Thanks for the tips arctor and adamj, now it works.
But I am agree I still don't understand the benefits of this new geometry workflow.
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Technical Discussion » Paint Capture issues.
- lisux
- 581 posts
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Technical Discussion » Move tool and characters
- lisux
- 581 posts
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Hi SESI.
çi have been playing around with bones and the move tool and I really missed a lot the pose tool in H8. I know the pose tool in H9 still exists but by default the s hotkey is now set to select instead of pose and I think that the pose tool regarding to bones is more useful that the move tool.
Will better to have a more intelligent move tool that when you select a bone or a null that is an affector goal autometically the pose tool for this bone chain is activated, in case you are using translation the goal translation handler appears, otherwise if you are using rotation the bones rotation handler appear.
Conceptually for an animator I think is much better because you can change between IK or FX almost using translation or rotation, which the correct way of thinking, animate with IK translating an affector or animate with FK rotating bones.
Also the tool should remember if fot that chain the blend or twist handler have been activated and keep them visible even if the user is using rotations instead of translating the affector.
I think this could be a really usefull RFE.
In the mean time is there any way using scripting to modify the move tool beheviour?
Thanks
çi have been playing around with bones and the move tool and I really missed a lot the pose tool in H8. I know the pose tool in H9 still exists but by default the s hotkey is now set to select instead of pose and I think that the pose tool regarding to bones is more useful that the move tool.
Will better to have a more intelligent move tool that when you select a bone or a null that is an affector goal autometically the pose tool for this bone chain is activated, in case you are using translation the goal translation handler appears, otherwise if you are using rotation the bones rotation handler appear.
Conceptually for an animator I think is much better because you can change between IK or FX almost using translation or rotation, which the correct way of thinking, animate with IK translating an affector or animate with FK rotating bones.
Also the tool should remember if fot that chain the blend or twist handler have been activated and keep them visible even if the user is using rotations instead of translating the affector.
I think this could be a really usefull RFE.
In the mean time is there any way using scripting to modify the move tool beheviour?
Thanks
Technical Discussion » Paint Capture issues.
- lisux
- 581 posts
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I am exerimenting similar problems too with the paint capture layer tool.
The thing is that in H9 it seems to not work properly, moreover when you want to previz your model at the same time is deformed, the tool puts the paint capture node before the deform node and set the display flag to this last one so you can´t use the paint node directly, you have to change the display flag manually, but then you lose the deformation … Is pain and a big problem because this makes the paint capture tool very buggy and hard o use.
Maybe your problem is related to this.
Cheers
The thing is that in H9 it seems to not work properly, moreover when you want to previz your model at the same time is deformed, the tool puts the paint capture node before the deform node and set the display flag to this last one so you can´t use the paint node directly, you have to change the display flag manually, but then you lose the deformation … Is pain and a big problem because this makes the paint capture tool very buggy and hard o use.
Maybe your problem is related to this.
Cheers
Houdini Lounge » Linux install made easy
- lisux
- 581 posts
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Hi SESI.
Looking around in the net I have seen one thing that seems to be one of the best solutions to create multiplatform installers that perfectly integrate the install process in the host OO.SS.
Is this:
http://bitrock.com/home.html [bitrock.com]
It can make native installers for Windows and Mac OSX , and native graphical installers for linux, even it can create RPM or deb packages automatically.
So if you can integrate this tool in the Houdini build system the users can get several options to install the app.
I think this is really necessary to ease the installation on Linux.
What do you think?
Looking around in the net I have seen one thing that seems to be one of the best solutions to create multiplatform installers that perfectly integrate the install process in the host OO.SS.
Is this:
http://bitrock.com/home.html [bitrock.com]
It can make native installers for Windows and Mac OSX , and native graphical installers for linux, even it can create RPM or deb packages automatically.
So if you can integrate this tool in the Houdini build system the users can get several options to install the app.
I think this is really necessary to ease the installation on Linux.
What do you think?
Houdini Lounge » Align object coordinate system
- lisux
- 581 posts
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Hi SESI and houdiniks.
How can I align the coordinate system of an object to match exactly another for example a couple of things yo ucan do in Maya and is not easy to do in Houdini, at least for me:
-In Maya you have the joint orient tool, there is something similar in Houdini, or what is the easiest way to do it? At the moment I am using the bone tool to do this.
-Orient constraint in Maya can change the local coordinate system in base of another, really useful to align one object to another, now I am making a mix of parenting, clean transforms, etc … but is there something like align or orient to other object, specially for the handlers, I have tried start orientation picking, but I can't manage it to work properly. This will be very useful to align for example the Z axis to the Z axis of another object and then have the same rotation axis. Some clues.
I a more interested in solutions at object level where almost all the character work is done.
Thanks.
How can I align the coordinate system of an object to match exactly another for example a couple of things yo ucan do in Maya and is not easy to do in Houdini, at least for me:
-In Maya you have the joint orient tool, there is something similar in Houdini, or what is the easiest way to do it? At the moment I am using the bone tool to do this.
-Orient constraint in Maya can change the local coordinate system in base of another, really useful to align one object to another, now I am making a mix of parenting, clean transforms, etc … but is there something like align or orient to other object, specially for the handlers, I have tried start orientation picking, but I can't manage it to work properly. This will be very useful to align for example the Z axis to the Z axis of another object and then have the same rotation axis. Some clues.
I a more interested in solutions at object level where almost all the character work is done.
Thanks.
Houdini Lounge » Announcing Houdini for Mac beta
- lisux
- 581 posts
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As a linux user I think is great to have houdini in another platform more options for the users and the studios, is always better for everybody.
A little off topic, but something that comes t omy mind now:
One thing that will be great too will to ease the installation of Houdini in Linux, specially for newbies.
If Houdini will be distributed in rpm and deb packages and tarballs for thoso who want to install everything manually or use the old method, will be great.
Create deb and rpm packages can be an automated thing included in the building process so no one needs to deal with packaging on evey new build,
These packages can be only containers with almost, or none dependency, only to automate the copy of the files in the correct places and integrate the tool in the desktop, so this way you can have a deb for all the debia nbased systems and an rpm for all the redhat based systems.
This will allow users to install the software with one click in any linux box, very for new users.
A little off topic, but something that comes t omy mind now:
One thing that will be great too will to ease the installation of Houdini in Linux, specially for newbies.
If Houdini will be distributed in rpm and deb packages and tarballs for thoso who want to install everything manually or use the old method, will be great.
Create deb and rpm packages can be an automated thing included in the building process so no one needs to deal with packaging on evey new build,
These packages can be only containers with almost, or none dependency, only to automate the copy of the files in the correct places and integrate the tool in the desktop, so this way you can have a deb for all the debia nbased systems and an rpm for all the redhat based systems.
This will allow users to install the software with one click in any linux box, very for new users.
Houdini Lounge » Curves and PolyBevel problem
- lisux
- 581 posts
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jeffNop is not a fuse problem.
Perhaps you need to fuse the points before the Poly Bevel…
RFE: I really like the way that SketchUp shows the back side of polygons as a light blue (they support two sided shaders in OpenGL). You can quickly tell when you have a reversed face.
Try this simple thing, create a poly curve in the a plane, ZY, ZX, whatever, then add a poly bevel to all the points, it creates one extra edge per point, that's correct for 0 repetitions, now increase the number of repetitions in the poly bevel op, no more edges are created, this is the problem, it doesn't smooth more.
Ans yes, will be great to have something similar to sketchup to preview back polys.
Houdini Lounge » RFE: Wheel button in viewers panes too.
- lisux
- 581 posts
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Hi SESI.
I have found that having the wheel button, the button in the parameters pane that give you access to defaults, presets, edit parameter interface, etc. In the viewer pane too will be really useful when modelling.
For example the transform SOP have several presets really useful to place the pivot in the centroid, and I have added more useful presets, but I always have to go to a parameters pane to activate this presets.
It will be useful to have a button, in the viewer pane too, that opens a popup menu with the toolbox partameters, those who first appears when you press p in the viewer pane, when you press something or release a slider in this popup window it disappears, this allows to have like a volatile parameters tool window.
Thanks
I have found that having the wheel button, the button in the parameters pane that give you access to defaults, presets, edit parameter interface, etc. In the viewer pane too will be really useful when modelling.
For example the transform SOP have several presets really useful to place the pivot in the centroid, and I have added more useful presets, but I always have to go to a parameters pane to activate this presets.
It will be useful to have a button, in the viewer pane too, that opens a popup menu with the toolbox partameters, those who first appears when you press p in the viewer pane, when you press something or release a slider in this popup window it disappears, this allows to have like a volatile parameters tool window.
Thanks
Houdini Lounge » Curves and PolyBevel problem
- lisux
- 581 posts
- Offline
Hi houdiniks.
Making some modeling with Houdini I have found one problem which I am not sure if is my mistake or something wrong in the PolyBevel SOP.
I make a curve, or a poly circle for example, and then I want o soft some corners, so I select the points for the corners and apply a poly bevel over them, then it can make only one repetition nevertheless I increase the repetition parameter, giving me only one new edge and not several edges to smooth the corner. I have test with all the bevel options, low/high density round, etc … But nothing.
Am I making something wrong or is simply a problem in the bevel tool.
Thanks
Making some modeling with Houdini I have found one problem which I am not sure if is my mistake or something wrong in the PolyBevel SOP.
I make a curve, or a poly circle for example, and then I want o soft some corners, so I select the points for the corners and apply a poly bevel over them, then it can make only one repetition nevertheless I increase the repetition parameter, giving me only one new edge and not several edges to smooth the corner. I have test with all the bevel options, low/high density round, etc … But nothing.
Am I making something wrong or is simply a problem in the bevel tool.
Thanks
Houdini Lounge » Show XZ in Transform handler hotkey problem
- lisux
- 581 posts
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Also in H8 I used to have hotkeys for the Transform SOP, Blast etc ….
Now many of this are done using hotkeys to tools contained in the shels.
But I haven't been able to assign a hotkey for example to the Transform SOP.
It is still possible to do this in H9.
Thanks.
Now many of this are done using hotkeys to tools contained in the shels.
But I haven't been able to assign a hotkey for example to the Transform SOP.
It is still possible to do this in H9.
Thanks.
Houdini Lounge » Show XZ in Transform handler hotkey problem
- lisux
- 581 posts
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rmageeOh! man that's another of the hidden shortcuts, is great, I don't remember if is included in the Houdini Spot book by craigm if not is a candidate to be included in a second edition.
There is an existing hotkey for this. Press Ctrl and click on the axis line that is the normal direction for the plane you want to limit yourself to. Press Ctrl and click on the center to go back to normal.
Thanks for the tip Robert
Houdini Lounge » Show XZ in Transform handler hotkey problem
- lisux
- 581 posts
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Hi houdiniks.
I have set a hotkey to the Show Translate Plane ->XZ option in the transform handler that shows the XZ plane in the translate handler.
Quite useful, the problem is that the hotkey appears in the popup menu when I RMB on the handler but when I hit the key, j in this case, nothing happens.
Anybody have tried to assign a hotkey to this feature before?
Thanks
I have set a hotkey to the Show Translate Plane ->XZ option in the transform handler that shows the XZ plane in the translate handler.
Quite useful, the problem is that the hotkey appears in the popup menu when I RMB on the handler but when I hit the key, j in this case, nothing happens.
Anybody have tried to assign a hotkey to this feature before?
Thanks
Technical Discussion » 3rd Party Renderers (3Delight and MR)
- lisux
- 581 posts
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Technical Discussion » 3rd Party Renderers (3Delight and MR)
- lisux
- 581 posts
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Personally I can't find any reason to go to another render working with houdini.
Now I am working in a studio that is complitelly MentalRay, for years, and we are finishing a project that is everything water everyewhere, all the shot is full of reflections and reflactions, and man, Mantra get nices renders in at least the same time as MentalRay, and we are working with very big scenes in HD, so if Mantra can compete with MR in raytracing and is still better with Motion blur and displacements, and is maybe the best integrated renderer when you know a little of Houdini, why to use another?
Give it a try, it's not easy at the beggining but at least as better as MR, and very very close to RMan.
Now I am working in a studio that is complitelly MentalRay, for years, and we are finishing a project that is everything water everyewhere, all the shot is full of reflections and reflactions, and man, Mantra get nices renders in at least the same time as MentalRay, and we are working with very big scenes in HD, so if Mantra can compete with MR in raytracing and is still better with Motion blur and displacements, and is maybe the best integrated renderer when you know a little of Houdini, why to use another?
Give it a try, it's not easy at the beggining but at least as better as MR, and very very close to RMan.
Technical Discussion » RFE: Offscreen flipbooking
- lisux
- 581 posts
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jason_iversenI don't find a way to eliminate this from H9, Houdini needs an opengl renderer, even nmore when now you can have opengl shaders. This will be veryuseful not only for offline flippboks to make fast effects like sprites directly rendered from opengl, or to make fast animatics for clients, etc …
Without a doubt this is sorely needed…
The only way we all agreed we could retire the old OpenGL/Scene ROPs was to able to replace it with flipbooking under the understanding that flipbooking would both have a ROP (something we've put together here temporarily utilizing the viewwrtie command), and also be able to render to off-screen buffers.
Very useful.
Technical Discussion » Adding items to the menus?
- lisux
- 581 posts
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YesI also think more scripting in the ui will be great.
In the mean time maybe if you want to adapt you naming convention fo rthe autosave feature yo ucan use the next environment variable:
Hope this helps
In the mean time maybe if you want to adapt you naming convention fo rthe autosave feature yo ucan use the next environment variable:
opteron11 sh015/h_015 > hconfig -h HOUDINI_AUTOSAVE_FILENAME
HOUDINI_AUTOSAVE_FILENAME
A template for the filename used for auto save file backups when the
“Numbered Backup” auto save option is set. Two variables are required:
$BASENAME, which will be replaced by the name of the file being saved
without its extension; and $N, which is replaced by the backup number.
$N can be followed by a single digit which is interpreted as the number
of digits to be used in the backup number; numbers with fewer digits than
this will be padded with zeroes. Default value is ‘$BASENAME_auto$N’.
Hope this helps
Houdini Lounge » new open source render queue manager for Houdini on Linux
- lisux
- 581 posts
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Great news Dave
More render queues for Hou8dini is great! More solutions for small studios.
More render queues for Hou8dini is great! More solutions for small studios.
Technical Discussion » How to add render properties to many objects at a time
- lisux
- 581 posts
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Hi SESI.
We have many geometry objects in a hierarchy ob subnets created byu the collada importer.
Is there any way to manage rendering properties for the whole collada import, everything is below a subnet called Scene_Root, and there there is a bunch of subnets/geometry objects creating a hierarchy for the scene.
Well we need to be able to add and manages rendering properties like matte shading or phantom render in an easy way for all the objects.
What is the best way to go for this with the new properties infrastructure?
Thanks.
We have many geometry objects in a hierarchy ob subnets created byu the collada importer.
Is there any way to manage rendering properties for the whole collada import, everything is below a subnet called Scene_Root, and there there is a bunch of subnets/geometry objects creating a hierarchy for the scene.
Well we need to be able to add and manages rendering properties like matte shading or phantom render in an easy way for all the objects.
What is the best way to go for this with the new properties infrastructure?
Thanks.
Technical Discussion » Selection script in H8
- lisux
- 581 posts
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Hi houdiniks
I am making a character in H8 and I want to use the selection script feature included in the geometry and null OBJ operators.
My problem is that because all my geo and null operators are bellow the character node I can't get the correct paths.
My character is for example /obj/char1 .
All my nulls and geo ops are bellow this node, and there I have a geo operator that contents a font SOP, the thing I want to do is to change the font message in base the null I heve just selected.
So every null has a select script like:
opparm ./metaball_text/font1 text ( “2” )
When I am into the character this code works perfectly.
The problem is that an animator works at obj level, not into the characters and then the code fails because the script instead of being excuted at /obj/char1 is executed at /obj.
I have tried many ways to get the path to my fontSOP but because it seems I can't execute expressions in this text field I can't get it from the $SELECT_NAME and $SELECT_PATH variables.
The ovious way to ge the pathh is with the next expression:
strreplace($SELECT_PATH, $SELECT_NAME, “metaball_text”) + “/font1”
But when I put it between backticks in the text field it isn't executed. In the textport works perfectly.
Another proble is that I have tried to source an script contained in the HDA with:
source opdefobj/char?selectScript
But again don't work.
Any clues about this?
Thanks
I am making a character in H8 and I want to use the selection script feature included in the geometry and null OBJ operators.
My problem is that because all my geo and null operators are bellow the character node I can't get the correct paths.
My character is for example /obj/char1 .
All my nulls and geo ops are bellow this node, and there I have a geo operator that contents a font SOP, the thing I want to do is to change the font message in base the null I heve just selected.
So every null has a select script like:
opparm ./metaball_text/font1 text ( “2” )
When I am into the character this code works perfectly.
The problem is that an animator works at obj level, not into the characters and then the code fails because the script instead of being excuted at /obj/char1 is executed at /obj.
I have tried many ways to get the path to my fontSOP but because it seems I can't execute expressions in this text field I can't get it from the $SELECT_NAME and $SELECT_PATH variables.
The ovious way to ge the pathh is with the next expression:
strreplace($SELECT_PATH, $SELECT_NAME, “metaball_text”) + “/font1”
But when I put it between backticks in the text field it isn't executed. In the textport works perfectly.
Another proble is that I have tried to source an script contained in the HDA with:
source opdefobj/char?selectScript
But again don't work.
Any clues about this?
Thanks
Houdini Lounge » MentalRay in H9, Where is it?
- lisux
- 581 posts
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WolfwoodYes sorry is my fault, I have shopvisible statement in my 123.cmd that is hidden all the mentalray stuff, I forget this.
I see it on Linux in both 9.0.793 and 9.1
Thanks
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