arctor and something fundamental to SESI's development (as I see it) is that they give their users the tools they need to build whatever they want - rather than huge black box systems… on the one hand this is great - you can build your own solvers, deformers, etc etc but on the other hand you don't get a gallery of pre-built, production ready shaders… I think this is something that the Orbolt site was intended to help…
Yes, I do think that is the point of the Orbolt store. To slowly, but surely create a library of tools and materials to use and learn from. I guess that is a good way of approaching it. Maybe it would make sense to talk about which shaders would be great to discover and use. Maybe it would make sense to encite competition amongst senior users to provide great free shaders.
arctor I know for a fact that the developers are aware of most of these issues but it all comes down to resources…
I think that we could help the developers (resource-wise) by discussing details and pros and cons of possible solutions.
I also think that some issues cannot be really fixed by (normal) users. Specifically everything that comes down to basic interface principles and usability. - Stuff like preview pictures on (VEX) nodes. - Such things should be discussed and analyzed thoroughly, before anybody even considers implementation. I think Houdini does many things much better than the competition and the concept that users make their own tools is very strong, but I think parts of Houdini are a bit dated.
I had to look up what RFE means. ^^ I don't think Requests get much attention without proper community support. I also explained in quite a lot of detail why I believe it is important to discuss all problems of the same type at once. What is wrong with improved controls? What is wrong with improved workflows? Every serious and big enough 3D company that I know hires people to make better tools, so that all artists can do their work faster and easier. It is an investment that pays off for them. Does a painter need to make his own paint to create great works of art? Does a photographer need to be able to assemble a camera from the tinyest parts to make great photographs? - Whoever can make their materials, still retains an advantage. But everyone, including the biggest experts, can work faster with better tools. We would be able to create more and at better quailty. At Google they write tools in python, not assembly. And those who want to learn about the details, can still learn better from great examples than from pure theory or a very limited amount of mediocre examples. Why fight for the right to work in a more cumbersome way? Why resist progress that is already here and will steam roll you if you try to stand against it? ^^
@MartybNz I kind of agree. I would like to be able to control/create substances from within Houdini. But I suppose it would also be possible to just immitate the functionality and workflow inside of Houdini, without the need to develop some sort of plug-in. This sort of tool seems essential to me. And it does not seem very wise to to make essential tools third-party plug-ins. On the other hand, you are right and the next better tool is around the next corner. So probably a plug-in system would be the wiser choice after all… I don't know.^^ Would be nice to hear more opinions on this.^^
Another point: We know, that after a certain point in shading, textures are far more important than the shading.
Substance Designer is a fully procedural texture generator. It is faster and more powerfull than any Houdini workflow for procedural texture generation (COPs anyone?). All of its presets result in better materials than most of the material presets from Side FX. And it has tons of them. In combination with substance Painter (a step that should be procedural in Houdini) the tool gives brilliant results in a comperatively short amount of time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ETs6v9HlVk [youtube.com]
Look at Quixel NDO and DDO (the whole Quixel suite, actually). It is a poorly implemented bunch of Photoshop filters, but the workflow is fully procedural and the results can be great. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyJJAp17K-Y [youtube.com]
I see no reason why Houdini would not be able to do better. And I see no reason why anyone would use an inferior tool, if a better one is available.
DASD MartybNz, please elaborate what workflows could be hindered. I think that would be an important addition to the topic and exactly a thing that would be worth discussing.
Nothing will be hindered by the additions you are talking about, but not all workflows need those things. i.e. it works currently.
Ah yes, my bad for misunderstanding.^^
- I was hoping people would also come out with old grievances and old ideas. Or current problems they didn't want to talk about. And then maybe people will start talking more and more and start designing better solutions… Like in the modelling improvements thread.
I was aware that some of the stuff has been requested and discussed before. Never the less, I feel that it is important to colllect all problems and look for a systematic common solution.
Many updates/upgrades to big software packages fail rather miserably, because tools are being added and patched in, while the whole segment needs an overhaul. For example, in Maya they rather recently added new modelling tools. They added a whole tab of modelling tools. And the funny part is, that the tools are significantly slower than before and incomplete. You still have to go through old modelling menus to get to the old tools you frequently use. 3DS Max is even worse for the same reason.
If we want real improvement, we have to talk about all problems of the same family at the same time. Only then will we be able construct satisfying solutions. For this reason, I invite everyone to discuss related topics, here.
MartybNz, please elaborate what workflows could be hindered. I think that would be an important addition to the topic and exactly a thing that would be worth discussing.
- A fitRand function that essentially does: fit01(rand( SEED ), NEWMIN , NEWMAX )
- A procedural face-rig (script) that would show how to procedurally generate bone chains.
- A procedural rig node, that generates bones based geometry. For example you would plug an L-system tree in there and you would get an exportable rig for that tree. ^^
- The option that Houdini Engine reads geometry copied with a copy-node as instanced geometry (and treats it that way in something like Unity). As far as I understand, packed primitves are a step in this direction or are even supposed to do that, but I haven't quite figured out how.
- And I sccond the community help file reference thing, from the post above.^^
Hi everyone, First off, I really love where Houdini is going and what artist can do with it. I have the deepest respect for for all people working at Side Effects and everyone that uses Houdini. I may not know everything about all topics that I am talking about, but that is exactly my point.
That said, I am frustrated with Houdini's approach to everything concerned rendering and I sincerely hope to rattle some cages, so that we may get some serious improvements in the future.
Rendering is quite possibly the most essential step of any 3D process, but every part of it in Houdini is antiquated or requires incredible effort to learn. I am coming from a background in Maya and 3DS Max and you might say, that I am just spoiled, but I know it is possible to offer premade modules that are noob-friendly, fast to use, efficient and give beautiful results, while still offering granular precise control. 1. Why not make one ueber-shader builder of each type of Material (atmosphere, procedural, surface, etc) and give them presets. - That way you can quickly, switch between presets to see what changes. - Of course, these presets should attempt to use the same inputs, so that when I have a texture in the diffuse slot, it should be in all the diffuse slots of all the presets, when I switch around. Furthermore you should be able to dive into every preset to see how it works and to modify it if necessary. This would greatly help the user to learn. 2.A: VEX context should have the option to give a (flexible) preview above each node. Particulary whenever textures are involved it is helpful to just see what effect you are causing with each node. This is modern industry standard and greatly helps to organize and to work efficiently. 2.B:Not to mention that diversifying the look of all (VEX) nodes, or at least increasing the size of their icons (or even keeping the size of icons constan until you zoom out too far and they overlap), would greatly improve readability of networks. 3. Furthermore there should be a better library of better premade materials. I know this has been called for before. Standard Materials should include: Paper, Concrete, Clay, Car paint, Gold, Water, Glass, Diamond, Mirror, Emissive, Carbon, Silver, Iron, Rusty Iron, Brushed Metal, Chrome, Wall Paint (fully procedural with paint splashes and all), Brick (with fully procedural binds bump maps etc), Rubber, Plastic, Polished Wood, and more. You can call this my lazyness, but there are two great reason to include this sort of thing: - Teach by example. - Every company has deadlines and time is money. 4. There should be standard Materials that immitate modern gaming engine standards. Particulary Materials that are the same as the Unity 5 Standard Material and the Unreal 4 Standard Material and work with the same maps. This should be even more obvious with the possibility for application in Houdini Engine. 5. Takes, bundles, flipbook, visibility nodes, layers? Even if all these things were necessary, the user should have a simple centralized control and a simple overview over the functions and purposes of these things. One menu to rule them all. One menu to bind them… One menu to control everything that controls what gets rendered where, how and why. 5.B. Implement preview-options into the menus so we get a rough idea of what we work on. 5.C Baking anything (to textures) is entirely unnecessarily complicated. Micromesh rendering can be used to render to textures - How? Why? Why do I need to have a specifically named camera in the scene when I don't even use it? - Why can I not have a menu to select, what to geometry to bake from, which geometry to bake to, and what and how to bake? Standard maps should include Diffuse, Specular, Normal, Height, Ambient Occlusion, Cavity, etc. and an option to bake custom designed properties baked in a custom designed way. There should also be an option to use a standard cage or a custom mesh. And of course, It should be possible to bake animations.
I hope this thread will result in some lively discussion of my ideas. I also hope, that I will not be shot down by people who have invested a great deal of time and pain into learning these things for themselves. Nobody wants to diminish your achievements. I strongly believe that it would be better for every Houdini expert, if the tool became a more viable choice for more companies, by simply being more user friendly.
SOP.: - An option that makes remesh generate nice quads instead of triangles. - Edgde divide: Remove shared edges should (optionally) leave holes in geomtery and not destroy essential edges. - An option in the bevel sop so that only bevels cusped edges and treats non-cusped edges like continious faces.
- Layout UV shells - A simple node that gives you different options to layout UVs in UV space. More and possibly better layout algorythm options would be great, too. - Generally better tools to work with edges and more nodes understanding edge group input.
Shading/rendering: - A modern PBR material (and presets) similar to what is used in newer game engines like Unreal 4. With Roughness and Reflectivity inputs…
COP.: - Foreach cop - shift cop (as in photoshop): shifting means whatever you move within the canvas will reappear on the other end.
Please inform me via PM if any of these nodes and options already exist.^^
I know this is probably old and forgotten, but I just wanted to thank everyone and add a little (probably obvious ): You can use a vertex node to feed the vertex split and unwrapped UVs back into the original geo.
- I think it is quite sad you need to hack a UV-layout from Houdini, when they could just make a UV layout node with code they already have.
* Sop-nodes to procedurally generate rigs from within a sop-network. - Please point me towards tutorials/guides if that is already possible.
* A random function with rand01(seed source path, seed source offset value,minimum, maximum) - Now that I think about that, I should have made it myself…