Hello. Baffled that Auto Bank / Roll / Path Constraints, etc. functionality is Invisible in the Cameras.
Why I ask? This was Visible in subsequent Houdini versions (i.e. 14 or way back).
Now we must edit parameters and show them.
Why does every other 3D app allow auto-banking and easily integrates for the artist?
Why did SideFX choose to hide this VERY useful feature.
No way am I going to use lengthy VEX tutorials/methods to achieve this already Built-In feature.
Houdini has this built-in - so confused. I'm assisting a new user of Houdini and they can't believe it.
Thanks for any thoughts and contemplations.

Here's my tutorial that is hopefully helping several unanswered questions going back to 2017.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr9K3tJU5qo&t=1s [www.youtube.com]

It was hidden when chop based Constraints were introduced as preferred method

tamte
It was hidden when chop based Constraints were introduced as preferred method

Yeah, it's a legacy method. It could possibly be removed in the future.

Thank you. With all due respects who says that is preferred? Was this a decision made by actual users or SideFX?
(Urge to use Blender increasing...)
Seems senseless to hide something so easy to use. CHOPS is rarely preferred from what I've seen.
Ever work with audio files?

Frank Unger
With all due respects who says what is preferred?

SideFX says it's preferred by hiding the previous method
The same way as they hide nodes if they have replacement that they plan to support instead of the old method

You can of course argue about whether it's better, easier to use or personally preferred, or consider pros and cons of each and use whichever you choose or mix and match

EDIT: also to avoid confusion, not talking about CHOPs in general, but chop based constraints which you can easily add from constraints shelf or by clicking Enable constraints on any object and pick some from the menu

Frank Unger
(Urge to use Blender increasing...)

feel free to use any software for whatever suits your needs better
in my opinion SideFX is still figuring out the best way to go about rigging in general at least for a robust solution so I'd personally not judge it so harshly or even expect it to be the best or most user friendly for that, especially compared to more mature rigging solutions like was Softimage ICE kinematics or even Unreal Control RIG

Well I will continue to judge Houdini as a tool because I'm stating the obvious that the company should not hide valuable features in preference of a more complicated "method".

But they are literally doing that because they don't plan on supporting the older method.
You should sort of be happy that unlike other apps, they almost never remove any node or function, so you
can easily open a H9 file in H18 with almost no issue, try doing that in another application as see how you go.
The param adding feature or opunhide to show previous nodes removed in newer versions at least gives you total access
to everything.

Once you add those parms, make them the default/an HDA and then it's there as you like it forever.

L

tinyhawkus
Once you add those parms, make them the default/an HDA and then it's there as you like it forever.

L

Thank you for the helpful input - appreciated.

Yeah, I'm specifically talking about "Auto Bank". This should be left alone for all future releases.
I'm not surprised that some of the devout Houdini loyalists would rather use 30+ nodes and VEX to derive normals, etc from a curve, to achieve this basic functionality that is already built-in for Cameras (in particular). (someone online posted a 15 min VEX solution simply for Banking along a path) At what point did SideFX have their morning coffee and donuts and decide this was not important to users? That's my question.

I think you are getting your train of thought stuck. Yes on the surface those built in parms are a no brainer,
but as has been said, it is a deprecated method, in favour of moving things forward. It's in a state of flux now,
as rigging used to be OBJ level based, and chops heavily involved in things.
Now it's moving to SOPs with kinefx, a lot of it is literally being developed as I type.
You need not worry sidefx is deliberately choosing to make things harder, on the contrary, look at all the SOP based
RBD, vellum, pyro tools, and the new SOP tools for creating orientation and randomness for scattering, vector, int, float
randomness and remapping also. In previous releases these were all VEX wrangle based things, to I don't agree with your
observations, it's coming across a bit insulting to the hard working folks at sidefx.

L

tinyhawkus
I think you are getting your train of thought stuck. Yes on the surface those built in parms are a no brainer,
but as has been said, it is a deprecated method, in favour of moving things forward. It's in a state of flux now,
as rigging used to be OBJ level based, and chops heavily involved in things.
Now it's moving to SOPs with kinefx, a lot of it is literally being developed as I type.
You need not worry sidefx is deliberately choosing to make things harder, on the contrary, look at all the SOP based
RBD, vellum, pyro tools, and the new SOP tools for creating orientation and randomness for scattering, vector, int, float
randomness and remapping also. In previous releases these were all VEX wrangle based things, to I don't agree with your
observations, it's coming across a bit insulting to the hard working folks at sidefx.

L

I think the issue is there's no replacement for autobank in the new system. It's up to the user to implement something themselves. Autobank never worked that well, so maybe that's why it hasn't been migrated to the new system. The results would be higher quality to do the math yourself and make something that's stable and not jittery like the autobank option.

jsmack
The results would be higher quality to do the math yourself and make something that's stable and not jittery like the autobank option.

Not when I adjust my curve to have more points, it smooths it out perfectly if/when there is some rough turns. Did you try that?

That's fine that you don't agree as I think they can handle some honest critique of the product.
I've worked closely with software teams and Houdini - it's nothing new to point out a few grievances such as these.

It's up to me to make things more complicated than they need to be - no, not for me personally.
I'll never forget seeing some of the most ridiculous networks from other artists - giant bowls of unnecessary spaghetti.
Call it job security to make things more complicated to impress supervisors I suppose.

The thing is, there's no single solution (of any particular complexity) that will fit everyone's needs. Rather than black box solutions the trend nowadays tends to be to implement tools as networks that folks can use as-is but customize if/when needed. However removing a feature and not providing a replacement is always going to be frustrating of course.