Is there a way to do Render Time Booleans in Houdini and Mantra?
I have some pretty detailed and numerous CAD parts that I will eventually have to show the interior of the assembly to display the functionality.
I'm having a lot more success using Clips instead of Cookies to cut the models and getting a cap. More success than 3DS Max as well as I would have to manually do this for every single peice instead of the procedural way I have going in Houdini.
But I'm only manually doing this because Vrays method of Render Booleans (VrayDistanceTex and duplicate geo) takes extremely long to render. From 45 minutes at 1080p to 6 hours a frame for my scene. This seems to be a known issue from the ChaosGroup forums but pushed aside as Render Booleans seem to not be used often. This lets me animate the outside-to-in transition though, instead of doing a fade away from full model to cut. Just Trying to be fancy.
Using my Clip Method I can't do the animated transition. I'm probably missing a step that I'll have to investigate, but it's still an aside.
Modo looks to have some nice Render Booleans but I'm curious if there's a way to do this with Houdini and Mantra. Just now exploring the shader route but it's not something I'm too fluent in yet.
Thanks.
PS: Wish these forums would fix the stuck drop shadow on the #mainContainer#shadowRight/Left.shadow_image{ display: none }
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Technical Discussion » Render Booleans
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Houdini Learning Materials » Redering tutorials
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Awesome posts! Thanks so much jeff, helps a whole lot. And I agree with your views on these tests and the current state of rendering fully as I expressed these concerns earlier as well. Not as eloquent though.
Your settings got me to 40s on my home machine. Admittedly (obviously) I'm still learning the Mantra way of optimizing, so your break down is quite valuable. I have read those threads (and others) at one point but thanks again for the reminder. The information never stuck though (it will this time). I find retaining information becomes harder when you're not actively in a place where it's immediately important. /too_much_to_learn_and_getting_old
Edit: Added expansions for jeffs great followup.
Your settings got me to 40s on my home machine. Admittedly (obviously) I'm still learning the Mantra way of optimizing, so your break down is quite valuable. I have read those threads (and others) at one point but thanks again for the reminder. The information never stuck though (it will this time). I find retaining information becomes harder when you're not actively in a place where it's immediately important. /too_much_to_learn_and_getting_old
Edit: Added expansions for jeffs great followup.
Houdini Learning Materials » Redering tutorials
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Korny Klown2GyroscopeGenerating scene: about 2 seconds
How long does it take your machine to calculate Final Gather? Generating Scene and calculating the GI Light only takes about a second in this scene in Mantra.
Total rendertime: 01:05 (faceted I'm down to 00:52)
Final Gather?
Yes, even if Final Gather takes 5 seconds to process with Mental Ray that is time you have to include. I don't know if you're including those times.
Korny Klown2GyroscopeMy inital intention wasn't to recreate the exact same, pixelperfect equivalent, I just slapped together a roughly matching scene because I don't think to illustrate the idea it's not important if the sphere is 0.045 lower in Y and the light 0.647 further back in Z, at least I think it wouldn't have changed rendertimes drasticly
If I were to critique your MR render… The sphere is floating, the roof looks like there is a small separation between the walls with the harsh black outline. And it's not really a 100% exact scene with Houdini as the light is not in the same position…
Thanks for omitting the most important part (light in view) for the sake of convenient argument. If your intention is not pixel perfect, or even remotely close your comparisons and conclusions become even more sketchy. Especially when you're getting into the minutia of second differences between the two methods.
Anyway to round out my participation here and back up my claim in my first post. My work machine: Dual Xeon E5-2680 @ 2.7ghz. 16 threads.
Houdini - Faceted scene:
- 1m8s with no GI light for flicker free animation
- 25s with GI Light
3DS Max - Vray 3.0 No Embree:
- 31s using Brute Force primary, Light Cache secondary for flicker free animation
- 11s using Irradiance Map for primary and Light Cache for secondary for still image.
Using Embree shaved off another couple seconds.
Houdini Learning Materials » Redering tutorials
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Box wasn't faceted so that's why the corners are washed out. Goof on both our ends for not catching that sooner. Basically a 4 sided sphere at that point, haha.
Comparing the difference of your 3:39 render and my 35s render did show some obvious noise difference, ignoring the jpg artifacts.
To match both mathematically and visually at 100% magnification. I dropped the noise 0.1. That's it. The render which is pretty damn close to yours only took 55s to render on my machine. Can you post the scene for your 3 minute render? You might've over cranked something. 35s to 48s to render is hardly double (which would be 1m10s).
Fixing the faceting problem actually reduced the render time to 40 seconds. So with that fix you have some time to spare if that noise is still not acceptable. You really only have to creep the values little by little.
It's optimizing stuff like this (and the double sided light, reflective properties, GI Light) which can lead to long render times, which is stuff I'm after. Looking forward to more guru level (circusmonkey, others) tips regarding this.
How long does it take your machine to calculate Final Gather? Generating Scene and calculating the GI Light only takes about a second in this scene in Mantra.
If I were to critique your MR render… The sphere is floating, the roof looks like there is a small separation between the walls with the harsh black outline. And it's not really a 100% exact scene with Houdini as the light is not in the same position. I know MR has trouble clamping values by default and the AA will add a few seconds with the light there.
Either way, going from an initial grainy 2m34s render to a clean 50s render sounds thread justifiable for me. I'll just speak for myself but I definitely learned stuff.
Comparing the difference of your 3:39 render and my 35s render did show some obvious noise difference, ignoring the jpg artifacts.
To match both mathematically and visually at 100% magnification. I dropped the noise 0.1. That's it. The render which is pretty damn close to yours only took 55s to render on my machine. Can you post the scene for your 3 minute render? You might've over cranked something. 35s to 48s to render is hardly double (which would be 1m10s).
Fixing the faceting problem actually reduced the render time to 40 seconds. So with that fix you have some time to spare if that noise is still not acceptable. You really only have to creep the values little by little.
It's optimizing stuff like this (and the double sided light, reflective properties, GI Light) which can lead to long render times, which is stuff I'm after. Looking forward to more guru level (circusmonkey, others) tips regarding this.
How long does it take your machine to calculate Final Gather? Generating Scene and calculating the GI Light only takes about a second in this scene in Mantra.
If I were to critique your MR render… The sphere is floating, the roof looks like there is a small separation between the walls with the harsh black outline. And it's not really a 100% exact scene with Houdini as the light is not in the same position. I know MR has trouble clamping values by default and the AA will add a few seconds with the light there.
Either way, going from an initial grainy 2m34s render to a clean 50s render sounds thread justifiable for me. I'll just speak for myself but I definitely learned stuff.
Houdini Learning Materials » Redering tutorials
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That's disappointing. Not showing what you think is acceptable noise. Makes me question whether you're actually putting in an effort at this point. Despite me saying Mental Ray is great for some things. Just as Mantra is. I still use Mental Ray from time to time. It's just not my first choice, but hey it's “free” right?
If you're committed to this method of rendering, and you're tasked with rendering 1500 frames only for the director to say the DOF is excessive after the fact, the problem isn't in the rendering, it's in the approval process of your workflow. Render every 10/nth frame, cycle through that to make sure. Or something. Work smarter not harder.
This is even more fucking critical when you're a small shop.
If your director/supervisor doesn't like that, educate him/her. But yes, I do agree the post method has it's place I never said it was bad, I just hate having to do it and hate the look because I know it's wrong.
Good luck. Have fun.
If you're committed to this method of rendering, and you're tasked with rendering 1500 frames only for the director to say the DOF is excessive after the fact, the problem isn't in the rendering, it's in the approval process of your workflow. Render every 10/nth frame, cycle through that to make sure. Or something. Work smarter not harder.
This is even more fucking critical when you're a small shop.
If your director/supervisor doesn't like that, educate him/her. But yes, I do agree the post method has it's place I never said it was bad, I just hate having to do it and hate the look because I know it's wrong.
Good luck. Have fun.
Houdini Learning Materials » Redering tutorials
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Korny Klown2
Maybe Houdini/Mantra doesn't like AMD and prefers Intel but I have a 4C8T processor with 3.5 GHz and 12 GB RAM, so technically it shouldn't be that bad.
I don't think Mantra uses any specific Intel instruction set such as Embree. AMD this gen has not really been able to compete with Intel for performance. [anandtech.com] Core count is only one half of the equation. IPC is the other.
Korny Klown2
Luckily with Mental Ray it's just the matter of activating AO in the materials and one checkbox in the renderglobals. With AO the rendering took 3 seconds longer.
Can we see? Where's your 3 minute noise-free mantra render and scene?
Korny Klown2
Why does everybody beef about my Mental Ray rendering. I never said that this is the holy grail of photorealistic CG and it's not the quality of my wet dreams either but it is a reasonable good quality in a reasonable amount of time. Clients I know, I could show them MR rendering and Mantra rendering side by side, they wouldn't even notice the difference so why should I spend more time rendering for a higher quality, only a few clients would appreciate.
Then what metric are we supposed to base your conclusions off of? I'm only going off of what is presented. And your case has become increasingly weak.
Korny Klown2
DOF, motion blur and stuff is all done in post (as well as GRAIN by the way, that's why I want a cristal clear/ noisefree image because adding noise on noise is a nono).
That post work done requires multple passes, plug-ins, external editors, layered renders, compositing time, re-rendering of sequence time. Only for it to look remotely natural. This extends to the argument of Artist Time vs Machine Time.
You may not like a bit of noise in your renders, which you still have not posted for us to disect and help you. I hate the look of post motion blur and DOF.
As a generalist who doesn't have a whole compositing department, it's something I'm glad I don't have to spend time/money on. With the advent of modern rendering methods, you can get servicable motion blur and DOF straight out, which yes, takes a small hit in rendering time. But I firmly believe in the artist time is more expensive than machine time mantra.
Houdini Learning Materials » Redering tutorials
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Korny Klown2
Well, that's a decent start but still noisy and
1. the same scene takes twice as long on my machine 00:48
2. when I tweak it to get it noisefree I immediately run into rendertimes of 3minutes and more.
Your machine is pretty weak. I personally think that the noise is acceptable. I don't know many clients who want to pay for a Cornell Box render.
Some of that noise would be less visible in a production scene where you have textures, different environment and more artistic lighting. I've no problems getting acceptable renders using the methods discussed. It could be faster I agree, which is why I want to make a better scene to test it out. Cornell Box test is to test the contributions of GI. Your MR render doesn't look accurate.
If your clients are pushing for higher quality, you should be charging more to get them the results which includes the cost of rendering. Your Maya render is pretty ugly IMO. I don't know what your acceptable noise tolerance is but, can you post a render of your 3 minute frame? You said you would have to add AO to your MR render, and I agree. How long does that take for you to add a seperate AO render pass? The Mantra render doesn't need it in my opinion.
Korny Klown2
I want a cristal clear image in a decent amount of time and I want control over where I want quality to be focused and where I want to reduce quality.
Try turning off GI if you want/have to render with Mantra then. If machine time is not cheaper for you than artist time. The noise will then come from the Light Sampling quality. Go to town setting up hundreds of lights to mimic the effect of GI. Total control.
The methods discussed, I find have been interchangeable with Mental Ray Unified Sampling, Vray, Arnold, Maxwell, any GPU render. If that's still not to your liking then move on. I love the accuracy, ease and photographic nature of Maxwell, but F**CK does it take forever to render. So I rarely use it unless the situation calls for it. Tools for the job.
Korny Klown2
The problem is, I don't care about a modern renderer because my clients don't care. If I'd work at ILM or DD or so I would probably like Mantra because I get high quality and don't have to care about rendertime. But my clients more often than not wouldn't see the extra quality, all they see on the bill is that it took two days longer to render.
I don't work at ILM or DD, I work in a small shop where sometimes I have to do everything and I like Mantra. Like I said it could be faster but we're at a point where I feel we matched your poor non-AO MR render with a better more accurate (and possibly faster, until you add AO) Mantra render.
The next step is for you to add DOF, Motion Blur and Animation to your test. We can compare set up time and render times then. If single image print is your end goal. I have to agree Mental Ray works wonderfully. Vray better… But you said you do VFX generalist stuff. Maybe if we focus on getting one of your water sims or flame sims optimized that'd be a better case. Cornell Box would be more Arch/Product Viz territory.
Overall, you like Mental Ray it's what you're used to which is understandable. Seems like you have not adopted the unified sampling method Mentral Ray now offers though. If you want to stick with MR, do it.
Use Houdini as a pipeline tool. It's been tailored to send data back to Maya for finalizing. If speed is your concern on a budget, look into GPU rendering. There are coveats there but my gosh it's so worth it when you can use it.
Houdini Learning Materials » Redering tutorials
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Skybar
Hehe fun, I tried as well, 5 diffuse bounces and some heavy DoF.
1m30s for straight PBR. 25s with GI.
Any chance for the scene? I'm being contradictory in my last posts towards KK2 as I too want to learn how to optimize Mantra. Sorry mate.
Edit: And it'd be nice to post system specs when posting times.
Houdini Learning Materials » Redering tutorials
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@KK2 - Optimizing Mantra… It's not like Mental Ray of yesteryear so you kind of have to forget that. Or if you're familiar with the new Mental Ray Unified Sampling method of rendering it's similar to that.
Here's a modified scene. 35 seconds to render on my machine. Mimics your non-reflective Maya render as was discussed earlier but seems to be ignored?
I can't tell what you really want to know. You seem to know what you need to know but aren't wanting to accept it? It is actually that simplified when it's a noise problem. I can't think of a modern rendering engine that is not using this approach. And I'm thankful as I don't have to spend hours dialing in numbers and spend more time on the art.
@circusmonkey
6) I love that suggestion circusmonkey! I was working on the latest CGTalk lighting challenge [forums.cgsociety.org] to learn this very topic of optimizing Mantra, but got majorly sidelined by work. I've got the scene but no shaders set up.
If that scene isn't fully shared, maybe I can set up this older CG Lighting Challenge [3drender.com] that can be used.
7) Was that 3 hours at 2k? Arzo's dual xeon with 72gb of ram.. I can only imagine dual 3.0ghz 8 cores at a total of 32 threads. And yeah 30 minutes a frame on that machine seems like a lot.
Here's a modified scene. 35 seconds to render on my machine. Mimics your non-reflective Maya render as was discussed earlier but seems to be ignored?
I can't tell what you really want to know. You seem to know what you need to know but aren't wanting to accept it? It is actually that simplified when it's a noise problem. I can't think of a modern rendering engine that is not using this approach. And I'm thankful as I don't have to spend hours dialing in numbers and spend more time on the art.
@circusmonkey
6) I love that suggestion circusmonkey! I was working on the latest CGTalk lighting challenge [forums.cgsociety.org] to learn this very topic of optimizing Mantra, but got majorly sidelined by work. I've got the scene but no shaders set up.
If that scene isn't fully shared, maybe I can set up this older CG Lighting Challenge [3drender.com] that can be used.
7) Was that 3 hours at 2k? Arzo's dual xeon with 72gb of ram.. I can only imagine dual 3.0ghz 8 cores at a total of 32 threads. And yeah 30 minutes a frame on that machine seems like a lot.
Houdini Learning Materials » Redering tutorials
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@SYmek If that was directed at me (it's not clear and just making sure): I'll be the first to admit I have a lot to learn in Houdini still. And my experience is only from small generalist shops (1-3 CG artists) where the idea of a render farm is just co-workers machines.
And I totally forgot matching the Maya scene and turning off the reflective properties of the default shader and the 2 mantra surface shaders set up. Changing them to simple surface shaders with no spec, the render time dropped to about a minute on my same home machine with the GI Light in the scene I posted. 1:10 without the GI Light.
I still think it will be slower than Vray with Brute Force as Primary and Light Cache as secondary which I find gives me no flicker, usable moblur and dof for animation. Which is what I care about. How the renderer gets to that is secondary. I'll run a test to show on Monday when I'm back at work.
With the reflective properties in the shader, KK2's initial scene would have 10 (defaulted) reflective traces. In my scene I dropped that down to 4.
Peter Quints [vimeo.com] amazing free tutorials is the only set I've found that is the next step after SideFX's learning path for new users, and I recommend it to everyone. You get into FXPHD, CMIVFX and you jump straight into TD VFX territory.
And I totally forgot matching the Maya scene and turning off the reflective properties of the default shader and the 2 mantra surface shaders set up. Changing them to simple surface shaders with no spec, the render time dropped to about a minute on my same home machine with the GI Light in the scene I posted. 1:10 without the GI Light.
I still think it will be slower than Vray with Brute Force as Primary and Light Cache as secondary which I find gives me no flicker, usable moblur and dof for animation. Which is what I care about. How the renderer gets to that is secondary. I'll run a test to show on Monday when I'm back at work.
With the reflective properties in the shader, KK2's initial scene would have 10 (defaulted) reflective traces. In my scene I dropped that down to 4.
Peter Quints [vimeo.com] amazing free tutorials is the only set I've found that is the next step after SideFX's learning path for new users, and I recommend it to everyone. You get into FXPHD, CMIVFX and you jump straight into TD VFX territory.
Houdini Learning Materials » Redering tutorials
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I was bored. And I can relate. As I have gone through similar growing pains with Mantra.
3 Bounces, fairly noise free, usable in my opinion.
1 minute and 50s render on an aged 4C8T core i7 920 with a GI light (it's not something I'm too familiar with so the settings are… something). Still slow though, I'm not an expert on Mantra and still learning it myself.
3 minutes without the GI Light, but with this you could add DOF, and MoBlur for little to no impact.
You had your area light set up incorrectly in a Cornell box test. You had it double sided inside the cage, which means that not only were you casting light down, it was also going up onto the ceiling. Causing more noise than it should. Did you not notice your buckets taking longer on the light?
I could tweak it further but that was just about 20 minutes. Like I said I can relate, but I'm not so quick to judge. There are tidbits of info scattered across this forum and odforce. [forums.odforce.net]
3 Bounces, fairly noise free, usable in my opinion.
1 minute and 50s render on an aged 4C8T core i7 920 with a GI light (it's not something I'm too familiar with so the settings are… something). Still slow though, I'm not an expert on Mantra and still learning it myself.
3 minutes without the GI Light, but with this you could add DOF, and MoBlur for little to no impact.
You had your area light set up incorrectly in a Cornell box test. You had it double sided inside the cage, which means that not only were you casting light down, it was also going up onto the ceiling. Causing more noise than it should. Did you not notice your buckets taking longer on the light?
I could tweak it further but that was just about 20 minutes. Like I said I can relate, but I'm not so quick to judge. There are tidbits of info scattered across this forum and odforce. [forums.odforce.net]
Houdini Learning Materials » Redering tutorials
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Is that Mental ray? You're using final gather with MR I'm assuming. Try animating a camera and the sphere. You know you'll get flicker. MR is great for stills but then you add Motion Blur, DOF and animation and it crawls unless you spend hours tweaking. The default Mantra PBR settings get you all those flicker free as a baseline but with noise.
If you want to get similar time/results as MR with Final Gather in Houdini, you can try adding a GI Light and go to town messing with that. Unfortunately you'll get some flickering in animation until you spend hours tweaking.
Having used too many Raytracers to name in production, I personally find as an artist, the Autodesk implementations of Mental Ray are atrocious in both Max and Maya.
With the lot of renderers adopting a PBR workflow with the intent of settling on a noise amount, tweaking fewer settings have been comforting. The fully featured IPR renderer in Houdini is a huge time saver.
I will say though, Vray and Arnold are faster than Mantra when going for animated DOF, MoBlur and GI. Mantra is definitely faster than MR and Maxwell for sure in a similar respect. Maxwell is a special case as it goes for total accuracy.
And there are admittedly a lack of tutorials for more general type of work for Houdini as the user base is a lot smaller and more focused on TD. A pitfall IMO. But Mantra sure ain't shit. It will of course be touted when doing work Houdini is known for, but for generalist type work I do I feel it can be slow for a small shop.
I do miss options. Arnold is coming, Vray is doubtful and has been asked for years. Redshift is a gamechanger and I hope it comes. Best tools for the job type of thing.
If you want to get similar time/results as MR with Final Gather in Houdini, you can try adding a GI Light and go to town messing with that. Unfortunately you'll get some flickering in animation until you spend hours tweaking.
Having used too many Raytracers to name in production, I personally find as an artist, the Autodesk implementations of Mental Ray are atrocious in both Max and Maya.
With the lot of renderers adopting a PBR workflow with the intent of settling on a noise amount, tweaking fewer settings have been comforting. The fully featured IPR renderer in Houdini is a huge time saver.
I will say though, Vray and Arnold are faster than Mantra when going for animated DOF, MoBlur and GI. Mantra is definitely faster than MR and Maxwell for sure in a similar respect. Maxwell is a special case as it goes for total accuracy.
And there are admittedly a lack of tutorials for more general type of work for Houdini as the user base is a lot smaller and more focused on TD. A pitfall IMO. But Mantra sure ain't shit. It will of course be touted when doing work Houdini is known for, but for generalist type work I do I feel it can be slow for a small shop.
I do miss options. Arnold is coming, Vray is doubtful and has been asked for years. Redshift is a gamechanger and I hope it comes. Best tools for the job type of thing.
SI Users » organizing alembic files AKA shading a cad imported car
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I always make sure naming conventions are set up. Working as a freelance and small shops of less than 5 with engineers/clients, it's crucial. Time is more critical. With engineers it's even harder, and that's why include Clean Up time in cost quotes. I mean if you can't name your stuff, logically it'll take me more time to get it going.
But I agree, with a Material SOP, setting up materials for objects that have even over a dozen different unique items/groups gets tedious. If group selection allowed multiple selection at one time with live updates of said selections, that'd be a great way to make it more efficient. Wildcards are great but sometimes not enough.
Even if Group Selection mimic'd bundle selection in the Mantra ROP.
But I agree, with a Material SOP, setting up materials for objects that have even over a dozen different unique items/groups gets tedious. If group selection allowed multiple selection at one time with live updates of said selections, that'd be a great way to make it more efficient. Wildcards are great but sometimes not enough.
Even if Group Selection mimic'd bundle selection in the Mantra ROP.
SI Users » animation improvements in Houdini
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I see and agree with his point. He's asking for Outliner type functionality.
More management capabilities in List/Tree View, it was lightly brushed upon in the modelling thread or was it the SI Guide thread… Tree View vs List view.
Tree View lets you navigate your file. List view lets you manage a few options.
But no pane as far as I can tell is there for you to organize. You cant create a subnet from selected items in List View. You can't move one item from one subnet to another in Tree or List view. Unless you can and I can't find it.
I agreed in the modelling thread, that Tree View and List view should be combined, coupled Constantine-X's suggested organizing capabilities. If you drag one item onto another, you parent it. If you drag it onto an expanded subnet folder, you move it to that subnet.
More management capabilities in List/Tree View, it was lightly brushed upon in the modelling thread or was it the SI Guide thread… Tree View vs List view.
Tree View lets you navigate your file. List view lets you manage a few options.
But no pane as far as I can tell is there for you to organize. You cant create a subnet from selected items in List View. You can't move one item from one subnet to another in Tree or List view. Unless you can and I can't find it.
I agreed in the modelling thread, that Tree View and List view should be combined, coupled Constantine-X's suggested organizing capabilities. If you drag one item onto another, you parent it. If you drag it onto an expanded subnet folder, you move it to that subnet.
SI Users » User Interface thoughts
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MartybNzTupaia
- What's the trick with the transform ‘gizmo’&tripod to use a plane instead of a single axis? XY, XZ, YZ.
You can assign keyboard shortcuts.
Control-Click on the Axis you don't want to transform on and you get a Square on the gizmo. Eg. Control-Click Y, to get ZX plane. I think this is what you're looking for?
SI Users » User Interface thoughts
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Simon__hayes
with the drop down menus pretty much all of them are persisting on my system (dell xps, windows 7, wacom tablet).
I might've phrased my problem wrong. The menu's do indeed stay down, but when you select an item, it automatically rolls back up. Which is ok most of the time but…
If you want to add multiple items, you have to roll it back down, select and repeat for every single item you wish to add. If it stayed down for you to select multiple items that'd be great.
I don't know if its a UI redraw issue because it adds the (*) to the drop down list. And I by no means want to replace how it currently works, only add to it. Say Shift-Click.
And I agree NNois. I made a lengthy post on Page 5 of the modelling thread regarding viewport interaction.
SI Users » User Interface thoughts
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Is it possible to have Group type drop down menus be a toggle for the actual drop down? Example, in the Material SOP. Selecting multiple groups require so many clicks.
It's worse when you have to scroll. It would be nice if it stayed down until you rolled it back up. Appending your choices appropriately while staying down. Shift clicking it for example. Wildcards are great but sometimes you just have to manually add them. How do other people work when items have oh, 20+ unique names?
It's worse when you have to scroll. It would be nice if it stayed down until you rolled it back up. Appending your choices appropriately while staying down. Shift clicking it for example. Wildcards are great but sometimes you just have to manually add them. How do other people work when items have oh, 20+ unique names?
SI Users » animation improvements in Houdini
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Awesome thanks MartybNz! Will save a lot time. I would be thankful still, if this was an optional default. The graph editor becomes really slow (slower in 13 compared to 12.5) with a lot of channels visible.
Also, those (B, 0, 9) functions should added to the Functions Buttons list to the right side. Seeing as Tie/Untie is already there. Maybe reduce the button clutter by combining the Tie/Untie buttons to a be smarter(toggle). Untie selection if Tied, else Tie, or something.
Testing it further, it might be a bug, but those buttons don't become active until you move a handle. If you just single click on the bezier line or end on one side, the buttons are still inactive. You can still hit T however.
I'd argue that Tie/Untie in general should immediately apply to all 3 segments at once, the Value, the Handle and the Handle End.
But it might be me who just has to get used to it. I'm just used to quickly marqee selecting the main key, with no regard to the handles and hitting Untie/Break/Non-Weighted/Non-Unify.
One advantage is if you actually want to use the shortcut (T, Button), but have other channels visible with overlapping handles, it becomes slower to untie each portion. Can't think of a use case for a disadvantage.
Edit: Tie needs to be expanded vocabulary wise. I'm used to thinking of it as Weighted and Broken (Maya). Weighted means both ends length are proportional to the other. Broken means that either ends slope is independant of the other.
In Houdini, you Untie the Bezier End to go change the Weight. You Untie the Bezier Line to Break it. Getting to each state seems inconsistent and unpredictable… thus the verbal diarrhea.
Also, those (B, 0, 9) functions should added to the Functions Buttons list to the right side. Seeing as Tie/Untie is already there. Maybe reduce the button clutter by combining the Tie/Untie buttons to a be smarter(toggle). Untie selection if Tied, else Tie, or something.
Testing it further, it might be a bug, but those buttons don't become active until you move a handle. If you just single click on the bezier line or end on one side, the buttons are still inactive. You can still hit T however.
I'd argue that Tie/Untie in general should immediately apply to all 3 segments at once, the Value, the Handle and the Handle End.
But it might be me who just has to get used to it. I'm just used to quickly marqee selecting the main key, with no regard to the handles and hitting Untie/Break/Non-Weighted/Non-Unify.
One advantage is if you actually want to use the shortcut (T, Button), but have other channels visible with overlapping handles, it becomes slower to untie each portion. Can't think of a use case for a disadvantage.
Edit: Tie needs to be expanded vocabulary wise. I'm used to thinking of it as Weighted and Broken (Maya). Weighted means both ends length are proportional to the other. Broken means that either ends slope is independant of the other.
In Houdini, you Untie the Bezier End to go change the Weight. You Untie the Bezier Line to Break it. Getting to each state seems inconsistent and unpredictable… thus the verbal diarrhea.
SI Users » animation improvements in Houdini
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SplineBezier():
It'd be nice to be able to fire and forget some animation work. The main thing preventing this from happening is the default state of Bezier() Keying.
Right now there is 0 slope associated with the default behavior. So every keys tangents will flatline. Simple test. Rotate a cube on one Axis. Key 1 has a 0 value, Key 2 has 90, key 3 has 180. You'd expect it to go smoothly from 0 to 180. But it doesn't. Nevermind the fact you could just set 2 key frames, 1 of 0 and another of 180.
Below is a simple example sequence. With descriptions for the explanation.
COG-Z Translate is displayed.
The conclusion; I would like to see is the addition of a SplineBezier() to the Function list. SmoothBezier wouldn't be a good name after thinking about it. Bascially, the same functionality as Spline() but with Bezier handles.
Unless I'm off my rocker and I just have not found a straight forward method to do this easy. If so, please enlighten me. Adding the side button bezier handles to spline() doesn't give you the weighted ends. Bug?
It'd be nice to be able to fire and forget some animation work. The main thing preventing this from happening is the default state of Bezier() Keying.
Right now there is 0 slope associated with the default behavior. So every keys tangents will flatline. Simple test. Rotate a cube on one Axis. Key 1 has a 0 value, Key 2 has 90, key 3 has 180. You'd expect it to go smoothly from 0 to 180. But it doesn't. Nevermind the fact you could just set 2 key frames, 1 of 0 and another of 180.
Below is a simple example sequence. With descriptions for the explanation.
COG-Z Translate is displayed.
The conclusion; I would like to see is the addition of a SplineBezier() to the Function list. SmoothBezier wouldn't be a good name after thinking about it. Bascially, the same functionality as Spline() but with Bezier handles.
Unless I'm off my rocker and I just have not found a straight forward method to do this easy. If so, please enlighten me. Adding the side button bezier handles to spline() doesn't give you the weighted ends. Bug?
SI Users » animation improvements in Houdini
- Gyroscope
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McNistor
I don't know what you were trying to do but you managed to do just that - take offense for him.
No, I took offense to you.
How does my personality come across?
And how is my character?
It doesn't matter, lets get back on topic. We clash, it happens. Sorry to all, for letting feelings get into this.
So let's present points on how we personally would better Houdini and leave it at that. I've proposed my Channel Editor improvements you, your timeline improvements. Let's let SideFX sort them out. Keep up the good fight!
Onto the SplineBezier() I mentioned elsewhere…
Edited by - March 22, 2014 20:02:24
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