOP node…I had to discover for myself that all the SOP version was doing was using a “time shift” node with an expression driven by the “quasistaticframes” channel…