jason_iversen
Can we save inflammatory sarcastic comments from anonymous logins for cgtalk.com please? JC and Andrew have driven H9 forward hugely, and at no small effort; some respect, please?

touche'


Ross de Young
FX TD
SF/LA CA

SESI, more than any other software development company, are all open-minded individuals.

I agree, I just read Joe's statement and felt that it was a bit of a slap in the face, after I have touted the efforts of SESI to work with artists to any production person that would listen. And started to wonder if I had made a mistake. Maybe the developers were in their own world of which the end user was not a part of.

And I don't think any of this would be being written, nor would anybody be bothered by the changes, if we all didn't love this software so much. So on my end I apologize for my nflammatory sarcastic comments. They were intended to show that nobody likes a brash across the board dismissive tone whether in ascii or hz. If that makes me the bad guy ce'est la vie.

Thank you for your sincere comments Cristin, and I believe you are correct, none of us are lawyers or politicians, And I truly believe in SESI and what it is doing, and the direction it is moving, I just wanted confirmation I was not being misled. I believe everyone should speak their minds, absolutely, and not everyone is going to like it, but if we are rational about our point of view, and logical on the solution, everything can be resolved.

moonlightkiss
WRONG! - Interns got ZERO say in the development of the nodes (especially not the LA Interns).

Now, now take a deep breath … the point was (as Peter pointed out earlier and many have been remarking for months) that much of the GUI changes actually impede productivity. Interns haven't had the joy of real production experience so it's not a slam about interns, it's about the disconnect that seems to have happened between hard-core production people, and whatever development forces and processes have been in play during this last development cycle.

Many of us who have used Houdini for years have a unique relationship with SESI and with the Houdini community in general, much of which is based on the fact there's lots of communication, incredible amounts of experience/talent and above all, a willingness to blaze a new path.

In addition, we all know the limitations of a small company like SESI, especially competing in such an aggressive market, so there's lots of things we have just had to put up with over the years … and it sucks, but there's compromises in life.

This discussion has turned a different direction, and my initial reaction to what seemed a “We Know Better” kind of comment was visceral … and well frankly, no you don't know better, none of us really do … that's the point, together we build something better.

But it all has to start with communication, respect, and an open mind. There's a damn good reason I hang out with Houdini folk, it's a whole different world, let's not spoil it, lest we be doomed.


++Mark

:!:

Hmmmm - IDEA:

Make your icons! Use your fav icon editor, draw in the correct num of of hots spots, run $HFS/bin/make-my-cool-SOP-icon, fire up H9, woohoo new icon …

Believe me, *not* an original idea … but quite easily do-able. HINT: There's this thing called HTML … image maps … m'kay ..






:shock:

xionmark
There's a damn good reason I hang out with Houdini folk, it's a whole different world, let's not spoil it, lest we be doomed.

Sometimes we hang out with them when we don't want to. I dreamed I was assaulted by a gratuitously drunk Mark Elendt dressed as Indiana Jones playing a game of pool a little while back, which explains why I avoided his company throughout SIGGRAPH this year.

jason_iversen
Sometimes we hang out with them when we don't want to. I dreamed I was assaulted by a gratuitously drunk Mark Elendt dressed as Indiana Jones playing a game of pool a little while back, which explains why I avoided his company throughout SIGGRAPH this year.

Kindred spirits we be!


Good times, bright future, we shall overcome!


8)

jason_iversen

xionmark
There's a damn good reason I hang out with Houdini folk, it's a whole different world, let's not spoil it, lest we be doomed.

Sometimes we hang out with them when we don't want to. I dreamed I was assaulted by a gratuitously drunk Mark Elendt dressed as Indiana Jones playing a game of pool a little while back, which explains why I avoided his company throughout SIGGRAPH this year.

Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?

mark
Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?

Users. Very dangerous. You go first.

I dreamed I was assaulted by a gratuitously drunk Mark Elendt dressed as Indiana Jones

My eyes! My eyes!

wow. “I wasn't expecting the spanish inquisition”

thanks JColdrick for echoing and clarifying my concern, and thanks cb for the balanced and informative reply.

My concern is mostly with the object level tiles. I recognise that the sop level tiles are not too different, aspect ratio wise, but the object level tiles are very different. font size relative to tiles seems to be an issue too, as does vertical spacing. Most of my work is in character rigging and animation, and I spend most of my time in the network view at the object level, usually zoomed out as far as I can and still use the wiring tabs.

see below for network view comparison pics.
both views are the same size, have been layed out with default spacing, and zoomed to show the same nodes.

- labels seem too big compared to tiles; too much overlap
- tabs for wiring tiles up are teeny, making wiring tricky when zoomed out
- icons are invisible at this zoom, and there is little space for them in any case

I just find myself zooming and scrolling a lot more than I used to. With the old network I could just zoom out to a point just before the wiring tabs vanish, and stay there. labels, icons, tabs, and flags were all usable at that zoom level. With the new network editor, I have to keep zooming in or out depending on whether I am wiring things, reading labels, or whatever.

btw, I have worked closely with SESI devlopers in the past, especially regarding character and rigging tools, and I have every confidence based on past experience that these issues will be considered carefully and rationally. It sounds to me like this tile issue has a history, and I would urge all who feel they might have been ignored on this issue to continue to press your case politely and professionally.

nice post - a couple of pictures are worth a thousand words (not that this information isn't months old). lets hope we see some movement from sesi in the near future…

nobodyinparticular - have you adjusted the HOUDINI_UISCALE or changed the UI size in the General UI preferences? The label to node size on my system looks a bit different than yours at the same scale (or close, I eyeballed it).

Edit: Of course our posts had to end up on different pages

there is definately an art to arranging large node-based networks. After my first few months of using Houdini and version 8 why wife (who doesn't use computers) noted that my tree's looked much prettier now than when I had started.

So of course I realized that there must be an “art” and that art must be adapted based on the overall look of the nodes and wires. The “trees” looked much different than my combustion scematics etc.

I'm sure wether an option is given to adjust the aspect ratio or not there will need to be aesthetic adjustments to networks to make them more understandable. But, at least now they don't look like a linux text-install, and if you open up Houdini the maya people don't go “eeeww” this thing does amazing effects?

One aesthetic improvement I'm noticing is that colorizing nodes looks much less gaudy and this could make networks more understandable as well.

Another (smaller) problem: it would be so nice & useful to be able to turn off antialiasing for text, both in menus and in the network (I was never a fan of Freetype's rendering quality anyway).

Dragos

twod
nobodyinparticular - have you adjusted the HOUDINI_UISCALE or changed the UI size in the General UI preferences?

this is a good point. we shouldn't *need* to adjust any of these settings to get a good, default layout. right now, we all have played around with the ui size (compact/small/etc) and HOUDINI_UISCALE to get something useable. and the end result *still* isn't as good as vanilla h8.

we have been saying this for 6+ months now. really, this needs to be refined and tweaked - so houdini 9 is at least as good as houdini 8 - “out of the box”.

twod
nobodyinparticular - have you adjusted the HOUDINI_UISCALE or changed the UI size in the General UI preferences? The label to node size on my system looks a bit different than yours at the same scale (or close, I eyeballed it).

Those screenshots were taken with a HOUDINI_UISCALE of 105.

this is a good point. we shouldn't *need* to adjust any of these settings to get a good, default layout. right now, we all have played around with the ui size (compact/small/etc) and HOUDINI_UISCALE to get something useable.

Sorry, perhaps I wasn't clear. I was wondering if the UISCALE had been altered, not recommending that the poster do so. The point of the UI size levels is to avoid using UISCALE altogether. Once the UISCALE is altered, it becomes difficult to guarantee that everything will “mesh” properly in a nice, aesthetic way (such as demonstrated in the network screenshot a few posts before mine). So we felt that having discrete UI levels would be easier to support, and at least then we could guarantee that they work as advertised.

The Compact UI level was the one designed to address the concerns of users on the alpha/beta forums (reducing the size of large icons, spacing, margins, button height, stowbars, splitbars, shelf icons, tabs). Small UI was meant as a more extreme version of Compact (and Large as solution for ultra-high resolutions). Node tiles aside, as they've been pretty well covered by this thread, what other areas of the UI still require size tweaking in this mode? I thought that I'd covered most of the hotspots back when it was implemented, so I'd be interested in hearing what was missed.

twod
The Compact UI level was the one designed to address the concerns of users on the alpha/beta forums (reducing the size of large icons, spacing, margins, button height, stowbars, splitbars, shelf icons, tabs). Small UI was meant as a more extreme version of Compact (and Large as solution for ultra-high resolutions). Node tiles aside, as they've been pretty well covered by this thread, what other areas of the UI still require size tweaking in this mode? I thought that I'd covered most of the hotspots back when it was implemented, so I'd be interested in hearing what was missed.

please refer to the many posts regarding general UI size that have been posted in the last few months. in particular, h9 still is very space inefficient compared to h8. specifically, parameter panes are v inefficient (especially in the vertical) - and obj/sop node layouts are a mess compared to h8. byw, i use HOUDINI_UISCALE 100 - with with compact setting (off the top of my head - the smallest).

i think you misunderstand how people like to layout their space when they have a high rez screen. we don't want larger ui widgets, but want to fit more of them onto the screen. ie, i have a 2560x1200 screen and still use the small setting. however, even at small, as i mention above - i see less ui on the screen compared to h8. this, is the crux of the issue.

rather than go though each part of the system - please just open houdini 8 and compare how much UI you can fit compared to h9. we just want to see the same amount of information on the screen - it's as simple as that.

forgive me if i sound frustrated (not with you, but the process) - but i am. i and others have been going on and on about this for months. it's a real surprise to hear sesi people say “please tell us if your not happy” about things that we *have* been very vocal about for over six months now. ie, posts of “bugs and polish” from just seven weeks ago have been forgotten (resizing parameter panes). there's been many other examples like this. too many rfe's seem to be falling though the cracks - or not prioritised correctly. there's some great information already there - please reread. i feel we're going round in circles and wasting valuable time.

ok, rant off. getting back to the issue - here's some specifics:
parameter panes:
- there's many vertical pixels wasted between each field. look at the height of the text entry fields (of say a transform sop). the numbers/text ‘floats’ in the fields themselves ie, you could hald the pixels straight off.
- the same goes for menu boxes - lots of space is wasted both vertically and horizontally. again, look at h8 - this is really pixel efficient in many cases. am i being anal - yes! does it really matter - yes! ;-) being anal is the only way to make things perfect…
- i think a more space efficient font should also be used. or, allow the font to be user defined. however, i'm reticent to suggest this - as this really should be fixed first by yourselves. (i've always thought the small/compact was a poor quick fix). also, the font scales poorly - it sometimes appears too large - other times too small.

…i think that sorting out the spacing in the parameters will get us 90% there. i generally stow everything else unless i'm in the first 30s of a project and use the shelf to put down a primitive box. ;-) (thats a joke - haha)

- the stow bars seem kinda fat. they could be leaner by a pixel or three. again, h8 had a better size.

playbar:
- again so much vertical space is wasted. there's at least five pixels used for the frame range slider. h8 did this better. also, the playbar wastes lots of space in the horizontal. does this matter? yes. because, often the playbar is moved to the viewport - which can be often a much smaller space than taking the whole of the bottom of the screen.
- the forward, reverse icons seem too ‘sharp’ and not up to the standard of the other new icons in h9. i think these should be filled in/solid. they seem a little busy right now. again, they “float” in their boxes. everything could be much smaller/compact/finished.

ok, by now - i hope you get my drift. everything needs to be ‘tightened up’ in a major way. this is as much a design issue as a UI one. however, the current “design” is inhibiting the “function” of what the ui needs to do. ie, present us the maximum amount of information in the smallest space. as i've said before, h8 may not have been “designed” - but in it's naivity - it didn't manage to pack a lot in a small space. there's no reason why h9 cant do that too - and look better as well. i dont want the h8 look back - just a more functional h9. only forward…!

regards, p

twod
nobodyinparticular - have you adjusted the HOUDINI_UISCALE or changed the UI size in the General UI preferences? The label to node size on my system looks a bit different than yours at the same scale (or close, I eyeballed it).

thanks, twod,

I have fiddled around with HOUDINI_UISCALE and the general ui size, and improved things slightly, but these improvements were more than negated when I did an auto-layout and the horizontal space between tiles grew much larger. (I laid out my screen shots in h8 and had not re-auto-laid-out in h9) This makes things a bit worse than I originally thought.
Some control of the autolayout spacing would help greatly.

however, my original concerns remain, and my original questions remain unanswered:

- why the wide tiles? what advantage do they offer over narrower ones other than “looking pretty”?
- why the teeny tiny wiring tabs? again, what is the advantage over the old ones?

I am sure there were reasons these changes were made at the time. If everyone is all “I dunno, I thought you wanted 'em wide” then maybe narrower might be better?

nobodyinparticular
- why the wide tiles? what advantage do they offer over narrower ones other than “looking pretty”?
- why the teeny tiny wiring tabs? again, what is the advantage over the old ones?

i have been asking exactly the same questions too. also very keen to hear any answers…

h9 still is very space inefficient compared to h8. specifically, parameter panes are v inefficient (especially in the vertical)

I don't think it's nearly as big an issue as that. The vertical difference between the two parameter editors is negligible in the header area, and would probably be equal if we switched to small (16x16) icons in the name/gear/info row instead of medium sized ones.

The text areas are bigger to make the textboxes easier to hit, and so you don't have the text butting right up to the border and looking like crap. Even so the difference doesn't amount to a whole lot in this example. And for people who prefer less humane UI in exchange for showing more parms at once, that's what the UI scale is for.