Hi, I already posted this over at odforce and got responses but am just throwing it up as a suggestion over here so that maybe a tech guy will notice it.

thanks,
dave

the original post was about being able to do multiple extrudes in a polyextrude sop.. much like doing multiple edits in the edit sop. you may view it here:

http://odforce.net/forum/index.php?act=ST&f=19&t=1392&s=b7529bdc632cc23dff7c156308480028 [odforce.net]

i agree! there could be two options. one for proceduralism and one for destructive extruding.

Hello deecue,

Does this request only affect PolyExtrude? What about PolySplit or PolyBevel? Those are also common operations. Perhaps we would instead like an automatic way to group similar operations in a chain and collapse them into a subnet automatically? The other alternatives are modeling without a history (sometimes called hard-locking the nodes).

Thanks for the feedback,
George.

Hi George,

Does this request only affect PolyExtrude? What about PolySplit or PolyBevel?

Yes, I could see the same kind of addition to others like you have suggested. I was more considering the polyextrude more so because some people model from a box and start pushing and pulling until they get a rough model. And soon enough you have 20 of them in a row. But I could definately see people liking the destructive option under others as well. Just something that allows Houdini to have the option of keeping it's procedural intentions while giving the option to the user to keep it's procedures to a minimum at times.

Perhaps we would instead like an automatic way to group similar operations in a chain and collapse them into a subnet automatically?

I guess that would be kinda nice. Maybe somewhere in the prefs that says if of same ops in row, collapse to subnet and the user could adjust the . But making a subnet is so fast as it is that I wonder if it would be really that much better by having the automatic option. It might even confuse people.

The other alternatives are modeling without a history (sometimes called hard-locking the nodes).

Hmm.. Never dealt with something like that. Sounds nice at one end and sounds terribly scary at the other. Almost like playing with fire there. How would it appear in the network? Just empty space?

Thanks for the consideration,

Dave

But making a subnet is so fast as it is that I wonder if it would be really that much better by having the automatic option. It might even confuse people.

That's a good point. So if the subnet doesn't already satisfy what you want, I guess making it automatic, wouldn't satisfy it any more It is however, the only way I currently see to make the solution generic, and at once satisfying the ability to keep the network clean and keeping the proceduralism of the whole chain. If you have other suggestions, I'd love to hear them. The way the “Edit SOP” does it, I'm afraid is not feasible for operations that generate data (much as someone at odforce had already commented). For SOPs that generate data, we may as well hard lock them and delete history (see below).

Hmm.. Never dealt with something like that. Sounds nice at one end and sounds terribly scary at the other. Almost like playing with fire there. How would it appear in the network? Just empty space?

If you right-click on geometry in the viewport, you should see an entry to “Delete History”. Choosing that will hardlock the output SOP and delete all the SOPs above it. I was suggesting an automatic way of doing that after each operation. You are very right though – it scares me too

Take care,
George.

I'm afraid is not feasible for operations that generate data

Yea, that makes sense..I think the sub-net way will prove to work well in the end..

Choosing that will hardlock the output SOP and delete all the SOPs above it. I was suggesting an automatic way of doing that after each operation.

Yea, i just tried that and don't think i'll ever touch it again. And think it would be very bad to have anything automatically do it. Thanks for the knowledge though. :wink:

The only other thing i thought of was to be able to template a node in your sop space and work on a node in your sub-net. i.e. Say i have modeled all my stuff with a bunch of PolyExtrudes. After that I Clip it, Copy it, Transform it, Stitch it, then finally Subdivide on the end of it. ok.. a bunch of operations.. so i sub-net all my PolyExtrudes and keep working. Now i want to go back to my polyextrude net and adjust some of the extrudes as well as add some. Can i view the final subdivide in sop space while making and adjusting all of these polyextrudes in my subnet space?

Thanks,
Dave

It would be really cool if you had a Fuse Face and Fuse Edge instead of just Fuse points. The Fuse Face would blast the selected faces and fuse the points in the closest area to those points. Faces with 4 points face to 4 points face would attach point for point. Faces with 5 to 4 etc etc would choose one point that was the closest to one of the fused points. 1 to 1, 1 to, 1 to 1, 1 to 2. This would have saved me days. Here is an example in my recent model where I modeled out a Tooth_Hook Object that had a bottom 4 point face that I attached to the 4 point face knobs. I blasted the faces then I positioned them and the I had to fuse the object. Proximately 15 minutes per Tooth_Hook. That became very tedious. If there was a fuse face tool that I could just select one face and then choose for the other object to move to the source object to attach to. Then it would have only taken me seconds to do the operations. I think there should be an option to move object just the face itself or move both to the mid point space between the two objects.




Cheers,
Nate Nesler

I'm curious.

Have there been reports of system slowdowns as a result of accumulating many sops?

I realize that some ops can wind up with long cook times, but I've not had that problem when polymodeling creatures using the basic poly ops.

I know that this can be a problem in other apps.

Nate,

Did you try to use the Align SOP? First sort your primitives (not points) using a sort sop to make sure that the bottom primitive of your tooth hook is the first one. Now you can use the Align SOP to align all of your tooth hook primitives to the one selected on your main model. Turn off Individual Alignment and Rotate. That will probably do what you want. Now you can easily blast away the snapped primitives (pick them via primitive normals in wireframe view) and fuse the points.

With a bit more thought, you can probably turn this network into a digital asset.

No I have not tried that but I defantly will now. Thank you so much edward you probably saved me days of work. I still have to add horns to the knuckles an to the head and the brow region. That will be very useful.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler :shock:

P.S. Many Thanks

Hi Nate,

Another tool that came to mind when reading your post was EdgeCollapse. I know it won't solve the problem you are describing – but it may help in other situations. Just thought I'd mention it in case you haven't run across it.

Cool model by the way.

Take care,
George.

Views on Polly-extrude

I am fairly new to Houdini and have come from max so I am full of my expectations from Max’s modeller. The way this issue is dealt with in max you can ad as many “edit mesh” modifiers to the model as you want steps but they are dependant on the face and vertex numbers not changing beneath them. This doesn’t make for a very procedural model but all of the edits and polly creation happen in one spot… and that is the strength of destructive modelling.

In the land of Houdini if you have a long sop chain of edits, extrudes, splits and bevels, that are more than say 12 sop's long, based on numbered vertex or face selections. You can edit operations and move points up the chain but any change to the faces or vertex count beneath is going to turn the end resalt into ciaos.

This is not to say an extrude, split or bevel, sop with multiple operations stored inside one sop is an idea that would fail it would just be subject to the same issues of selections by name or number needing to remain true before and after the face numbers change.

One future that could be a benefit would be a default selection of “previous_extrude_primitives” being made, this would be the selection that you would get if you just right clicked and continued extruding except that it would be a named selection and not dependant on the vertex numbers changing. Now there is an option to group the end and side faces but these need to be unequally named. If the “previous_extrude_primitives” was redefined by the previous extrude each time it would be able to be more flexible and tolerant of face number changes.

Just my 2c hmmm no make it 20c.

Thanks George,

Its still a WIP! There is one feature that would be very cool to have that I like in Lightwave and that is the spin quads feature unless you guys already have that feature in houdini and I just don't know about it. I saw the Poly Splines, PolyPatch, and PolyLoft. Which is very cool. Can you attach spline curves and have multiple end points in Houdini like you can in Lightwave or is it like Maya where you can only have one determining end point. I don't know if anyone has seen the Spline God's presentation on On Spline Modeling Organic Surfaces as SubD Surfaces, but its very cool. He could basically get a really good head model in about 30 minutes which takes days in the box method and takes longer to make fixes and alterations. However, in the Spline Method of SubD modeling the alterations, blends, rigs, were much quicker and he basically did some of it right in front of us. You could see that it was much faster. I can tell you the DVD if anyone wants to know because I have a link to where you can buy it somewhere. He modeled Golem in Lord of the Rings and he has worked on some other stuff also. Anyhow I think you can do close to the same method in Houdini. The process should work as far as I know. Oh yeah I kind of wish there was a Convert VOP that coverted uv cordinates to pos. Does anyone know how??? A layered Shader would be cool. They defantly have a layered Texture Shader but it would be cool to have a layered shader too.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

Hey Nate, don't know specifically about what you are talking about but it sounds just like nurbs patch modeling which is usually the way many people approach modeling (besides the gaming industry)…

you might already know what this is and is not what you are going after, but here is a link for a maya tutorial on it.

http://avl.etsu.edu/intranet/resources/CharacterAnimSite/patch.htm [avl.etsu.edu]

i would love to see a tutorial on patch modeling in houdini. i've done a little through tests and such, but would like to see what others may be coming up with and their methods…

hth,
dave

Hey,

Well its SubD Patch Modeling which is different. Its kind of like that but your creating spline cages and then creating the poly surfaces between them the way you would do nurbs in say maya. Problem with maya is that you have to have 1 start point and one end point for every curve. So that means you can't create a solid spline cage without constantly worrying about whether or not those splines are going to be pulled part when you are manipulating them. Then the flow of the splines is very different from the tutorial that you showed. Think boundry surfaces all the way. Of course you can do SubD surfaces in Maya this way but you have to worry about being in polyproxy mode because shading in SubD mode is very problematic. Then there is the whole thing about maya shading your SubD as a cube part of the time in polyproxy mode. There are other problems too. The problem with doing nurbs patch modeling is that it adds alot of Isoparms in the surface that you do not need also alot of times it requires stiching which tends to blow apart when you animate and then there is the whole thing about the lighting when the two curves between the surfaces are not aligned the perfect 180 degrees with each other then you get light breaking on the surfaces between the seams. This is not something you would have to worry about in Houdini with the fuse. Just fuse the points and its now one solid surface. The thing about the spin quads in Lightwave is that you can quickly change the flow of the splines defining your organic character by just spinning them. Its really very cool. In other packages you have to go in and move the CVs to change the flow etc etc etc.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

P.S. Yeah I have done NURBS patch modeling too.

You mentioned NURBS Tutorials in Houdini have you seen this one ?

http://www.sidefx.com/community/learn/modeling/legacy/gps_watch4.pdf [sidefx.com]

The NURBS tools in houdini are pretty cool I created some of the bones in my character with NURBS. I like the Pasted NURBS especially but I don't know if you can layer them in Houdini 6.1 I know in 6.0 the documentation said that they were planning in the future to add the ability to layer them. I really wish they had an Insert Isoparam like maya because I don't feel like I have much control over the refine sop. Thats just my two cents.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

P.S. Thanks for all the comments and help you guys have given me. I am very greatful.

actually, i missed that one.. thanks nate..

I really wish they had an Insert Isoparam like maya because I don't feel like I have much control over the refine sop.

I agree with that all the way. I like the refine sop and use it frequently. But the ability to add or delete an isoparm would be nice.