Regarding modality: obviously Houdini is.
Softimage isn't, really. That, among many other things, make it such a joy to use.
No disrespect meant, but as a user, I couldn't care less what paradigm the developers chose, and for what reason. I just care for ‘complexity made simple’ and the least possible number of mouse clicks.
Isn't this one of the main topics around the SI-Users forum here?
EPS: cool, it works when compression is turned off! Thanks!
The docs (which I could have consulted first… ;p ) state that open curves are unsupported - that's not true anymore. I just managed to export open and closed curves from AI, CS6, compression off (the ‘create PDF compatible file’ checkbox has no effect).
Text, however, has still to be converted to paths.
Best regards,
Eugen
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SI Users » Nurbs curves
- Tupaia
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SI Users » Nurbs curves
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Thanks, guys!
Have to try things out and learn…
Anyway, in the meantime, I watched
https://vimeo.com/40771484 [vimeo.com]
and in fact there seem to be the most wanted curve tools in place, but the whole workflow feels convoluted and fiddly.
The price for flexibility? Nah, this should become simper, and I'm sure it can.
ad #4
There's
Display Options > Geometry > Shade open curves
… but I can't find something like ‘shade closed curves’.
ad #5
DWG is the native AutoCAD file format. It's binary, and I think you need a dev license from Autodesk to get access to the parsing library. That's something SideFX must be willing to do. F.e. 3ds max or Cinema4D natively support it.
EPS import is there, true, but it simply does not work, or is very unreliable. When you try something newer than ‘Illustrator 3’, Houdini locks up. That's poor.
Does it make sense to log a bug for this?
Data exchange is very important, and Houdini is somewhat exotic anyway. Hope this will improve.
Cheers,
Eugen
Have to try things out and learn…
Anyway, in the meantime, I watched
https://vimeo.com/40771484 [vimeo.com]
and in fact there seem to be the most wanted curve tools in place, but the whole workflow feels convoluted and fiddly.
The price for flexibility? Nah, this should become simper, and I'm sure it can.
ad #4
There's
Display Options > Geometry > Shade open curves
… but I can't find something like ‘shade closed curves’.
ad #5
DWG is the native AutoCAD file format. It's binary, and I think you need a dev license from Autodesk to get access to the parsing library. That's something SideFX must be willing to do. F.e. 3ds max or Cinema4D natively support it.
EPS import is there, true, but it simply does not work, or is very unreliable. When you try something newer than ‘Illustrator 3’, Houdini locks up. That's poor.
Does it make sense to log a bug for this?
Data exchange is very important, and Houdini is somewhat exotic anyway. Hope this will improve.
Cheers,
Eugen
SI Users » Nurbs curves
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Ad #2
Found out that you need to be in ‘Show Handle’ tool to be able to move or add points. Better than nothing.
The hotkey for ‘Show Handle’ is ‘Enter’ - I'd like to redefine that, but the Hotkey Manager seems not to list that command when I search for ‘Enter’… bug?
Something I notice:
It's very easy to get completely swamped in some ‘mode-hell’ when switching tools… horrible! Hard to explain, but suddenly I'm not able to edit that curve anymore with the Handle tool…
This whole viewport interaction business needs some serious cleanup… I believe there has been a lot of discussion already, and I can only confirm that.
Why do I need to switch to Camera tool to be able to switch view, for example?
Got sidetracked, sorry. The topic was Nurbs curves…
Thanks!
Eugen
Found out that you need to be in ‘Show Handle’ tool to be able to move or add points. Better than nothing.
The hotkey for ‘Show Handle’ is ‘Enter’ - I'd like to redefine that, but the Hotkey Manager seems not to list that command when I search for ‘Enter’… bug?
Something I notice:
It's very easy to get completely swamped in some ‘mode-hell’ when switching tools… horrible! Hard to explain, but suddenly I'm not able to edit that curve anymore with the Handle tool…
This whole viewport interaction business needs some serious cleanup… I believe there has been a lot of discussion already, and I can only confirm that.
Why do I need to switch to Camera tool to be able to switch view, for example?
Got sidetracked, sorry. The topic was Nurbs curves…
Thanks!
Eugen
SI Users » Nurbs curves
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Hi,
some noob modeling questions regarding Nurbs curves:
#1 What tools are available? Only what's to find under TAB>NURBS?
That's a mix of surface and curve tools, obviously. Not so well-arranged…
#2 What's the simplest way to edit the curve? Add, delete, cut,…
Some ‘move component tool’ anywhere? No, right?
#3 Are there selection filters for:
'subcurve'
'segment'
'isopoint'
'boundary'
Don't seem to be…
#4 Why do closed curves always display a polygon also? Can I turn this off?
#5 Can I import
AI/EPS
DWG - Not directly, I know. What's the best workaround?
Got 100 more questions, but that's enough for a start.
Thanks!
Best regards,
Eugen
some noob modeling questions regarding Nurbs curves:
#1 What tools are available? Only what's to find under TAB>NURBS?
That's a mix of surface and curve tools, obviously. Not so well-arranged…
#2 What's the simplest way to edit the curve? Add, delete, cut,…
Some ‘move component tool’ anywhere? No, right?
#3 Are there selection filters for:
'subcurve'
'segment'
'isopoint'
'boundary'
Don't seem to be…
#4 Why do closed curves always display a polygon also? Can I turn this off?
#5 Can I import
AI/EPS
DWG - Not directly, I know. What's the best workaround?
Got 100 more questions, but that's enough for a start.
Thanks!
Best regards,
Eugen
SI Users » project "Houdini, a great modeler"
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Constantin X
Hi Eugen,
From what i see so far we can replicate this behaviour in Houdini. I can add an ‘Edit’ node and manipulate points and polys inside it as much or as little as i want. Once i done some manipulation, i can add a new ‘edit’ node and so on.n
Yes, but the Edit node does not digest topology changes, like deleting a polygon, only point ‘relocation’.
The 3ds max Edit Poly modifier can do ‘it all’.
Best,
Eugen
SI Users » project "Houdini, a great modeler"
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jordibares
Destructive manipulation is fine sometimes.
+1
There needs to be a balance between proceduralism and direct manipulation.
No sense in stacking up 100s of modelling nodes for a character's skin, but for geometric stuff it may be exactly what you want.
Seems to be a somewhat hot topic as of now, and each application seems to have it's own approach and flavor. Opinions seem to diverge.
3ds max - if you are editing components, you can work inside one single ‘Edit Poly’ modifier, but you can add as many Edit Polys as you like, and also plenty of other modifiers that do specific parts of Edit Poly (weld etc.).
No problem in resorting modifiers, too (if feasible).
I'd say that's a quite good approach (besides some quirks of max in general).
Cinema4D has good modelling relations (= Generators, operators that need input from other objects), and a Deformer stack, but no stack for topology changing ops, at least not in the traditional sense.
Interestingly, generators like Mograph Extrude, show that procedural topo changes are technically possible.
Maxon seems to be aware of the shortcomings regarding proceduralism, and I believe more of the good stuff can be expected.
Modo, on the other hand, offers almost no proceduralism at all, except some modelling relations in Mesh Fusion. That's not so good in my book, but many people seem to be happy with it's way nonetheless.
Softimage, as we know, has it's own (peculiar) ways, too. Topo ops have to be kept under the modelling region of the stack, which can be frozen on it's own. Besides that, deformers can be collapsed into one operator, too, if needed.
It successfully avoids various quirks doing so, but in a way it is less flexible that way compared to Houdini or max, and there's the stupid (and often requested for fixing) restriction that the stack cannot be kept live while editing somewhere down below. Bad for symmetry modelling workflows, for example.
Don't know Blender well, but last time I looked topo-changing ops can be kept live and thus parametric, but the generated mesh is not directly editable until it is dropped/frozen.
Maya I don't have much clue, except it must be very flexible since the DAG can be manipulated directly, but I heard this is can become a quite tricky and fiddly thing to do… ; )
To sum it up, it seems that Houdini has a very, if not the most, powerful and robust approach, but some level of direct manipulation would be desirable.
Best regards,
Eugen
SI Users » project "Houdini, a great modeler"
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Simon__hayes
I was surprised that modelling in Houdini is also pretty destructive (i.e. the edit node has no history.) some sort of history in the node would be nice. Even if you have to add a n option to destroy all the operations in order to keep the scene light. In XSI you have the operator stack and when it gets too large and begins to slow the scene down you can freeze the stack essentially deleting the operators and leaving only the result while this is destructive it is less destructive that the current edit sop. what I would like to see is (and this has already been mentioned) is a single sop with a tree inside of it which contains all of the modelling features inside of it.
Simon
Why do you need another history inside the ‘edit’ node? If you want to keep more of your component edits ‘live’, just create another ‘edit’ node!
This is comparable to 3ds Max in a way - you can create as many ‘edit poly’ modifiers as you like.
In Softimage you can only collapse either the whole stack or the modelling part of the stack. In that regard it's less flexible actually.
Btw.: the ‘edit’ node stores only component translations, as it seems (correct me if I'm wrong).
Deleting components creates a ‘blast’ node.
In that regard, ‘edit’ is somewhat comparable to the ‘offset’ operator in Softimage, which is created automatically when you do
MCP > Edit > Operators > Collapse Operators
and that combines all selected deform operators into one (topo ops are ignored).
Best,
Eugen
SI Users » project "Houdini, a great modeler"
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Believe me, it's the simplest thing to use, and you will never want to miss it again.
screenshot: from the 3ds Max preferences
screenshot: from the 3ds Max preferences
SI Users » project "Houdini, a great modeler"
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Here's another one:
Softimage will tumble/orbit around the selected object/components automatically.
In Houdini, you have to press SPACE-Z, as I just learned, to set some kind of focus on another part of the viewport.
That feels pretty strange and awkward… or is it just me?
At least I would like to put it somewhere else… but I cannot query that shortcut in the Hotkeys Editor - the search by hotkey field only takes SPACE, without B.
Thanks!
Eugen
Softimage will tumble/orbit around the selected object/components automatically.
In Houdini, you have to press SPACE-Z, as I just learned, to set some kind of focus on another part of the viewport.
That feels pretty strange and awkward… or is it just me?
At least I would like to put it somewhere else… but I cannot query that shortcut in the Hotkeys Editor - the search by hotkey field only takes SPACE, without B.
Thanks!
Eugen
SI Users » project "Houdini, a great modeler"
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Hi,
allow me to chime in with a suggestion for a selection feature known from 3ds max or ACAD, which I sorely missed in Softimage all the years, and which seems yet to be missing in Houdini, also:
'selection with automatic window/crossing toggle'
There's 2 aspects to it, actually:
1) when drawing a selection frame, or a lasso, I'd like to choose if only objects/edges/polygons (sorry, primitives) that are completely INSIDE the selection ‘window’ get selected, or also those that are ‘crossed’ by it.
It's called ‘surround select’ in Softimage, but there it only works on edges or polygons.
In 3ds max, it worked for all types of objects or components (except vertices, because you cannot really ‘cross’ them too well).
2) to spare ticking any checkboxes or anything for swithing between those 2 modes, this can simply be automated by looking if the selection frame was drawn from left to right (->window) or right to left (->crossing).
Once you get used to it, it's a sincere workflow boost, because selecting is what you do all the time when modelling, and not only there!
In the Softimage beta, I asked if the ‘surround select’ feature could be improved to work with objects also (not just components), and if the auto-feature could be added, but it never happened.
So I'm asking here, again… ;}
The screenshot attached is the same that I used for the SI beta.
Hope it's clear what I mean…
Thanks for considering!
Best regards,
Eugen
allow me to chime in with a suggestion for a selection feature known from 3ds max or ACAD, which I sorely missed in Softimage all the years, and which seems yet to be missing in Houdini, also:
'selection with automatic window/crossing toggle'
There's 2 aspects to it, actually:
1) when drawing a selection frame, or a lasso, I'd like to choose if only objects/edges/polygons (sorry, primitives) that are completely INSIDE the selection ‘window’ get selected, or also those that are ‘crossed’ by it.
It's called ‘surround select’ in Softimage, but there it only works on edges or polygons.
In 3ds max, it worked for all types of objects or components (except vertices, because you cannot really ‘cross’ them too well).
2) to spare ticking any checkboxes or anything for swithing between those 2 modes, this can simply be automated by looking if the selection frame was drawn from left to right (->window) or right to left (->crossing).
Once you get used to it, it's a sincere workflow boost, because selecting is what you do all the time when modelling, and not only there!
In the Softimage beta, I asked if the ‘surround select’ feature could be improved to work with objects also (not just components), and if the auto-feature could be added, but it never happened.
So I'm asking here, again… ;}
The screenshot attached is the same that I used for the SI beta.
Hope it's clear what I mean…
Thanks for considering!
Best regards,
Eugen
SI Users » User Interface thoughts
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Hi!
Thanks for the directions, I'm already reading…
@Gyroscope:
Yes, that's what I was looking for!
Best,
Eugen
Thanks for the directions, I'm already reading…
@Gyroscope:
Yes, that's what I was looking for!
Best,
Eugen
SI Users » User Interface thoughts
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Greetings, honorable ladies and gentlemen of the Houdini order!
My first post here, after playing around with Houdini for a few hours altogether.
I'm somewhat ‘spoiled’ from the Softimage UI, I thus have a few questions and suggestions… apologies in advance for any duplicates, but there's just too much to read in this subforum already…
- Can I zoom about the mouse cursor in a 3D viewport, like I can in a panel?
- Can I select ‘primitives’ (=components) across multiple selected objects, and edit them together? I have to apply a ‘Merge’ and an ‘Edit’ node, right?
- Softimage has this ‘multi-PPG’ feature, meaning you can inspect multiple operators of the same kind in one and the same property page. Is something similar possible in H.? Like setting the divisions of multiple cubes at once, etc.
- The ‘tree view’ seems to be the equivalent to the ‘Explorer’ in SI, but only one object can be selected at a time, and it doesn't seem to have any drag&drop capabilities. Am I missing something?
- It's strange that primitives (points, edges, polys) get converted automatically when changing the selection mode.
Would be cool if each primitive selection was remembered, and only converted when asked to.
- What's the trick with the transform ‘gizmo’&tripod to use a plane instead of a single axis? XY, XZ, YZ.
There's a ‘show translate plane’ menu in the RMB context menu, but that's awkward to do something as simple and important.
In Soft, a little yellow rectangle appears between the axes of the tripod, depending on where you hover with your mouse, so you can move in a plane.
- Obviously contextual menus exist. Is it possible to configure them freely? (like in C4D, for example)
- I chose ‘select front facing only’ in the ‘geometry select mode’ button's RMB menu, but still backfacing points get selected. What am I doing wrong?
- Is there something like a ‘working pivot’/'temporary transform pivot'?
- Snapping… i move something (points, objects), turn on V for point snap, and it won't snap… why not?
In Soft, snapping in combination with the working pivot works nothing but perfect… they really got this right.
- Supra/sticky keys… very nice to have!
- The coord system menu (object, world, view, parent) is a submenu - inconvenient, is it not. It's importance would ask for it being top-level.
- Is it possible to swap the zoom tool direction? Down = in, up = out. (I know, this is a bit picky… in Soft, you can configure the speed also, to a negative value as well, which then flips the direction)
- Softimage has this brilliant option to keep the axis tripod inside the viewport, even if the selection lies outside of the VP. Spares some VP navigation. Very handy!
- Soft selection radius is not color-coded in the VP, as it seems, and thus it is hard to say which primitives will be affected during transformation.
Ok, enough for one post… thanks for reading!
Ah yes… Houdini is obviously a brilliant application, and I'm literally just scratching the surface here…
Best regards,
Eugen
My first post here, after playing around with Houdini for a few hours altogether.
I'm somewhat ‘spoiled’ from the Softimage UI, I thus have a few questions and suggestions… apologies in advance for any duplicates, but there's just too much to read in this subforum already…
- Can I zoom about the mouse cursor in a 3D viewport, like I can in a panel?
- Can I select ‘primitives’ (=components) across multiple selected objects, and edit them together? I have to apply a ‘Merge’ and an ‘Edit’ node, right?
- Softimage has this ‘multi-PPG’ feature, meaning you can inspect multiple operators of the same kind in one and the same property page. Is something similar possible in H.? Like setting the divisions of multiple cubes at once, etc.
- The ‘tree view’ seems to be the equivalent to the ‘Explorer’ in SI, but only one object can be selected at a time, and it doesn't seem to have any drag&drop capabilities. Am I missing something?
- It's strange that primitives (points, edges, polys) get converted automatically when changing the selection mode.
Would be cool if each primitive selection was remembered, and only converted when asked to.
- What's the trick with the transform ‘gizmo’&tripod to use a plane instead of a single axis? XY, XZ, YZ.
There's a ‘show translate plane’ menu in the RMB context menu, but that's awkward to do something as simple and important.
In Soft, a little yellow rectangle appears between the axes of the tripod, depending on where you hover with your mouse, so you can move in a plane.
- Obviously contextual menus exist. Is it possible to configure them freely? (like in C4D, for example)
- I chose ‘select front facing only’ in the ‘geometry select mode’ button's RMB menu, but still backfacing points get selected. What am I doing wrong?
- Is there something like a ‘working pivot’/'temporary transform pivot'?
- Snapping… i move something (points, objects), turn on V for point snap, and it won't snap… why not?
In Soft, snapping in combination with the working pivot works nothing but perfect… they really got this right.
- Supra/sticky keys… very nice to have!
- The coord system menu (object, world, view, parent) is a submenu - inconvenient, is it not. It's importance would ask for it being top-level.
- Is it possible to swap the zoom tool direction? Down = in, up = out. (I know, this is a bit picky… in Soft, you can configure the speed also, to a negative value as well, which then flips the direction)
- Softimage has this brilliant option to keep the axis tripod inside the viewport, even if the selection lies outside of the VP. Spares some VP navigation. Very handy!
- Soft selection radius is not color-coded in the VP, as it seems, and thus it is hard to say which primitives will be affected during transformation.
Ok, enough for one post… thanks for reading!
Ah yes… Houdini is obviously a brilliant application, and I'm literally just scratching the surface here…
Best regards,
Eugen
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