I am new to Houdini and have been enjoying my learning experience so far. I have mostly spent my time though on the infrastructure of the app and learning about its procedural nature.

That said I have not really had a go at the poly modelling tools yet. I am coming from XSI (which I still use and enjoy greatly). Most of what I did in XSI was poly/subd modelling and I found it to be very clean and quick. XSI's toolset for poly modelling isn't quite as exhaustive as say LW or some of the script sets for Maya, but I think its power lies in its simplicity.

Is Houdini's poly modelling tools worth learning given I'm coming from XSI, or am I better off using XSI to build organic poly models and importing that into Houdini? And won't that lose some of the powerful procedural nature of Houdini?

Thanks for any thoughts on this, I just want a slightly better understanding of where Houdini stands on poly modelling before I commit learning time to that aspect of it.

I've never used XSI, but Houdini's poly-modeling abilities are very nice. It lacks some things such as select by edge loop or a bevel tool but otherwise it's very solid. Truth be told, proceduralism is not a huge deal in organic modeling (although it comes in handy sometimes). I don't really model with the network in mind, I just model how I'm used to, works fine.
One thing that I like a lot better than modeling in max is the viewport rotation (as in zoom/rotate/pan). At first it seemed unintuitive compared to max's euler style rotation because it's a bit harder to control, but once you get the hang of it, going back just feels too restrictive, as if you can't get a clear view of your model.
Anyways, I would definitly recommend giving Houdini's poly tools a shot and deciding for yourself which you're more comfortable with.

You choose among 3 different the tumbling styles in Houdini. If you like Euler (and be restricted like how DaJuice says), then “80's style tumbling” is for you. See Settings > Main Preferences > Viewports. It's really not that hard to get the hang of the default tumbling style in Houdini. Imagine a trackball centred in your viewport. You when you tumble, you're actually moving this imaginary trackball.

I happened to learn some nice point pulling things in houdini today. Try the following. First turn on your viewport construction plane. Append an Edit SOP in the viewer. Now turn _off_ your handle by tapping the ‘r’ key until it disappears. Turn off secure selection if you have it on (the ‘=’ key). Your geometry filters should be enabled in the left viewport toolbar. Now you can directly pull geometry on your model by left mouse dragging on points/prims/etc that are along your construction plane. The type of geometry you can grab follows your geo filter (ie. the 1,2,3,4,etc keys). If you hold down the ALT key while doing this, then you move perpendicular to the c-plane. If you hold down CTRL key while this, then you get 45 degree snapping.

You can do this while in the ortho views as well except the default dragging is along your ortho plane. In H6, you can use the CTRL+Right mouse menu to choose to see the bottom, back, left views as well when using the View tool. If you assign hotkeys to them, you can switch between them really fast with space+<assigned hotkey>. Personally, I just use 6, 7, 8 for them. So to switch views, I do one of space+1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 (space+5 is the uv viewport by default).

Thanks for the feedback, I will give it a go then. Truthfully I hate anything but the 80's style tumbling, it makes me dizzy and I feel like I lose my orientation. Its definitely a preference thing..

Btw, has there been no release of somekind of poly modelling op releases to fill the gap in the areas you mentioned? Maybe there has been but they're all private? Something along the lines of an MJPolyTools for Houdini, but not even quite as exhaustive..

In any case I am looking forward to giving Houdini's poly tools a go. I am most comfortable with an XSI or even Mirai method now, but it will be fun to experiment.

Much thanks for the feedback again..

To do the equivallent of the MJ Poly Tools you would need the HDK as there are no methods to dice up geometry with any of the scripting and programming tools that ship with Houdini.

The HDK (Houdini's Developer Kit) must be purchased. It is the actual soruce tree that was used to build houdini so is quite powerful. There is no API (Advanced Programmers Interface) to bridge the gap that ships with houdini like Max and Maya.

We are aware of this toolkit and see it's benefits.

Jeff,

If someone developed something like this with the HDK would all users need an HDK license to use it? Or would it be useable on any Houdini seat?

Thanks..

Everyone would be able to use it, once they installed the custom compiled SOP in a dso/ directory in the HOUDINI_PATH (or if you have set HOUDINI_DSO_PATH but not likely) like $HOME/houdini/dso.

For every major release of houdini, the author needs to compile the custom SOP in order for it to work with that version of the software. If you ran both Houdini5.5 and Houdini6.0, you would need two different versions of the dso. This is one of the reasons why we have a release specific $HOME/houdini5 and $HOME/houdini6 directory.

This is unlike custom VEX tools or OTL's which should be release independent barring any significant change in the tools embedded in your custom operators.