Hi! Houdinians!

I'm a XSI user who want to learn Houdini with apprentice version.

My question: Free Apprentice version is it a 30 days trial or illimited time?

Thanks in advance!

Yes, each license is for 30 days at a time. But you can get a new apprentice license every 30 days automatically when running the program.

So don't worry, you don't have to learn it all in only a month!

Great! Now I have unlimited time to create a cube, a sphere… maybe a cone

I installed H9 and I like it, but I have a problem with the views. I can't be in 3 or 4 view only in single or two. When I select 3 or 4, a fatal error window appear and I must close the program. I don't know why?

Question about non-commercial use:
Can I use Houdini to create some CG scenes in my Non-Profit movie?


P.S. I dislike the candy interface colors, I feel like in the CareBears cartoon, sure it's not the «old Atari game like» interface of Maya, but I prefer Houdini 8 colors version. When I saw on Gnomon website pictures of H8, I always found the interface look very serious and professional. I don't understand this change. :?

There is an option somewhere that makes you sort of switch back to the h8 UI. Then there are also some nice color themes by Wolfwood etc. that make houdini a nice dark like all the stuff form pixelfarm/iridas etc. etc. Looks very professional and nice. You can also scale down the interface a bit so you get the little buttons of h8 back.

I just uploaded my dark, more subdued theme to the exchange [sidefx.com] with a preview piccie, so see if that sort of look is to your liking. It's necessary to break out some items with colour to make things more efficient for flow, and with a really bright BG(which I also dislike because it interferes with dark light environments and judging luminance with plates) you sort of have to go towards the candy cane colours to make it readable. That's why we pushed everything back in that example. See what you think.

Cheers,

J.C.

Very nice! I like it!

Just a little problem, I don't find the $HOME/houdini9.x/config. to put the file in.

Do you mean the Config in the Houdini files?
C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 9.0.768\houdini\config

Thanks JColdrick!


Pagefan, where is that options you talk about?

I have put the JC_UI.hcs file in the Houdini\Config, changed Houdini Light to JCs Dark in Color Settings\Color Scheme and here what I get… only Geometry turn dark. What I'm doing wrong? :?

Yup, you should put the file in the $HH/houdini/config directory.

Hmmm I could swear there was this button hidden in some deep dark and unexplored corner of houdini's new UI but seems I am mistaken.

If you watch the video from Jeff on the Old school blog (Houdini 9 transition) you get some tips at the end of the video how to switch back to some houdini 8 behavior. Little synopsis:
- you can use the old pane linking by right click on the link-pin and then set it the numbered pane linking of houdini 8
- in preferences -> general user interface you can switch the ui to small and turn on Color Pane Headers with Network Contexts
- in preferences -> objects and geometry you can change Default Geometry Display to Show Display operator and Default Context Creation to Create in Context
- you can fold the shelf if you use tab to acces your tools
and, to finish, you can set some environment variable to use the old houdini 8 mouse mappings if you really want.

at the moment houdini only recognizes one color scheme file and that's the one called UIlight.hcs. So rename the file coming as standard with houdini to something like UIlight.hcs.orig and then change the name of JC's file to UIlight.hcs

Doh!! Umm, yeah, with the version you're running, yes, do rename it as suggested. ops: Obviously this will be changing. Sorry about that! Unfortunately you will need to change this behaviour in the future as Houdini will expect different names for different configurations - you won't want them colliding.

You can also change the display of the shelf tools with the popup on the right of the shelf - I hate those big cartoony icons and that's the way I got a lot more usable space - by changing it to show text plus small icons. Also, the ‘compact’ UI option is pretty well necessary on anything above 17" IMHO.

Cheers,

J.C.

Thanks Pagefan! Now I have a nice and professional interface look!

Me too, J.C., I don’t like the cartoony icons but when I use small and text I lost some icons (with text it’s too large).

Last question to close the colors seting chapter  : How change the viewport and the grid color?

Thanks again for your help!

Bob

Hit ‘d’ over the Scene view, go to the Background tab, and change the Color Scheme to Dark.

Cheers,

J.C.