having trouble with slections and tools not on the shelf

for instance if i wanted to do a delete(not a blast) i would select a couple of polygons then right-click on my last node and select delete….this would not delete anything…
so if i right-click and selected delete…then selected the polygons after…same result.
by manually entering the polygon numbers in the group parameter I could then delete the polygons

same thing with soft-transform…no matter what i have selected it seems to apply the soft transform to the entire object.

is this something i'm doing wrong….
i have no trouble with any tool on the shelf….am i selecting these things wrong?

Hi,

I recommend going through the Apprentice Blog [sidefx.com] & the videos available.

Cheers!
steven

For ops like delete, you have select the faces, press tab over the viewport and choose the delete ops. You cannot do that over the network editor which will just append a delete node without any reference to the face number. Hope this help.

ya thats it
i was doing it the network editor

i don't really understand the logic as why it would wor in the viewer and not the network editor…other then that it dosn't work

on second thought…..
selecting delete from the viewport will only give me the blast node…
whereas selecting delete from the network editor gives me the delete node..

try it

the blast node does work fine….but i specifically wanted the delete node for some of the options it has…and even if i select it in the viewport it only gives me the blast node??

Selecting Delete from the shelf gives a Blast sop (when working on geometry). This corresponds to hitting Tab in the viewer pane and typing delete and choosing the “Delete (Modify)” option - the “modify” is referring to the Modify tab on the shelf (which in the sop context produces a Blast sop). The other option you see next to it is the “Delete (Attribute)” which is the Delete sop you want and corresponds to the Delete in the Attribute sub-menu of the Tab menu. Confused?

If you want to have the delete sop placed in the shelf you can put it there manually. Perhaps there's an easier more correct way, but what worked for me was to drag and drop a delete sop from the network editor on to the shelf. When invoked, this will now place a delete sop into the network, but it wont wire it in, so:
- RMB on your new shelf tool icon and choose “Edit Tool”.
- in the Options tab change the name to something like DeleteSop so you can more easily differentiate it amongst the myriad of other deletes :twisted:
- in the Script tab clear-out everything and copy and paste a couple of lines from the original Delete shelf tool's script, namely:

import soptoolutils

soptoolutils.genericTool(kwargs, ‘delete’)

Notice here the “blast” gets changed to “delete” and it'll now give you what you want - the delete sop, which is also correctly wired into the network.

It'd be cool if the script could be edited in such away that when pressing say the Alt key while choosing the (original) Delete tool in the shelf it would give you a delete sop and not a blast sop - not sure if that functionality is there though… maybe it is?

I believe there's an outstanding RFE to clean up the Delete naming conventions. I agree, it's unnecessarily confusing and arguably Just Plain Wrong. IMHO there's a number of collisions between surface node/object level and Shelf tool naming. I always find myself plunking down an Edit SOP when I wanted a Delete SOP, quite frustrating. It discourages me from working outside the network editor.

Cheers,

J.C.

Newbie here, I read in the magic of houdini book that blast op is actually pretty redundant since delete can do wat blast do and more. So question is wat is the purpose of the blast op?

The blast sop was chosen because it is more efficient than the delete sop. If you want to change the blast sop then you can RMB on the node in the network and choose Change Operator. Select Delete and you now have the extra parameters that blast doesn't have.

If there was an option on the blast sop to delete non-selected I think i would use it far more. Many times that's the only reason to use the delete sop over the blast sop.

Houdini 9.1's blast does have that option, so you should be happy in the future!

Execellent! I hadn't noticed that yet… cheers