Doudini
Hi McNistor,
I really hope all of your stuff will get addressed. I think you have given lots of important and useful suggestions that are just missing in H.

+1 !
You've done a lot of good suggestions and I also really hope that's will be taken into account.
And, just in case, as many of theses suggestions are more or less directly inspired from Softimage, just remember that intentions are not to make a “softimoudini” software and denature it, but improve this actual good piece of software to make it more accessible and userfriendly as it can while preserving/improving its powerful procedural side .

Doudini
Hi McNistor,
I really hope all of your stuff will get addressed. I think you have given lots of important and useful suggestions that are just missing in H.
Also I can understand your frustration.

Making the tools rock solid for hard surface modelling is really a must. I dont see houdini catching up with other apps if those get not addressed or if the priority is just too low on those minor RFEs.. Snapping with shift or ctrl has been addressed by so many users. I submitted an RFE again this year (RFE #72856). But my hope for getting this are really low.

And why do we need that green and red outline with the polyextrude?? wtf. Why the blue highlight? why the follow selection green indicators? Nobody was like wow great we really need those. Nobody ever went on and sent an rfe for this. yet some dude at sesi thought its a good thing.

Also try to model something in centimeter space when your units is set to meters. Good luck with zooming in on fine details and adding polysplits.

All this works better if you do a case study of how these issues affect you working directly - otherwise it's a bit rantish.

Sorry, I dont want to rant. Just trying to report things and rfe and trying to help improve the houdini workflow for other artists.

Anyway here i recorded the issue with small geometry and the polysplit. this was also the case with polysplit::1.0 and made me model everything 10x bigger when it comes to hardsurface modelling



And here this green and red line which seem pretty useless:

Doudini
Sorry, I dont want to rant. Just trying to report things and rfe and trying to help improve the houdini workflow for other artists.

Anyway here i recorded the issue with small geometry and the polysplit. this was also the case with polysplit::1.0 and made me model everything 10x bigger when it comes to hardsurface modelling

And here this green and red line which seem pretty useless:

Thanks that is a lot clearer now - Houdini doesn't have metric measurements - it is unitless except in DOPs. So the best Rfe is to have units. Therefore the ‘cm’ scale is 1/100 of a unit modelling if I understand the video correctly.

The Red and Green lines identify the start and finish. The best Rfe is to have the preference exposed to turn them off, or reduce them like the handle glows. i.e. the glows are fine in normal non-modelling use yet modellers detest them - so have a preference for them

You have to imagine that these tools are part of the bigger Houdini landscape and thus all preferences accommodate the entire package and users - not just hard core hard surface modellers.

Edited: to fix the damn forums auto-correcting!

Hope its okay I just wanted to report back that this post has been taken note of already and broken down into various RFE by Sidefx. <3

Global/Local Transform: RFE #72380

Hello David,

The “lengthy but really good post” has already been broken down into various RFEs.

I added your name to RFE #72382. I will inform you when this is implemented.

Cheers,

Silvina

Much Love!

edited to add RFE ID

super cool! H16 will be the softimage killer. The delivery of H15.5 nailed the new tools really well, and, it was branched off H16, so looking forward to it!

Doudini,

That problem has nothing to do with units or size. I found that the PolySplit tool does not like concave surfaces, and becomes very difficult to do at any size. Move your camera inside the object and the split works.

PS. The tools can be brilliant at what they do, but if good workflow lacks, the tools will become bloated assets that nobody uses.

Attached is an animated giff showing this issue.

If the current transformations limitations will be dealt with in H16 it will be a huge step in the right direction, but hardly a Softimage killer.
There are other small but important features to be implemented in order to reach XSI's easiness and versatility of viewport gymnastics.

Looking at Werner's gif above I just remembered one which so far has not seen the light: an auto focus based on selection and the elements you added/deleted. Sculpting programs like Zb has it too. You can't expect to easily work zoomed in to add detail in a small area, when the moment you tumble around you've lost your area of focus and you constantly have to “space+F”.

agreed McNistor, that is very annoying.

Viewport zoom speed is another one I requested, but nothing yet. a Simple zoom sensitivity slider under properties would be most welcome. ID # 70764

Not auto by any means but, if you position your cursor on a primitive, a press space bar + z , it will set the viewport pivot to tumble around that primitive

Much easier than constantly losing focus in an area

not a zoom focus but something I find helpful is to place my cursor over an area I want to work on and use space+Z - this will move my viewport pivot to this point.

Werner Ziemerink
That problem has nothing to do with units or size. I found that the PolySplit tool does not like concave surfaces

Thanks Werner for that Info! You are right.
I reported it as a bug ((ID=75754)

You two (sidenimjay and arctor) have to have a telepathic link.
What is the difference between space+z and space+f? No, seriously, what is the difference? I don't observe anything substantial. In the end, you're pressing some keys to keep focus in one area.

We're talking about a solution which doesn't require the user to press anything.
For whomever else reads this, it's not a matter of convenience - when you're modeling and that's what you do for a long time, this becomes an invaluable feature.

space z focus on where your mouse points at. (i think like a ray projection from the view to the geo) and will frame that.
while space f will frame your selection.

McNistor do you mean like the focus is always where the mouse locates at? I think this would be nice to have as an option. We can submit an RFE for this.

I did submit zoom on cursor (as an option under properties)

ID: 75747

I'm talking about: open XSI, go to Preferences>Camera>Orbit around selection>ON
Works great when you have one or a few point selected in a restricted zoomed-in area.
I even made a .gif in a long time ago thread., but I think it;s pretty self-explanatory.

zoom on cursor is a good RFE

in addition to space+z I use space+g - this will focus on the current selection.

I know about these shortcuts an my point is that I shouldn't be relying on them, just using them occasionally.
Lack of a “Orbit around selection” feature is part of a long list of why isn't Houdini my main tool yet.

arctor
zoom on cursor is a good RFE

in addition to space+z I use space+g - this will focus on the current selection.

Strange that the network view works that way but not the viewport.
Again…this as an option under preferences would be welcome.

Anyway…back on topic. PLEASE! give us manipulation of components and objects independently in local space.

This is still my single most missed feature that one would expect from a great procedural application from get go.

Doudini
Snapping with shift or ctrl has been addressed by so many users. I submitted an RFE again this year (RFE #72856). But my hope for getting this are really low.

Yes me too, in February this year (RFE #73378), that's in part why Softimage is so ergonomic !