……..for crying out loud, how do I get that transformation handle for light object?? I don't want the orientation/cone/frustum handle. Just the simple xform handle…

Hit ‘s’ and then pick the light, right-click.

ack,… ops: I've been working with that with the Bones and for some reason ‘s’ never hit my mind. This true qualified as another one of those head banging moment.

off I go.

Thanks!

Actually the “s” key thing is one of favourite axes to grind. i would wish “s” was set to Select mode only, and not “favourite operation”. All around the place I see people getting very frustrated hitting “s” and not seeing that by some obscure chance the favourite operation has become the View state. I'd love to motivate that “s” gets assigned to Select Operation and some other key gets assigned to Favourite Operation.

This type of confusion frustrates and scares off people not used to using the Viewport.

Where can I set the “favourite operation” in Houdini 6.1?

In the Viewer pane's Pane menu, go to Toolbars and Controls > Operator Toolbar. Make sure that's turned on. Now in the operator toolbar, there should be the first icon starting from the left. Right-click on it and choose your favourite one.

edward
In the Viewer pane's Pane menu, go to Toolbars and Controls > Operator Toolbar. Make sure that's turned on. Now in the operator toolbar, there should be the first icon starting from the left. Right-click on it and choose your favourite one.

Thanks!

There is no equivallent to the “select” tool in the object editor. It only exists in the SOP context. I like the pose tool being the default as it gives you the ability to select plus you get the transform handles plus any object-specific handles.

There are actually three things that cross people up in the object viewer. when first getting in to Houdini when coming from Maya:
- esc doesn't get them back to the previous selection but bails completely out of what you were doing and in to the view state.
- hitting the “s” key doesn't just select objects but gets you in to the pose tool by default in H6.5 and H7. Maya users are used to just selecting objects then picking the transform, scale or rotate modes to modify.
- You can't directly add a sphere, tube, or any primitive type in the object viewport.

Actually, there are more but these relate to the current thread.

Some new users just breeze right past these differences and have no problems but other users that have to pop back and forth between mainly maya and sometimes houdini have problems with this.

The reverse is also true though. Might is right?

Yeah, coming from XSI and Maya I'm still handicaped in Houdini.