Has anyone else envisioned a Houdini material authoring workflow that integrates SOP+VOP+COP like this?
I know this topic has been discussed previously in this forum, but we never had a prototype to show. The following video gives you an idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1v7UnX4ou4 [www.youtube.com]

I think that from artist point of view making materials in Houdini is biggest problem. If there was UI and workflow (workspace) like in instaMAT it would be game changer.

I wisch that there will be few totally different modes with different UIs for different task. Not universal for everything that feels more like its design for coders.

UI for animation
UI for animatin layot with multi amera option
UI for modeling
UI for FX and simulations
UI for USD - Solaris
UI for material creation and rendering settings and passws

Etc.

Carlos_Rivadulla
Has anyone else envisioned a Houdini material authoring workflow that integrates SOP+VOP+COP like this?

I did. In my dreams and wishful thinking. Maybe with COP3 nodes we will get it. That is, if they ever MATerialize.

Anyway, that's the first time I hear of this software, but it looks promising. I guess it aims to be a replacement for Substance Designer, and thank God for that, because I want a divorce with Adobe. I have an aversion to megacorporations, so you have just made my day a very happy one, dear Carlos. Hopefully Abstract's next step will be some kind of InstaPainter program, just to mock Adobe.

I'd like to try this software out, but I am unable to determine whether they have already made it available to GNU/Linux users or not. On their website in one blog post from January they promised that GNU/Linux support will be introduced in 2024. Other than that post, there's nothing more than silence regarding this subject and I couldn't find any information about software requirements on their site. There's no way of finding this out, other than registering first in an attempt to download the program, which of course I won't do, unless I'm sure it will work on my workstation. They really should post some information about requirements for potential customers.

Just to add to my post, I'm disappointed and very sad that MaterialMaker, TextureLab, FilterJS, Symbinode, Imogen and probably other libre procedural texturing projects that I'm not even aware of, didn't get much traction, judging by their most recent commit dates. Procedural texturing is a huge gap in libre DCC software that needs to be filled up ASAP. Most, if not all, of those programs, made by extremely talented people, now appear to be abandoned. I guess the problem is funding, because it's most definitely not the lack of skill.

There's almost a similar thing with libre node-based raster editors, on which I've been waiting for ages now. I know of two currently under development. We have Gimel Studio with the last commit a year ago, so probably it's been abandoned, because one year in CG software is a huge gap. Fortunately, the development of Graphite continues (https://github.com/GraphiteEditor/Graphite) and I hope its authors will not run out of steam.