in the Task Management section I read "Asyncronous I/O Support for Python".
Can you explain what does it mean like you would explain to a dog, please?

As far as I know, I can already use the python asyncio module in Houdini 19..

Woohoo, all three of my priorities have been addressed! Can't wait to try out 19.5.

Another amazing release!!!

There are a few things that were either hinted at in the past that I was hoping for, or things that were not hinted in the past, but I was still hoping for :-)

Hinted in the past, but don’t seem to be in 19.5:
- High level, artist friendly animation tools overhaul… I think it was said that it was mentioned in the past demos that sideFX were very close on this
- Quad remesher
- UI enhancements - more interactivity, improved viewport - faster and less buggy (refresh issues)
- Feather system was mentioned in the past

I was also hoping for (I guess I’m spoiled with those amazing massive releases) to see updates to:
- Material system… as a new user I’m completely confused and overwhelmed where I develop materials in… there are multiple note
- COPS redesign and integration to a point where it could compete with Substance Designer/Painter… maybe something bridging COPS and MaterialX and other material authoring networks

Oh and still no sparse pyro GPU acceleration or native python states? Or ability to fall back to CPU when OpenCL runs out of memory…

Is it just me, or the MaterialX is the way to go for CPU and XPU both going forward? RandomWalk SSS, crack-free displacement seems to be MatX exclusive

osong
Is it just me, or the MaterialX is the way to go for CPU and XPU both going forward? RandomWalk SSS, crack-free displacement seems to be MatX exclusive

Good question and observation… as a new user I’m completely confused when to use what material networks, editors, VOPs, MaterialXs etc… for example - the material presets that we have - those aren’t based on MaterialX, right? So I can’t use them in Karma?

osong
RandomWalk SSS, crack-free displacement seems to be MatX exclusive

These have been in the mantra principled shaders for karma cpu for a while. Random walk has anyway. I'm pretty sure mantra displacement was always crack-free.

osong
Is it just me, or the MaterialX is the way to go for CPU and XPU both going forward? RandomWalk SSS, crack-free displacement seems to be MatX exclusive

SideFX itself says:

Because Karma XPU will never support the traditional VEX-based shaders used by Mantra and Karma CPU, MaterialX is probably the future of writing shaders for the Karma renderer.

https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/solaris/materialx.html [www.sidefx.com]

Good question and observation… as a new user I’m completely confused when to use what material networks, editors, VOPs, MaterialXs etc… for example - the material presets that we have - those aren’t based on MaterialX, right? So I can’t use them in Karma?

Of course you can use (most of) them with Karma CPU. I don't think VOP shaders are going anywhere. But MaterialX will (gradually) become the preferred approach.

LukeP
the material presets that we have - those aren’t based on MaterialX, right? So I can’t use them in Karma?

you can, it's the "classic" principled shader stuff, will work no problemo in solaris/karma CPU

jsmack
These have been in the mantra principled shaders for karma cpu for a while. Random walk has anyway. I'm pretty sure mantra displacement was always crack-free.

the implementation on the video looked somewhat (for the lack of the better word) "better"? displacing geometry made with booleans previously gave "interesting" results. hard to tell by that 1 second video part is it same or not

i do not think i saw anything regarding "new" features for principled shader based material, maybe those will be in release notes in docs
all in all i have an impression (just personal opinion, nothing more) that the MatX looks to be a (much) more active area of development

raincole
SideFX itself says:
Because Karma XPU will never support the traditional VEX-based shaders used by Mantra and Karma CPU, MaterialX is probably the future of writing shaders for the Karma renderer.

thanks for giving this reminder, i thought i sorta-kinda-almost-remembered something among those lines, and yep there it is

What is Dashbox widget?

i wonder did karma XPU finally support materialx layering?

Great update, but I was hoping we would see a revamped Sculpt tool to help with simple modeling tasks.

Werner Ziemerink
Great update, but I was hoping we would see a revamped Sculpt tool to help with simple modeling tasks.

This. But they did update Curve Tool with better UI, so at least SideFX acknowledged the importance of non-procedural modeling.

Interesting that the preview doesn’t show anything about KineFX, but the list of updates to KineFX is actually quite large. I wonder if SideFX would consider slapping artist friendly tools on top of all this amazing infrastructure and separately offering Houdini Animation module.

Also love the work on Karma XPU/CPU… Not sure if it makes sense technologically, but what if COPS could be combined with MaterialX and brought to Solaris context. Of course in a very interactive way.

Add do that ability to sculpt geometry but with high res details… maybe convert to VDB in the background and back to pollygons somehow…

Basically you’d do all the detailing (geometry and texturing) in Solaris. Maybe I’m not making sense, but it sounds cool to me :-)

LukeP
Interesting that the preview doesn’t show anything about KineFX, but the list of updates to KineFX is actually quite large. I wonder if SideFX would consider slapping artist friendly tools on top of all this amazing infrastructure and separately offering Houdini Animation module.

Also love the work on Karma XPU/CPU… Not sure if it makes sense technologically, but what if COPS could be combined with MaterialX and brought to Solaris context. Of course in a very interactive way.

Add do that ability to sculpt geometry but with high res details… maybe convert to VDB in the background and back to pollygons somehow…

Basically you’d do all the detailing (geometry and texturing) in Solaris. Maybe I’m not making sense, but it sounds cool to me :-)

I also noticed that Houdini doesn't handle Stash'ed geometry very well. It handles hi-poly geo well when it's read from an external file, but when you store hi-poly geometry in a Houdini project with Stash SOP, it's much slower than even Blender, let alone ZBruzh. So making an actual functional Sculpt feature might require more effort than it seems.

since when Houdini has sculpting tools??
Have I missed some update??

Karma XPU isn't feature paritied yet so I have to stick to Redshift for a little while longer, but it good to see some progress.
And it's good the new muscle system is updated, hopefully it's out of beta now so I can start doing some work.
Also hopefully Houdini 20 will be the one where they finally update the animation system. Then I can use Houdini for most of what I need.

Andr
since when Houdini has sculpting tools??
Have I missed some update??

Calling it a tool is too much but there is a sculpting node.

LukeP
Interesting that the preview doesn’t show anything about KineFX, but the list of updates to KineFX is actually quite large.

a good chunk of things went into making things simply faster/better, but this would not be super obvious in this type of video where you have to showcase features that have obvious visual impact. the scrolling list at the very end has good stuff indeed all over it

tell me
the list of features in the sneak peek its all the features that houdini 19.5 will have? or its just a part of that?

JalexM

Andr
since when Houdini has sculpting tools??
Have I missed some update??

Calling it a tool is too much but there is a sculpting node.

ohhh that thing..


btw I haven't seen in the list any Vex related improvement, like new functions..