I regularly run multiple instances of Houdini and my 3dConnexion device works flawlessly in each viewport (16.0.750 Win 10).It might be something new that's been introduced with 16.5 or it could be platform related.

Whenever I've had problems with my 3dConnexion device I've done a clean reinstall and it's solved my problem(be sure to properly clean any remnants of the old drivers before reinstalling).

sl0throp
A good place to look is Jarrets Touchdesigner file that has most of the work done in the “Art of Generative Design” translated into Toughdesigner. The methodology of Touch translates a lot better the Processing.

http://www.derivative.ca/wiki088/index.php?title=Generative_Design [www.derivative.ca]

Jordan

It is indeed a great set of examples. Although I still find myself ‘vexed’ (see what I did there) by the single threaded nature of the Chops stuff in TD. They haven't done much work on the nodes that trace their family tree back to Houdini since TD split off as a separate product back at Houdini 4.5! And since they've moved to Python (away from the HScript origins) many things are actually slower than they were back in the day.

The real TD power users have moved most of what their doing over to the GPU partnered with bespoke C++ nodes.

If it is indeed a bug it should be reported via the usual bug reporting channels:

Report a bug/RFE [www.sidefx.com]

Or simply by sending an email to support@sidefx.com

With all the social media channels SideFX operate in, you can't guarantee the support team will see a bug report from within this forum. That's why the support team request that bugs are reported through either of the above.

It pains me to say it but Autodesk's FBX Review is very slick. It uses Maya's Viewport 2.0, works with all the main formats - FBX, OBJ, DAE and even previews Alembic (which is nice - save a trip to Houdini's command line abc viewer). It uses standard Maya navigation and previewing new geometry is simply a matter of drag/droping it into the viewport.

MeshLab is always handy to have for far more than 3d file viewing, but I'd also advise Open3dMod too. It's nowhere near as slick as FBX Review but it previews a greater number of file formats including LWO (it spits a lot of LWO's back out but it's one of the only LWO previewers I've come across (save for the command line tool in Houdini).

Apologies - I don't have time to provide the links but they're easily found on Google.

- Great news… though it hasn't been announced yet (it will be soon), we're hosting an event this October in London called Procedural in Motion, which will have educational presentations from advertising and motion graphics studios and artists. So that's a start, but I agree that we also need more SideFX experts covering those areas - so more to come there.

This is really great news Chris. And being a London boy I'll be sure to be there.

Looking forward to the full details so I can put the word out amongst the UAL (University of the Arts London)students. These are fine art and design students, so very different from the typical Bournemouth NCCA under/postgraduates (that are already well versed in the ways of Houdini). Nonetheless, a good number of these future artists and designers are intrigued by the possibilities Houdini can make possible.

I think the Illume series has been a fantastic initiative. Glad you that you took our feedback constructively. There's no value in them becoming wooden, but the more successful webinars have been the ones where Jeff has been able to get through his agenda without any of it becoming compressed because of lengthy digressions.

The Matt Estella Illume, was one of my favourites. I think the community would value more content like that.

An area of growth I've noticed over the last 24 months is the number of motion design shops that have deeply integrated Houdini into their workflows. I'd love to see an Illume or two for this new non VFX/Games segment of customers you've developed. The awesome Entagma crew have of course provided so much great content over the last 12 months or so for this audience, but I'd love to see an Illume where SideFX engineers share their own take on the generative design/animation capabilities of Houdini.

My expectations are that Houdini 17 will fulfill the emergent promise of Houdini's rigging tools. The new constraints/biharmonic capture and experimental muscle stuff introduced during 16 cycle have shown great promise which I'm sure you're fleshing out further still. Whilst I don't think it's unfair to say character rigging is still to reach it's full potential, Houdini has major strengths in technical rigging (all manner of mechanical objects) so something at the mechanical end of the rigging spectrum would be nice.

No more to add other than thanks for the quality content. It's great to see a DCC vendor understand that good marketing isn't just about the chase for new customers. It starts by making your existing customers get the most out of your product as customers with skilled chops make for very convincing advocates.

You can customise your desktop anyway you want it and lot's of elements can be stowed.

Much as I own Indie I keep Apprentice on my miniscule 11" Macbook Air; mainly for exploring the help documents (and the bundled example HIP's). The desktop is setup as you see it below as the important thing for me is that I have a clear view of the data driving the scene rather than the GL view itself. But don't forget pressing P in the network view will enable and disable the parameters view on demand (when set up this way) and CTRL/CMD B over any viewport to maximise it. Perfect when working in a restricted screen real estate.

I'm not suggesting my setup is the best setup, simply that Houdini has a highly customisable interface that enables users to create a desktop that works best for the way they prefer to work.

Lyr
CHOPS

Not exactly a useful answer for the OP!

Maya's Time Editor is conceptually close to the Animation Mixer in Softimage (which was always considered to be a crowning glory of the XSI animation system). Now that Autodesk have killed off Softimage they've brought a modernised version of the animation mixer into Maya. And it's nicely done too, especially from a UX perspective.

Houdini has a feature called the Animation Layer Mixer which is conceptually close to both of the above but unfortunately the UX is nowhere near as slick as Maya's update of the XSI original.

Animation Layer Mixer [www.sidefx.com]

The Animation Layer Mixer in tandem with Chops is very powerful but technically it's not the most user friendly workflow. I have a feeling it's due for an update sometime soon as H16 introduced a bunch of new Chops animation constraints features, which also happen to be fully threaded (I expect the long term aim is to be competitive with Maya's parallel evaluation system).

Much as I think it's not as friendly as Maya's system it's worth learning, especially if you're attempting character animation in Houdini.

aRtye
P.S. can't wait for this to go meta, when SideFx closes this thread about closing a thread

I'd say it simply comes down to good forum manners with regard to the promotion of third party tools. There's a thread over on Odforce which is intended for links of interest (that aren't directly connected to Houdini) which you continually use to promote your tools. And you do the same in the Houdini Doodles thread on the Modo forums.

Personally, I don't object to this behaviour but I do find it ‘impolite’ forum conduct, especially when the posts are often little more than a video link. The end effect is that I tend to ignore your posts as they feel a little ‘spammy’.

None of this is to criticise Flux. A few of the artists I know through the Modo forum have purchased your addon and are very happy with their purchase.

I'm also not sure that I would frame Flux as a reason for artists to trial Houdini Indie when Flux is currently $99, soon to be $150 and the complete Houdini toolset is available in Indie for $199 (per annum). It's great that you've created an excellent add-on for Houdini that provides value for it's customers but it's possibly a little egocentric to say your efforts are are a reason to trial Houdini.

You've answered your own question correctly but the change isn't an arbitrary decision.

For a great overview of the changes to SOP's and the reasons for the changes check out this Webinar with Jeff Wagner.

Not sure if you've looked back this far in the SideFX archives but the ‘Non VFX VFX’ webinar by Matt Estella was very much a proceduralism in preference to simulation seminar.

Non VFX VFX [vimeo.com]

With Aixsponza being so heavily focused on motion design, the Entagma content is unique in it's focus. Houdini's bread and butter is VFX but many talented artists in the motion design community are utilising Houdini's procedural prowess to explore generative design aims and Entagma sits at the centre of this community of artists. I agree that it would be great to see content from SideFX that recognises this ever increasing new segment of Houdini artists.

In the meantime a good place to explore for inspiration is the Processing community. There's a ‘Bees and Bombs’ thread over on Odforce, that has lot's of example HIP's where Houdini artists have taken a Processing animation and recreated it in Houdini (most often with VEX). Even though Processing is a language founded on Java it has many parallels to VEX in that it contains many unique functions specifically designed for creating and manipulating geometry. It's often a relatively easy exercise to translate a Processing project into something that functions in Houdini. And even if it's not so easy it's a fantastic learning exercise.

I'd recommend you do the Algebra basics course on Khan Academy whilst learning Houdini. If only to refresh your mind on the stuff you learned at school.

Khan Academy Algebra Basics [www.khanacademy.org]

And this course on Vector Match for 3d artists is really helpful too.

Vector Math for 3d Artists [chortle.ccsu.edu]

If you do decide to investigate the Delay Load option, you'll need to ensure that you've used a Pack Points node pre writing your particle caches (read the docs for details). The packed primitives workflow is the more modern way of doing things and the Delayed Load Procedural method might disappear in a future Houdini release so it's probably good to understand both.

The important thing is that Houdini treats particle caches no different to any other geometry format. The delayed loading of the points at render time is what keeps Houdini working in the most efficient manner with large point counts.

There's an old thread on odforce which discusses at length recreating a Krakatoa style workflow in Houdini with Mantra. One of the participants (CeeGee) shares some example files which will help you understand the setup (however they use the old particles technology which is single threaded so strictly use the ‘Palace’ Hips he shares to understand the overall setup. Be sure to read the thread too as it contains important info. The key thing with Mantra is to use the Delayed Load Procedural (read up on this in the documentation) to load the cache files on demand, this will be as fast or slow as your fastest drive (speedy SSD is obviously your best choice). Cache loading nodes in Houdini have a Delay Load option too but I still use the Delayed Load Procedural method (out of habit not preference) so I can't comment on that approach.

http://forums.odforce.net/topic/10065-krakatoa-shader/#comment-66055 [forums.odforce.net]

I've deep linked directly to the comment where the first of the Hip files was shared, if nothing else be sure to read the following 10-15 comments.

@powestroke3000 I find myself only partly in agreement with you.

One of the wonderful things about Jeff Wagners webinars are the digressions but equally they are one of my biggest annoyances too. A great example this year would be Jeff Wagners H16 Geometry Workflows webinar. Something went wrong with the recording on this one so Jeff had to re-record it. This meant that it stayed on brief and followed the well prepared deck Jeff had put together.

But there are times when Jeff's digressions elucidate wonderful areas of knowledge that are connected to the agenda but which otherwise might not have been discussed. My request would be that Fianna compiled all the questions to be answered in the last 45 minutes. That way Jeff could stay on brief but we'd also benefit from Jeff's 30 years plus experience of working with Houdini.

As great as the Masterclass series is, it does lack that audience interaction. I'd love a live Q&A after the pre-recorded Masterclass. Something that could involve audience, developer and Jeff as that could lead to interesting tangents but not disrupt the core learning material.

I don't have time to create an example for you but if you follow this tutorial on wedging pyro sims the methodology is exactly the same for particles. The wedging stuff kicks in around the 16 minute mark. It's simply a matter of referencing back into your particle network from your Wedge node and referencing the seed on the emitter. If you've set up the wedge correctly it will automatically cache out the number of cache wedges you require whilst ensuring the seed is changed on each cache wedge. A Wedge isn't a special type of cache is simply Houdini nomenclature for the process in much the same way that Thinkbox refer to cache iterations as Partitions.

Having researched HEngine: Point Generation a little more it seems it's main benefit is that you can use Houdini Engine licenses on Mantra network nodes. I've personally never liked render time point generation multipliers and I've tried them in XSI ICE, Krakatoa and Houdini. Partitioning/Wedging always produces more natural results. Splitting your cache files into manageable chunks aids data IO too.

symek
Modern version of point replicate procedural is HEngine: Point Generation

http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/nodes/vop/enginepointgen [www.sidefx.com]

Interesting. Seeing as this is a VOP node my expectation is that it would be threaded but there's a worrying phrase in the docs that mentions a similarity to Copy Stamping (going outside of the VOP to reference attributes in SOPs). Does this have an impact on threading, or are the docs strictly talking in a conceptual manner. Anything that can reliably upres a particle sim without threading issues is going to be a useful option.

The way Maxon maintain their Houdini Engine integration is very weak in comparison to the Maya, Max, UE and Unity integrations. With Houdini changing so much on a regular basis through its daily builds it's essential that Houdini Engine is recompiled to match. The other builds benefit from SideFX being responsible for the maintenance but it seems to me that Maxon regard the Houdini Engine integration as little more than a marketing tactic. Little do they realise that this has backfired as many former C4D champions are now using Houdini exclusively. Maxon's ineptitude in this matter has created a rather nice ‘Trojan Horse’ for SideFX.