Sorry for my lingo, I'm still getting used to houdini.

I want to constrain some text I made to my current viewport. I know in the “Look At” parameter, I can put in a path to a camera, but that is different than the default perspective viewport, and I haven't had any luck finding this in hscript or in the python docs, or just by using some houdini nodes.

Can anyone point me in the right direction here?

- fortner

You can link the text object to the camera object.

Maybe there are other approaches as well.
But this is simple and working.

Georg

but in Houdini there is no ‘perspective’ camera…

… then I misunderstood the question …

You could set the background image to point at a cop with your text in… maybe.

@ o0fortner0o
with only a guess at what you're trying to do (please feel free to correct me)
I think what you'll need to do is make a camera with a special name ‘persp’ or something…then all the usual tricks can be used.


HTH

What we were trying to do is put labels (font SOP) on locators we are importing from Maya. We thought it would be a nice feature to have the locator's label always always face the screen regardless of what camera the user was viewing the scene through (even no camera). We don't want to end up with a complex solution for this, so well probably just orient the lable to the locator's Z axis.

ah…
SESI might have an answer for this…
you might do something like have the locator (it's called a null in Houdin btw mike) point to the mouse position…?
it would also be nice to have that object lable thingy in the display options be available on a per object basis…

In H9, you could also just create a custom attribute and have its text displayed in the viewport. eg.
1. Put down a default null object
2. Dive inside and append a AttribCreate SOP. Set the Name to say, “label”. Set Class to Primitive. Set Type to String. Set String to say “Test”. Set the display flag on the AttribCreate SOP.
3. Hit d with your mouse in the viewer to bring up the display options.
4. Under Custom, choose “Create Attribute Text”. This creates a new custom display option.
5. Right-click on “text1” and choose Edit. Set Attribute to “label”. Hit Accept.

That's pretty sweet, thanks , Edward.