When I activate " display points" and I'm at Object level, Houdini shows me all the points in the scene, no matter what I have selected, and the viewport turns into a blue sea with a lot of high rez objects.

When I then enter a Geo node to edit an object at SOP level, still all the points are visible when "Show All Objects" is active or I'm editing points.

When I then toggle "Display Points" suddenly only the points of the object I'm editing are visible. But I can't seem to find a way to hide the points of background object when "Show All Objects" is active and I'm editing points.

Is there a way to at least automate hiding points when Display Points is active, so one doesn't have to toggle manually all the time ?

And maybe there's even a way to only show the points of the currently selected Geo at Object level or SOP level when editing points ? But I suspect that would be bit too advanced for the Houdini viewport ;-)

I've been searching, but no luck so far, anyone ?

H 20.0.751

Some great and smart suggestions in this thread, let’s hope SideFX is listening.

Here’s some more that come to my tiny mind.

- Would be nice to get a release where in general the focus lies on workflow to improve the life of current users, instead of just adding flashy new half baked features to create a buzz and media attention to lure in new customers.

- Would be a huge improvement if multi editing several objects at SOP level were finally possible.

- Out of the box drag & drop everywhere, currently that’s only possible with OD Tools.

- Undockable menu’s would speed up the workflow so much.

- Useable sliders that automatically adjust the range when entering a large or tiny number.

- Decent isolines for Subd’s

- Stable reliable viewports; to be honest, the Houdini GUI and viewport are the worst of all the 3d apps I’ve used, the GUI sometimes feels like a trip back to the Amiga Workbench from the 90’s. The viewport shading is horrible, one has to keep resetting because it breaks , sometimes a SOP does not work in a particular viewport, but works fine in another etc. And the fact one still has to first select a viewport before changing shading style with the radial menu is just ridiculous.

- As mentioned by others before; a better way to handle geometry edits and groups so stuff doesn’t break all the time downstream. It was possible with clusters and weight maps in Softimage 20 years ago, so why not in Houdini ? That would make the procedural workflow in Houdini way more usable .

- Improve guide grooming to an actual procedural workflow that doesn’t break as soon as one adjusts geo upstream. It’s currently even less flexible than most non-procedural apps.

- A simple way to isolate geo without adding a visibility SOP which is only distracting and way less productive, just to be "procedural". Especially when modeling this is only annoying and adds a lot of useless nodes.


- And maybe an idea implement an AI engine to replace scripting and the help, I’m sure it will happen sometime, so why not get onboard asap.

I've been trying to get the "relax" brush to work on some Hair Guides, but no luck so far.

The Brush disappears no matter what size I set it to, and nada happens when I try to "relax" the guides.

Same with the "orient" brush, I tried it on some guides with no effect. When I then tried it on some Hair Houdini crashed.

Is this another bug, or is there some secret trick to make it work ?

Thanks.

H 20.0.751

when I load your scene I get an error and the scene seems broken.

But if I were you I'd simply redo the setup with " Particle Fluids > Flip Fluid From Object" and selecting a polygon sphere with a "mountain" SOP already added.

And then add the Pigs head and make it a surface collider ( Collisions > Surface Collider )

I could be mistaken, but I suspect you have to plug the "mountain" SOP in before the "pointsfromvolume".

edward
Please log a bug to submit your hip files into support. Sometimes, it's very particular to some geometry that might be the cause. Don't assume that it's easily reproducible by someone else.

Just took another look at capture painting in 20.5.332 and it's so broken, I wouldn't know where to start to be honest. I get the feeling this was not even properly tested before release, SideFX just uses us as beta testers.

Last week I needed to get some extremely basic rigging done in kinefx, just to pose a simple character. And I struggled for 2 days to get something workable in Houdini. In the end I did it in less then an hour in XSI which has been dead for quite a while now, but still more reliable then Houdini in this department it seems.

Just tried Weightpainting my joints in 20.5.332 because all I get is Python errors and crashes in 20.0.751.

But still a lot of error popups when trying to use jointcapturepaint, and the weight painting from 20.5.278 is completely broken on loading the scene in 20.5.332.

I suspect I'm giving up on 2.5 for a while.

It's no gold, its swiss cheese.

Liesbeth_Levick
Hi toonafish,

Let me know if that helps.

Ah, great thanks.

Just installed 20.5.332 and hiding guides seems to work now.

Hey, thanks for checking.

The wrong skin & skinvdb connections is what Houdini created, but connecting them properly didn't make a difference either.

I thought I'd check if it's the same in 20.5, but one still can't select guides in the viewport in 20.5.323. Which is a bug I reported when 20.5.278 was released, but still is not fixed it seems.

Going from bad to worse...

goose7
is there a screenshot or hip file?

It's very basic, but here's some screenshots of what I'm trying to do.

If I select the visibility SOP, the guides ( but the same happens with hair ) are hidden, but as soon as I want to groom, poof! all is visible again.

I want to speed up the grooming of some dense hair, so it would be great if I could get this working.

Does anyone know if there is a way to hide hair geo in the "hairgen" SOP while grooming ?

When I select some hairs in the viewport, there's this nice "visibility" dropdown menu at the top of the screen, but when I try to use it while grooming, it doesn't work.

At first it hides the hair alright, but doesn't work while grooming. Doesn't make a difference if I plug the "visibility" SOP before or after the Groom, all the hairs become visible again when I start grooming.

Same for Hair Guides btw....

Another bug, am I doing something wrong, or is this feature just for show ?

H 20.5.751

edward
I'm not sure but it's best to log a bug.

Thanks, I’ll probably do that.

edward
I can't reproduce either. Which Windows version? Also, what's in the crashlog that gets generated?

Hey, thanks for checking.

Sent the crash log to support, but that didn’t help.

But this is what it says :

"Crash report from 8c422c91; Houdini FX Version 20.0.724
Uptime 712 seconds
Sat Jul 20 10:18:50 2024
Caught signal 11

Traceback from 19172 ThreadId=0x000069e8
CURRENT THREAD 27112
+0x1beaae78 D:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini20.0.724\bin\libGA.dll
+0x1bb4ecc9 D:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini20.0.724\bin\libGA.dll
+0x1acc1c1f D:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini20.0.724\bin\libGEO.dll
+0x1acc38e0 D:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini20.0.724\bin\libGEO.dll
+0x0690e24d D:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini20.0.724\bin\libMCS.dll
+0x1c2e7288 D:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini20.0.724\bin\libSS.dll
+0x1c49e56a D:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini20.0.724\bin\libUI.dll
+0x1c49bc2f D:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini20.0.724\bin\libUI.dll
+0x0690e96e D:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini20.0.724\bin\libMCS.dll
+0x1c49e56a D:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini20.0.724\bin\libUI.dll
+0x1c49ba89 D:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini20.0.724\bin\libUI.dll
+0x1c49c0f8 D:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini20.0.724\bin\libUI.dll
+0x05ddaa84 D:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini20.0.724\bin\libSI.dll
+0x05ddb5fc D:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini20.0.724\bin\libSI.dll
+0x1400015a2 D:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini20.0.724\bin\houdini.exe
+0x140001a32 D:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini20.0.724\bin\houdini.exe
+0x7fffd4b77374 C:\WINDOWS\System32\KERNEL32.DLL
+0x7fffd623cc91 C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll"

Well, to answer my own question.

After quitting Houdini and reloading the scene, the response time for editing Geo with everything hidden is back to normal again.

Houdini, a bug around every corner....

Its a little hard to explain, but how can one speed up response time while modeling in a scene when an object is connected to several SOPs in a scene.

I have a rig with separate objects like a head and a body merged which them are rigged in another Geo node, and are then also used as a base for some hair grooming.

But when I hide all objects, and then edit only the head geo, so nothing else is visible, only the geometry I'm editing, the response time is extremely slow because Houdini seems to cook all the hidden nodes after every single edit.

Which takes about 10 seconds after each edit.

Is there a way to prevent this, because I assumed that's what the advantage of "hide other objects" would be.

Is there a way to disable the scientific notation in Houdini ?

I know how it works, but find "5e 05" hard to read, I'd prefer "0.00005". Which doesn't take up much space, so I wonder why convert such a number at all ?

Does anyone know why the file size of my Houdini scene is huge when after importing an FBX file ?

I unlocked all the "file" SOPs, and the original FBX is not even 7MB, but my Houdini scene is about 50MB's. Even when all the geo is stored externally.

Thanks.

The longer I use Houdini, the more I realize how brilliant Softimage was.

I still use it for modeling, and it’s a relief to simply focus on the task at hand, instead of being in a wrestling match while trying to get a job done.

What happened to those SI developers, did any them end up at Sidefx ?

I noticed that when I constrain some lattice deformed Geo with the Rivet SOP to animated geometry, the lattice goes haywire and completely screws up the lattice deformation.

One would expect the Rivet not to affect the lattice deformation, but there seems to be a surprise around every corner in Houdini.

The only way I figured to prevent this is to merge the lattice deformed Geo into yet another Geo node, and parent that to the Rivet.

But I figured there must be a better way, or maybe this is another bug ?

Houdini 20.0.751

When I try to use the jointcapturepaint spreadsheet to assign skeletonweights to some points, most of the time Houdini crashes to the desktop.

I have submitted a Bug report but it seems Support can't reproduce the issue, while this happens every time on my system with the scene I attached, and in other scenes in both, Houdini 20.0 and 20.5.

I also created a screencapture of the issue : Screencapture [www.dropbox.com]


Maybe someone can reproduce the issue, or confirm it's just me ?

Thanks.