I am scaling pollys and no matter whether I set the control to local or global, I sometimes get the wierdest effect. almost like the center of the poly has been moved to somewhere else. It will translate and scale or sometimes it will seem like I am executing a skew command at the same time. This gets very annoying when it happens. I was wondering if anyone else ran into this and what they might have done to fix it.

Which sop are you seeing this with? I never noticed it myself. Except sometimes if you do a non-uniform scale on a poly that isn't aligned to the world axis it adds an rotation that it shouldn't.

I see it happening with the edit sop. It's my favorite next to Polyextrude

Simon
Except sometimes if you do a non-uniform scale on a poly that isn't aligned to the world axis it adds an rotation that it shouldn't.

I'm certain that's what he's talking about. If you try to do non-uniform scaling when the handle is not aligned to the world axis your geometry goes bonkers (the skewing effect). In my humble opinion it's a big pain in the butt and AFAIK this problem has been around since forever.

Some qualifiers: If your geometry is “aligned” to the world axis and you select and rotate it, and then do a non-uniform scale it works fine.
If you select geometry that is not aligned to the world axis, and you detach your handle and line it up with your model to do a non-uniform scale, then you will find that you run into this problem.

Yes, this problem is massive pain to modelers - please fix it, SESI… :roll:

It's a pain in the arse never mind the modelers! :?
I've brought this up so many times, I think they are sick of me asking. Sesi kept telling me it was just rounding errors - Hmmmmmmm, that's one hell of a rounding error.

DaJuice

Simon
Except sometimes if you do a non-uniform scale on a poly that isn't aligned to the world axis it adds an rotation that it shouldn't.

I'm certain that's what he's talking about. If you try to do non-uniform scaling when the handle is not aligned to the world axis your geometry goes bonkers (the skewing effect). In my humble opinion it's a big pain in the butt and AFAIK this problem has been around since forever.

Some qualifiers: If your geometry is “aligned” to the world axis and you select and rotate it, and then do a non-uniform scale it works fine.
If you select geometry that is not aligned to the world axis, and you detach your handle and line it up with your model to do a non-uniform scale, then you will find that you run into this problem.

Keeping the geometry aligned to the world axis? That kind of limits us to create cubes doesn't it? Also, having the ability to make “align to world axis” a default would be a boon.

harlequin
Also, having the ability to make “align to world axis” a default would be a boon.

hey harlequin,

if you check out the handles section in prefs there is a “default handle alignment to world” checkbox..

deecue

harlequin
Also, having the ability to make “align to world axis” a default would be a boon.

hey harlequin,

if you check out the handles section in prefs there is a “default handle alignment to world” checkbox..

I must have missed that. There are so many little nooks and crannies in Houdini. Easy to miss something.

Control RMB everywhere, that will take you to most of the nooks if not all the crannies.

Hi..

What a coinsidence..
Yesterday I suffered all day with this problem, my project is suffering from
these kind of nooks and crannies.
Getting objects to face the correct direction, relocating pivot points, diconnecting
handles etc…
Hey, is it me or is houdini just a pain for modeling. I'm always having trouble
with construction planes, grids, local and global etc…

I really need to understand the difference between SOP level construction,
Object level construction plane and Subnet level construction planes,
once you have SOPs within Geometries and Subnets, the scaling, translating
and rotating any issues become exponentially problematic, the problems
have had me rebuilding networks for days/weeks. Maybe that's why houdini
is mainly used for FX, day to day modeling and animating within houdini
simply requires a amount of time of expertise/resources for it to be a
viable tool for anything other than FX.

I'm really starting to consider the facts, if the tool gets in the way of the job,
then it's time to painfully consider another tool…

Regards
Tom

I personally think Houdini is damn good for modeling. I love the workflow and the network is a nice luxury to have, even if you're just going to use it as a “construction history”. Yeah, there are some rough edges, for example the whole orientation picking dealy (please just make a keyboard toggle for local/global handles or something), and the bug discussed in this thread. But the nooks and crannies don't bother me, it's just a matter of learning what's available and where it is.

Your mileage may vary yada yada…

btw I'd like to see viewport subdivision surfaces in Houdini…cuz they're sexy, and nicer to work with too I imagine.

Harlequin, what operator you using? I think you might be mixing up some of the terminology.

If you're talking about the Edit SOP, then you just need to go to the parameter pane for the Edit SOP. Scroll all the way down to the bottom and click on the button “Commit Transform/Peak Changes”. Now when you continue on, you shouldn't get that skewing effect.

The short answer is that the skewing has to do with the transform order. eg. If you rotate geometry first and then scale or vice versa, the result is different. The problem with the Edit (and Transform) SOPs is that they have a fixed transform order which is dictated by the Transform Order parameter. However, sometimes we forget about this and then manipulate the handle in the opposite order, giving counter-intuitive results. So the workaround is to either start a new change in the Edit SOP or in the case of the Transform SOP, append another one.

Sorry edward, but I couldn't get that to work. I probably misunderstood something
When you click the ‘Commit Transform/Peak Changes’ button the handle reverts to the world axis, which is no use. It won't do this if you uncheck the ‘Reset on Each New Operation’ box, but it's still no gouda. I've also tried different transformation orders but I can't seem to make it work.

Ok, to make sure we're on the same page, here's the scenario:
1. I've got a box.
2. I append an Edit SOP and rotate the box to an arbitrary angle.
3. I Click outside the box then reselect it. The handle is now aligned with the world axis.
4. I detach the handle and use orientation picking to line it up with the box (or eyeball it and do it manually, whatever).
5. At this point no matter what, I can't seem to get non-uniform scaling to perform as expected. Could you maybe do a step-by-step?

I was thinking of a different problem then. For your scenario, it's impossible to represent what you want as a single rotation/scale after having committed the changes. I think to do that, we might need shear parameters. Either that, or an extra set of post-rotation parameters. I guess the TransformAxis SOP could help.

Actually Edward, if you do the simplest thing in the world -

*/ grid, make a rectangle
*/ transform sop and rotate it 45 degrees
*/ edit sop, detach handle, turn it 45 so the arrows lie along the length of the rectangle, reattach, scale along the long axis.

It skews horribly. Even if there is a good reason for this, the handle is just plain lying to you about how it's going to scale.

Idunno, I only hope when we're all using Houdini 10 this won't still be an issue. btw, I just fired up max 3.1 (several years old now) and it doesn't seem to have much of a problem with this.

[img.photobucket.com]

DaJuice
Idunno, I only hope when we're all using Houdini 10 this won't still be an issue. btw, I just fired up max 3.1 (several years old now) and it doesn't seem to have much of a problem with this.

[img.photobucket.com]

People have been complaining about this problem since before I became a Houdini user. I know because I read the dates of the posts about it. I just hope that we aren't complaining about this problem when they come out with version 7……..D'OH!!!