Hi all,

This is my first post. All I wanna say is I really love this app, I use Max, Maya on a daily basis at work but Houdini is simply the most powerful and intuitive, unlike what others claim.

I have lots of questions about it, hope you guys can help me out.

So I am wondering if there is a notion of top/pinned nodes in Houdini.

As an example say, that I have these nodes:

a -> b -> c -> d -> subdivide

So later on I add a new operation (through the UI), so it's not like I am adding the node directly but houdini does it for me if that makes sense.

In that case the new operation is added after the subdivide node. But I want the subdivide node to always be the last so the result would have this subdivision surface result for instance.

Does it make sense?





Thanks.

There isn't really a need for what you describe, Houdini isn't built like the Modifer Stack in Max(thanx Bok Choy!), the network you're building is a completely branch able network that isn't based on a stack structure. At any time, you can display or render(can be two different nodes if you wish) any node in the stack. In fact, frequently you will want to go back and insert SOPs in the middle of a stream, branch things off, etc. Another common tool is to display the final node as a template while you're editing an earlier part of the structure, it will respond as you work.

Hopefully this makes sense. Work through some of the tutorials, they make a lot of use out of this.

Cheers,

J.C.

I think what he means is that when adding nodes with TAB while in the viewport on object level houdini appends the node to the current node bearing the display flag and then sets the display flag to the newly created node.

For example, create a cube and from the shelf select poly extrude. It will create the polyextrude node and append it to the cube.

Now if he is working on a model and wants to see the subdivided result this becomes annoying. The question is if there a way to tell houdini to always insert new nodes created via the viewport before a specific “pinned down” node.

Wiring up nodes by hand for every modeling operation gets boring really quickly.

Personally I've always made a 2nd object that grabs the output of the model I'm working on with an object-merge and append a subdivide there. That way I also do the mirroring.

But it would be nice to know if the pinning was possible. Anyone?

Best regards,
Fabian

have you checked out the spoon tutorial in the Apprentice Blog? It was designed to show you how you can set one node like the subdivide node as the display node then when you click back on an earlier node you can see the subdivided result but work on the mesh. You can select points and edit them, select faces and extrude them and perform other operations that get placed inbetween the selected node and the display node.

Here is a link:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=751&Itemid=241 [sidefx.com]

when I am working on a symmetrical character I set up a mirror, then a subdivide then jump back to the node before the mirror and work on the one half of the model - you can use the shelf or tab key and the nodes will get inserted for you.

Thanks guys for replying. This is awesome. Fabian hit the nail on the head. I have been suggested Fabian's method but if I am not wrong, that means the complete duplicate of the mesh so paying double the price for one? I generally want to do things as efficient as possible (both on the technical and art side)

That being said I will try Robert's tutorial for sure.



Thanks guys.