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Technical Discussion » possible bug? global variables and setEnv
- paul
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i try to steer clear of global variables for just this reason - they cant be relied on if they change a lot. i now prefer to use a top level ‘control’ object that exists in every shot with a bunch of spare parameters.
Technical Discussion » Materials And Building UI's = Nightmare's
- paul
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hey sergio, i feel your pain. vops need lots of love right now. for instance, theres no if,then,else (or gather, else) construct right now. node inputs only respect input numbers rather than names. plus the whole parameter mess you mentioned. and we havent' even mentioned the super clunky “new look” ui. (why bother making it look different when the old look was fine - we needed new functionality - rather than pointless eye candy). ugh.
so, i hope that sesi are listening here. mantra just rocks - but the ui to interface with mantra has fallen way behind. we need real world production usability. the new “production ready shaders” (haha) just emphasize how out of touch sesi really is with what users really need. it's otu of-the-box useability and intuitiveness that will sell houdini and keep new users interested - and i hope that v10 will concentrate on. it's come so far recently - so i remain optimistic! :-)
also, i'd like to sneak in my own RFE: to have a material switch!
so, i hope that sesi are listening here. mantra just rocks - but the ui to interface with mantra has fallen way behind. we need real world production usability. the new “production ready shaders” (haha) just emphasize how out of touch sesi really is with what users really need. it's otu of-the-box useability and intuitiveness that will sell houdini and keep new users interested - and i hope that v10 will concentrate on. it's come so far recently - so i remain optimistic! :-)
also, i'd like to sneak in my own RFE: to have a material switch!
Houdini Lounge » Fur Tutorials now in Docs
- paul
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JColdrick
It's just a personal opinion, but I like tutorials to have completed versions to examine when they're non-trivial like this one. I understand the whole mentality of ‘you don’t really learn it until you manually go through it', but that can be left to the discretion of the end user. Some people find it faster to study working examples rather than go through tab-add-connection exercises, probably related to their amount of experience with Houdini. Maybe in the next incarnation each tut can have a ‘work in progress’ hip file attached?
Cheers,
J.C.
no one else has agreed with you here - so i will! the devil is often (always in 3d) in the detail. a finished hip file (with in progress objs) would be v v useful. seconded! (also, wouldn't these be potentially useful for regression testing?)
Houdini Lounge » Instance particle color to instanced objects
- paul
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hey jeff, does this require mean that the shader parameters need to be promoted to the materials parameters?
Houdini Lounge » color spline!
- paul
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this has been an RFE for around 5 years! imho, it's essential for serious shader work - and it's continued omission has always perplexed me…
Technical Discussion » 3rd Party Renderers (3Delight and MR)
- paul
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hey freakish,
just another gentle word of encouragement urging you to persevere with mantra. i was once a prman zealot - and ran every job realise did through it. as of late - mantra has really come of age…
it's super tight integration with houdini is a breath of fresh air - even after using prman. and throw in point clouds (a real secret weapon), volumes, properties and new vex extensions - you've a killer combination! i think you'll be getting much better results per hour spent on mantra vs any 3rd party renderer right now.
good luck whichever path you choose,
paul
just another gentle word of encouragement urging you to persevere with mantra. i was once a prman zealot - and ran every job realise did through it. as of late - mantra has really come of age…
it's super tight integration with houdini is a breath of fresh air - even after using prman. and throw in point clouds (a real secret weapon), volumes, properties and new vex extensions - you've a killer combination! i think you'll be getting much better results per hour spent on mantra vs any 3rd party renderer right now.
good luck whichever path you choose,
paul
Technical Discussion » Houdini and Machine Vision
- paul
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yes, but i cheated a lot. ie, i interrogated the object/group hit to identify it was friend/foe/wall. just relying on distance data would mean a whole new level of work. btw, there's some pretty interesting robot simulators out there. check out player/stage:
http://playerstage.sourceforge.net/ [playerstage.sourceforge.net]
…two toolkits that mimic few robots in detail vs swarms of lo-rez robots. these toolkits “talk” to the python robot library mentioned in a earlier post. it all looks really fascinating.
http://playerstage.sourceforge.net/ [playerstage.sourceforge.net]
…two toolkits that mimic few robots in detail vs swarms of lo-rez robots. these toolkits “talk” to the python robot library mentioned in a earlier post. it all looks really fascinating.
Technical Discussion » Houdini and Machine Vision
- paul
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i did something very similar to this years ago in prisms. in brief:
- the artificial eye is a poly sphere which fires rays off into the scene
- groups the hit points & del the rest
- you can then use the hit points to act as +/- attractors (did some stuff with the prisms feedback sop so hits dissipated over time)
- then drove the ‘creature’ as a particle move towards/away from food or predator
i believe you could do some pretty cool stuff with the DOPs sop/pop solver. also point clouds will be able to help massively as well (getting neighbor velocities/directions/states). then chuck in some craig renolds boids logic (the 4 basic rules of flocking)- and you may see some interesting emerging behaviours…
-paul
EDIT: of course, this is real machine vision. rather, “simulated” vision within a virtual world.
- the artificial eye is a poly sphere which fires rays off into the scene
- groups the hit points & del the rest
- you can then use the hit points to act as +/- attractors (did some stuff with the prisms feedback sop so hits dissipated over time)
- then drove the ‘creature’ as a particle move towards/away from food or predator
i believe you could do some pretty cool stuff with the DOPs sop/pop solver. also point clouds will be able to help massively as well (getting neighbor velocities/directions/states). then chuck in some craig renolds boids logic (the 4 basic rules of flocking)- and you may see some interesting emerging behaviours…
-paul
EDIT: of course, this is real machine vision. rather, “simulated” vision within a virtual world.
Technical Discussion » [HCS] Dark Houdini Color Scheme
- paul
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Technical Discussion » [HCS] Dark Houdini Color Scheme
- paul
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nice one guys! my one comment from the screen shot is that there's maybe a little too much contrast for my liking. but, i will look forward to loading this up and having a tweak myself.
yes, this should be the basis of the houdini default colour scheme. the current military-strength interrogation white makes lighting and shading dark scenes difficult as your eyes have to adjust between 10% dark to 100% white. it almost seems as if the current sesi ui designer doesn't care about people trying to render and light…
yes, this should be the basis of the houdini default colour scheme. the current military-strength interrogation white makes lighting and shading dark scenes difficult as your eyes have to adjust between 10% dark to 100% white. it almost seems as if the current sesi ui designer doesn't care about people trying to render and light…
Technical Discussion » Textures and renderfarm
- paul
- 832 posts
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i can also confirm that we absolutely hammer the network with no houdini related slowdowns. this certainly sounds like a windoze thing. i seem to remember a similar problem eons ago when we used windoze (if thats any comfort).
Houdini Lounge » ramp VOP
- paul
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Wish
I will remind you, guys, from time to time about color spline)) O'right? :!:
what the colour spline VOP? it's not very useful at all. the spline positions are all equidistant - and more importantly - there's no decent shop UI. we need something which is at least as good as maya/xsi/max or any other 3d software out there.
Houdini Lounge » ramp VOP
- paul
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mark, it's good to hear you acknowledge the importance of this. even a quick fix would be better than houdini not having the ‘perfect’ solution for another five years. it really is an *essential* part of writing good shaders. right now we have to use all manner of dirty time consuming workarounds. i wouldn't even mind having a vex function that takes a maximum of 10 points in the ramp. *anything* is better than nothing.
or, put it this way - maya has this!
or, put it this way - maya has this!
Houdini Lounge » ramp VOP
- paul
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onesk8man
Why houdini doesn't have a simple ramp in VOP context?
I think it's a preatty basic thing…
I know there are some ramp operators for download (http://www.cgtalk.ru/forum/showthread.php?t=13780), [cgtalk.ru] but I think it must be on…
Or there is other sistem to do it?
thanks!
this is a good question. we've been asking for one for years. it's an essential tool for serious shader writing. i'd like to see a 1/3 channel ramp. even something similar to the pixar slim ramp (which is itself a photoshop ripoff) would be good for starters.
Houdini Lounge » searching the shelf
- paul
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i've been delving into the shelf and have a simple question:
-is there a way to search for a string - in a similar way the type ahead works for OP selection?
i must be missing something - as it seems currently slower to find/select things in the shelf than the type ahead method. ie, you need to do lots of mouse clicking to install/find the correct menu - rather than just type the first two of three letters of it's name. am i missing something here?
-is there a way to search for a string - in a similar way the type ahead works for OP selection?
i must be missing something - as it seems currently slower to find/select things in the shelf than the type ahead method. ie, you need to do lots of mouse clicking to install/find the correct menu - rather than just type the first two of three letters of it's name. am i missing something here?
Houdini Lounge » Buying Houdini... EU region
- paul
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Houdini Lounge » Is H9 a better overall product than H8?
- paul
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jeff
It is trivial to have several instances of an operator with different names. One example that just came up yesterday was “how do I triangulate geometry?” The answer was an obvious “use the Divide SOP”. Moments later I had a "Poly Triangulate tool on my shelf and in the tab menus that placed a Divide SOP with the proper parms set.
RFE: allow us to add a “provide” tag to each nodes help. (ie, pertinent keywords that describe each nodes function; ie, divide, triangulate) then allow the TAB type ahead to return a list of hits from the “provides” tag in nodes help. maybe to the side of the “name” hits.
…this would allow people to find the functionality they're looking for much faster.
Houdini Lounge » really wide network tiles in H9 - why?
- paul
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twod
One of the spots I didn't get to was thinning down the input fields and menu buttons, which was on the todo, so as a result parm dialogs use a bit more space in H9 compact than H8.
hey, thanks for your response. i hear you with the compact mode - right now i'm using the small - but still feel it needs tightening up in the areas i specified. i hope that this can further be refined now that you all managed to deliver the .0 realise.
However, in general, the H9 main interface in Compact mode is almost identical to a corresponding H8 main interface (run both at 100% scale, maximized, and turn off the shelf in H9 because it's an obvious addition to the interface, and flip between the two). What I mean by this is that the toolbars, pane headers, stowbars, spliters, etc.. are all very close to their H8 size.
just not close enough! ;-) i've just fired up h9 with the “small” ui - and for instance, there's a terrific vertical wastage in the xform SOP parameters. sure, that's just one SOP, but many of our DA's have 10's of parameters. i would like to see a further round of tweaks. it needs to be tight in X and Y!
Some people, yes. Others don't like to go blind But that's why it's a user setting. It's also a bit of future proofing for resolutions beyond 2560x1500 which will likely be appearing in the next few years. Also useful for demoing Houdini on a projector, which is really neither here nor there.
future proofing is a good. today proofing is more important.
I'm not trying to be contrary, just pointing out that many things have been worked on in direct response to user's requests in this area. I'll see what I can do to handle some of the remaining hotspots. The network editor is a whole different ball of wax, though.
hey - thats cool - the new small/compact modes made h9 *much* better than before. so, there's been forward progress. i just want the momentum to be maintained. i think the last 5% is always the hardest - but can make all the difference. :-)
and yes, the network editor is a different ball of wax which deserves it's own thread.
Houdini Lounge » really wide network tiles in H9 - why?
- paul
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mchaput
I don't think it's nearly as big an issue as that. The vertical difference between the two parameter editors is negligible in the header area, and would probably be equal if we switched to small (16x16) icons in the name/gear/info row instead of medium sized ones.
sure - one example on it's own doesn't look so bad. but in real world production - i want as many parameters and node editors on the screen at the same time. all these little xy additions add up - and do turn into a big issue once your not able to display what you want. so,
mchaput
The text areas are bigger to make the textboxes easier to hit
you really serious here? this sounds like a post rationalisation. i - and no one i've ever worked with has had any problems hitting a textbox. we animators are pretty used to the mouse thingy. sure, oversize buttons are useful for pre-schools or geriatrics - but c'mon - we're a pretty dexterous lot. i'd rather have the UI space ay day ;-)
mchaput
and so you don't have the text butting right up to the border and looking like crap. Even so the difference doesn't amount to a whole lot in this example. And for people who prefer less humane UI in exchange for showing more parms at once, that's what the UI scale is for.
hmmm, crap to me is where the ui doesn't fit into the screen. sorry, thats a sorry excuse. you could fit much more information with better design/font and colour usage. and keeping it humane is working faster and not pinging between different tabs/desktops to fiddle with parameters. but, hey - what do i know. i just animate.
lets not confuse form over function…
Houdini Lounge » really wide network tiles in H9 - why?
- paul
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nobodyinparticular
- why the wide tiles? what advantage do they offer over narrower ones other than “looking pretty”?
- why the teeny tiny wiring tabs? again, what is the advantage over the old ones?
i have been asking exactly the same questions too. also very keen to hear any answers…
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