schmutza
Yeah, would be nice to know if it's on track (well, clearly not for the March part of the estimate), though would be great to hear an update with revised estimates.

Thank you all for your kind patience with the upcoming V2 plugin. We know you have been waiting for it eagerly for quite some time.

It has been a longer road than anticipated: some urgent Houdini priorities in early 2019, unexpected UE4 issues we had to work around, other matters inherent to the software process, plus the time it took to staff up with great people (our UE4 team has doubled since last year). These reasons have contributed to the stretched timeline, but I’m happy to say that we are finally only a couple of weeks away from Alpha.

Our framework and feature goals for the initial release of V2 are largely in place, with a few expected to trickle in throughout Alpha. As you likely know, this has been a complete rewrite, driven by your requests. Hopefully you will recognize many of your RFEs in this initial V2 release, with many to follow. R&D are 100% focused on the project and responding fast to the feedback coming from internal testing. Your turn is coming shortly.

As to milestones, our aim is to stay reasonably in sync with our next Houdini release: Beta in early Q3 and Release in Q4. The only reason I state the targets this broadly is that we need to do more testing before we can reliably assess the stability and feature readiness of the software. As you can imagine, it’s been a lot of heads down in R&D until now, but in the next few weeks the landing strip will become much more clear.

Cristin B
Head of R&D

elgordostudio
just want to state if karma is excluded from indie this user will be very disappointed, perhaps an indie karma license if they don't want to include directly into indie? I won't be able to use if only available to fx user.

Karma will be available to everyone: commercial, indie and apprentice. This was always the case; never intended or stated or implied otherwise.

Cristin Barghiel
Head of R&D
SideFX

garyo

skydave
…
Check out https://github.com/dkoerner/houio/tree/master/scene_exporter [github.com]. This python script exports the current scene in houdini to a json description file…

Wow, I didn't expect that Houdini would have no way to export a full scene! I have written a full glTF exporter before, but I'm hoping not to have to do it for Houdini; it's a good chunk of work. And when/if SideFX does implement glTF export that work would be wasted.

At this point I've tried fbx and Alembic, and neither one exports even basic principledshader or textures. Are there other 3rd party exporters?
How do people use Houdini to develop assets for games? Just use it for geometry (exporting obj) and recreate all materials and textures in some other software?

Maybe my comment earlier was a little too subtle. If you can wait a bit, you won’t have to write it for Houdini.

Cristin
R&D SideFX

garyo
I'm not sure that scene file format is implemented properly/completely. But three.js can load glTF (https://threejs.org/docs/#examples/loaders/GLTFLoader). Can Houdini export glTF? Seems like no, which is too bad. Three.js also supports COLLADA; can Houdini export COLLADA (dae)?

Your request for GLTF support has been noted.

See also this thread here: https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/53079/ [www.sidefx.com]

Cristin

WaterBirdx2
Hi. A staff member mentioned back in July that a face rigger was in the works to go with the auto rigger that was introduced with Houdini 16. Should users like me expect to see the feature be released later this year? If so, then will the auto rigger's capabilities be expanded as well to allow users to create complex animal rigs?

cb
We will be looking into providing facial rigs in the future, yes.

Cristin

My quote says that we're looking at providing a facial rig in the future, not that one is in the works

Ideally, one would be in the works already – there's obvious demand for it and we intended to add one from the very start. Unfortunately, polishing the existing auto-rigs has kept us too busy to seriously tackle facial rigging. Between adding quadruped support to the auto-rigging system and pushing hard on the muscle and flesh project, I doubt that we will have the cycles to release an official facial rig by the end of this year. We have started researching various approaches to it, and the ideal solution is not as straightforward as one might hope. The most we can hope for at this point is to share with you some facial rigging examples by year-end, then see in what direction to take them in 2018.

Cristin

WaterBirdx2
I have been giving it a good deal of thought lately, and I have come to the conclusion that recreating my characters inside of Houdini might not be a bad move to make after all. The Auto Rig system that Houdini has included with the latest system updates doesn't appear to be too dissimilar to what I created inside of Maya. The main difference is that the Auto Rig system doesn't appear to provide facial rig controls. Would the system developers consider incorporating such a function the next time that area of Houdini gets updated?

We will be looking into providing facial rigs in the future, yes.

Cristin

NNois
Seriously, softimage selection and snapping was just perfect. This becomes obvious only after a day or two with it (mentored by a good old game modeler).
Houdini have some bribes of it but only a little

Thank you, gentlemen. RFE noted and forum link saved

Cristin

julca
Hi, I'm 100% agree about this not convinced default behavior and hopefully yes, “secure selection” is a good mode.
But we need more !
For example, with “secure selection” mode, It would be really really accommodating and more productive to allow us to translate an object without need to select the manipulator.
If I need to place a far away selected object(s) to a specific place (with a simple snap clic on another object for example) (cf. “manipulate.jpg”).

All the best

Thank you for that RFE.

In the meantime, it might help to use the middle mouse button to translate the selected geometry without having to place the cursor on the selection or on the transform handle. This functionality is already in Houdini 16.

Cristin

NNois
Hi, how can I disable the “click translate” mode on Objs, it's kind of anoying when you juste want to select something in the viewport and you end up with a slightly translated obj.

Cheers

Look up “secure selection” in the Houdini docs, and turn it on by default.

The introduction of transient keys for selection in an upcoming release will hopefully eliminate this problem altogether.

Cristin

friedasparagus
Hello all,

Has anyone come across a problem with animating objects within an HDA (in my case a character rig), where editing existing keyframes or deleting them does not propagate to the objects transforms? i.e. deleting a set of keys removes all the channel values correctly, but the objects still move as per those keys.

Just to clarify, the keyframes are visible not in the animator editor nor the parameter editor, but the objects are still moving. Have I missed something silly with cached transforms or some such thing.

Any help really appreciated,

Cheers,
Henry

Hi Henry,

This sounds like a bug that was fixed last week. Please grab a fresh build and give it a try.

Cristin

atlemgw
I think it could have been cool too. I actually tried with the carton shader and an outline shader, but it didn't looked good. I miss the old carton shader way back in the days.

Could you please tell us how the cartoon shader failed to meet your expectations? Maybe post a picture or two (and a hip file) to exemplify.

Thanks,

Cristin

twod
The Lag CHOP also has a parameter for overshoot as well.

And, for simple stuff, RMB on any node parameter, go to the MotionFX entry and choose Lag. That will create the CHOP override for you.

I believe there's also a Lag tool on the Constraints shelf.

Cristin

gmanyyz
Anyone from SideFX????

Just looking for some direction on what would be a good starting point.

Would like to keep trying to learn but it definitely has a steep learning curve.

Thanks

As a starting point, have you taken a look at the Billowy Smoke tool on the PyroFX shelf?

Try it, then post your hip file here if you get stuck.

Cristin

rayfoundry

cb
This is something we will be addressing very soon – not as a quick bug fix: as a game changer.

Cristin

Sounds great. Is this already launched as part of H16 or something to come?

Something to come.

Cristin

aRtye
My search ninja skills are crappo and couldn't find the info. Is there a surface tension attribute for Flip?

Thx!

H16 Docs: http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/nodes/dop/flipsolver [www.sidefx.com]

H16 Masterclass: https://vimeo.com/209763376 [vimeo.com]

Cristin

BabaJ
You haven't been the only one. I was confused when I first started looking around on those pages; thinking the same thing

…Kinda misguiding to have the latest builds “under” an older one…

We will do something about the Downloads page to clarify which builds are which.

Sorry for the confusion we have caused.

Cristin

FarrokhSarram
any tutorial on H16 Muscle system ???

Coming very soon. Sorry to keep you waiting.

Cristin

matthias_k
Example where the new boolean results in wrong cuts.

Several boolean bugs have been fixed since 16.0.504.20. Please try the latest cut of Houdini 16 and let us know if the problem is still there.(I am away from my computer right now, and cannot check.)

Cristin

Best to attach a hip file so we can take a good look at your approach.

In terms of tutorials for suction fluids, here are two links:

https://vimeo.com/204584694 [vimeo.com]

https://vimeo.com/209763376 [vimeo.com]

Very nice work!

When you have a chance, would you mind posting a hip file that shows how Houdini 16 fails your expectations with respect to modelling with Boolean+Bevel? We might be able to learn from it for future R&D.

Thanks,

Cristin