I've spoken to some of the people behind Sketchfab and they where very interested in the idea of having Houdini assets for sale on their site. Now with the Houdini Engine expanding to more and more applications, it seems like a good time to start planning some sort of integration.

A web based asset viewer and the Sketchfab Python api should be enough to get a ball rolling. Does it exist any open source code for the viewer system used with Orbolt? I presume it uses some web service to integrate the Orbolt asset view inside a Houdini panel… :?:

I just wanted to remind people coming from other packages, especially XSI that are used to ICE nodes (also used it for a while) that in some senses the “VEX Builder” networks in Houdini might “look” more complicated, and let's face it, they are because of their general approach to doing things.

This is actually a good thing though. You can use the same brain cells in many more contexts without remembering all the node names for example.

If you want to ease the transition you can turn on the option to display full names for input and output connections in your network views.
You'll get the parameter default variable name by hoovering over a connection arrow anyway, so you can use that in your expressions etc.



Then they will look like this:

Why not run the program through a debugger and send the output file?

How about switching top monitor <-> bottom monitor physically ? ;-)

I'm using an Intous4 on the 0.335 release, and have no trouble, but I'm on windows 8.1…

twod

Wolrajh
One thing worthy of mentionning is that I do not know the first thing about Xeons and what they could offer me. It's just tales of greatness I heard and read.

So any idea how to get the most bang for my buck ?Also I was told Houdini wasn't able to use neither hyperthreading nor a second CPU. What gives?

Xeons give you the ability to address more than 64GB of VRAM, and to have 2 or more physical CPUs (dual or quad socket). If you're not interested in either of those, an i7 5960 or 5930 will suit you just fine.

I'm not sure who told you Houdini doesn't support hyperthreading (SMT) or dual-sockets, but it does (in the sense that it simply “sees” more logical processers to run on). Maybe you're thinking of multiple GPUs? OpenCL-compute and graphics can only utilize a single GPU for each.

Even if it was so that Houdini itself didn't take advantage of the extra cpu, it could still be that the general system load would decrease in other areas, hence keep Houdini from crashing. But this is anyway logged by the os , so the source of the problem shouldn't be hard to trace.

Also running it via a debugger would yield info…

If you use Nvidia drivers, turn off scaling of monitors via gpu in the preferences, make sure that native scaling is used on both monitors. Not sure what they call the preference in amd gpu's catalyst control center…

If this is only on Windows, have you made sure to disable the “use Windows ink” option in the Wacom preference application? It has caused wierd shit in my view ports if enabled… Just 2¥ from the sideline.

Also, you can find many extra interesting options for how the Os interprets the Wacom via gpedit (group policy editor) that I've used to fix minor annoyance issues when using wacoms in general…

If I'd wanted to buy a Houdini Digital Asset for use with any supported plugin or application, I'd be to put it mildly, slightly put off by the general quality of the assets available and the “feel” of the site in general.

I believe asset sharing is a terrific idea and doing it commercially is no bad move either, but then you have to set some standards and implement some sort of lowest common denominator for quality of what is published.



Look at places like http://www.sketchfab.com [sketchfab.com] for example.
A whole different experience that actually makes you want to buy something.

Or go to Turbosquid http://www.turbosquid.com/index.cfm [turbosquid.com] and have a look around. :shock:

These are the places I'd go shopping. But there are no integration with Houdini Assets for these resources.

Now that the Indie versions of both Houdini and the Engine is going good, isn't it time to pay some attention to the asset exchange possibilities? The mentioned sites all integrate via plugins with the same applications that the Houdini Engine is planned for, like 3ds Max and Cinema4D in addition to Maya etc.

SreckoM
Not it will not lose users at all. Really I fail to see why that might happen.

And saying Mantra is old … that is plain ignorance. Your knowledge might not be good enough.

Are you a fool or just pretending to be one?

I've worked as a software developer using C++ for many years and lately also used alot of LLVM. This does not mean that thing's are “just around the corner”.

I love Mantra! Vex is also very powerful, and a lot like doing a strange form of C programming or something, so I'm a happy camper… C was my first language.

juanjgon
Indie is not going to support the Houdini Octane plugin, sorry.

-Juanjo

But standalone Renderman works as usual in Indy doesn't it?
Also there is like two new projects a month claiming to be the latest and greatest GPU based renderer.

Maxwell and Houdini has always worked for me.

I think SideFX will loose A LOT of customers if Indie Customers are forced into using only Mantra and not standalone or plugin 3rd party renderers…

(Mantra is a great renderer, but it's as old as most people in here's moms (not as old as my mom though)…
:roll:

For the time being CUDA (Nvidia Based) cards tend to work better across different platforms and programs, as it's more mature and has a lot of financial backing.

OpenCL (Intel/AMD/ATI) is like the Blender of GPU rendering, it works great when and where it works but might not be the best investment for a CGI artist these days.
But this is an evolution, so they will even out somehow over time.

Personally I've run both Blender, Maya, Houdini and XSI on both “Pro Series” Quadro (Nvidia) and FireGL (AMD), and to be quite honest the major price difference does not give you bang for the buck, so go for a modern GeForce GTX, possibly set up as an SLI pair and you should be good to go with the most demanding third party renderers that uses GPU's. Nvidia also has pretty decent OpenCL support and excellent OpenGL support, and it's the OpenGL that matters in Houdini combined with your good old Quad Xenon CPU… :-)

Enivob
I would like to see a Python support forum added to the list of forums. As the user base grows I would expect that more users, like myself, will be diving into python. Having the questions floating around in various forums, as they are now, does not help them get answered quickly if at all.

Just creating the slot on this board is not enough, however. For this to actually work SideFx would need to assign a moderator who actually has the knowledge to answer most python questions. Or at least offer guidance to solutions.

You could model this after the BlenderArtist [blenderartists.org] coding forums. Break it down for python, hscript and vex. Also having a forum for support on released HDAs might be nice too.

Absolutely agree.
The BlenderArtists site is a good model.
Personally I enjoy http://www.cgsociety.org/ [cgsociety.org] as well, but it may be a tad to flashy…

Instead of making the title “NOOB QUESTION”, maybe more people would be in a posistion to know if they could help based on the title alone.

That's kinda what titles are for!

So next time, try to explain your problem with few words in the title, not like “NOT WORKING” or “I AM AWESOME”.

:twisted:

Edited to be more user friendly. :wink:

I think this new policy is like biting your own tail.
You want more money, offcourse, who doesn't?
But in the end this will lead to increased piracy, sadly…

imensah
bah! humbug!!! :shock:

I didn't catch the humor in this…

Try getting any other $99 application to do what Apprentice HD already does…

But, then again, if my brain is in a slow-state, this comment probably was nothing but hilarious…

SEE MY POST WITH THE SAME TOPIC FOR A SOLUTION.

Chris

I think this has to do with the GCC version.
Leopard uses GCC 4.0, Houdini is built with this, but SnowLeopard uses GCC 4.2.1.

I have the same issue on one of my machines. Tried installing today.

Might also be a permission issue.

I'll keep you posted, if no one else knows what causes this.

I'm downloading the last daily-build now, so, I'll see if the issue persists in that build.

EDIT:

Well, the daily build gave me this:
http://www.mentalhub.com/snaps/houdiniError-1.png [mentalhub.com]

So, launching Houdini from the terminal as root, placed the license successfully:

applepie:~ Chris$ sudo /Applications/Houdini\ 10.0.453/Houdini.app/Contents/MacOS/houdini


So, if you change the permissions on this folder afterwords, with:

sudo chmod 0775 /Library/Preferences/sesi/


The application starts up just fine!

Chris

No worries…