Ok, I am trying to give Houdini a shot with modelling via polys and subd's. I am coming from an XSI/Mirai background and I'm finding that the workflow in Houdini is not jibing with me.

I am sure there is something I am not doing right, but it seems like the procedural node based strength of Houdini only gets in the way when trying to do fast speed modelling.

For instance, I create a geometry, delete default file op, create a box, and apply an Edit to it. As far as I know it is an Edit op that one uses to do general T/R/S tweaks on the verts/edges/polys of a polygonal structure. So far so good.

But lets say I want to extrude a face. Ok, I do TAB>Polygon>Extrude. That works, but as far as I can tell the Extrude op doesn't have any visible handle to use, despite an icon showing up for it on the left hand toolbar. So I have to go into its parameter page and tweak its values until I get the result I want, and then return to the Edit. And for love nor money can I figure out how to scale the resulting face from the Extrude without going back up to the Edit op and selecting its face and scaling it. And one more thing, when I do an Edit on a face and try to say translate, how can I get the axis to be local like in XSI?

Just with that alone I have lost the speed I can get out of a workflow in say XSI or Mirai, or even Wings3D.

So, this is not a knock on Houdini, because I am almost certain I am doing something wrong. What can I do to get the Extrude op to show a handle, and does anyone have any timelaps video of poly modelling in Houdini?

I know it must get better than this right?

For videos you can look here: http://www.vislab.usyd.edu.au/sidefx/houdini_video/by_topic/modeling/index.html [vislab.usyd.edu.au]
The workflow for subD modelling is explained quite well.

Dragos

Use PolyExtrude. Extrude is OK for extruding text. Watch the video as recommended above.

There is also the Houdini Online class over at 3DBuzz [3dbuzz.com].

Cheers!
steven