When I create a new visualizer (the concept of which I love), I'm (naturally) asked for the name of an attribute that I wish to visualize.

Sadly, It seems that houdini believes that it's the damned DMV, and wants me to fill in forms in triplicate.

Why is it that in the year of our lord 2015, must we type in the same thing three times?! I get that one might want a different label, but surely there's a mechanic in place that will allow me to bypass this nonsense.

Sorry. Frustrated.

ps: Angry fellow shamelessly stolen from cookingcomically.com.

That seems like a fair point. They could be hidden away under a ‘+’ and be auto-populated at first.

Perhaps Twod will show us the full use cases in a masterclass

The Name/Label is a little redundant, especially since it could easily generate the “name” (internal token) from the Label, uniquifying it for any scripting needs. Though I could see having “Ramped V” as a name, with a V attrib lookup into a ramp, to differentiate it from a straight V visualizer.

I think the old custom option dialog would automatically fill in all 3 for you when you type the name (or attrib/label) when the others were at their default value, which is probably pretty easy to implement and cuts down on the creation time.

twod
The Name/Label is a little redundant, especially since it could easily generate the “name” (internal token) from the Label, uniquifying it for any scripting needs. Though I could see having “Ramped V” as a name, with a V attrib lookup into a ramp, to differentiate it from a straight V visualizer.

I think the old custom option dialog would automatically fill in all 3 for you when you type the name (or attrib/label) when the others were at their default value, which is probably pretty easy to implement and cuts down on the creation time.

The real sad thing is that it still takes significantly more clicks to get up and running then ye olde colour sop.

G

Agree - and perhaps there could be one or two more default visualizers, just off by default - velocity volume is very common, for example.

keyframe
The real sad thing is that it still takes significantly more clicks to get up and running then ye olde colour sop.

G

Yeah, the UI for the visualizers was a bit more than I was expecting. There is definitely room for streamlining.

I'd really like the options to create visualizer from attribute
like clicking + to add visualizer opens menu
Marker
Colour
Volume
Tag

what if hovering over Marker or Colour opens nested menu with list of all attributes to choose from, click on one, Done, no Edit window, nothing to do
maybe alt+click on the attrib in that list can actually open Edit window with that attrib populated
first item on that menu can be <custom> or something which opens edit visualizer window with nothing populated as currently

My crazy dream would be to drag column titles directly from the geometry spreadsheet into the viewport, and that'd create a visualiser for you.

Everyone keeps a geo spreadsheet visible at all times right?

But yes, less cllicky visualiser menu would be awesome.

Now that the lock flag has been relegated to display only status here's what I'd love:

- The Lock status is represented by an icon overlay in the middle of the sop, instead of the flag. Just like bypass draws a hatch pattern, the lock will draw some graphic indicator that the node, is, well, locked. perhaps a lock.

- The flag formally known as the lock flag becomes a ‘promote attributes from this sop to visualizers’ flag. You click the flag, and all the attributes are there, in the vis flyout panel.

- Instead of the ‘edit’ pen, you get several toggles (radio boxes) for the type of visualization that you want, thus you can easily switch from ramp, to random, etc. The edit pen is still there if you need to get fancy.

you can also promote the visualization, once it's established from the ‘visualize’ flag (formally, lock flag) to permanent resident of the hip file.

keyframe
Now that the lock flag has been relegated to display only status here's what I'd love:
..

it's not display only
you can Ctrl+LMB to toggle it which is great and wouldn't want to loose that flag

keyframe
…flag becomes a ‘promote attributes from this sop to visualizers’ flag. You click the flag, and all the attributes are there, in the vis flyout panel…
..

promote attribs would be great, bu I can live with it being in the RMB menu, not as a flag, it's not flag type option

tamte
it's not display only you can Ctrl+LMB to toggle it which is great and wouldn't want to loose that flag

Ha. I didn't know that. Awesome. Thanks for pointing that out.

Optionally, what if the MMB flyout gained the ability to promote attributes to visualizers?
if you CTRL+MMB release while hovering over the attribute, it creates a visualizer?

edit: the reason i'm reconsidering promoting all the things, is that often, post sim, there are many many attributes. Many of which could be irrelevant to the visualizing task at hand.

Cool ideas!
I like the drag and drop from the spreadsheet idea.. or to add to it, a simple RMB menu on the column name of an attribute where we could have an option to display it in the viewport.

Since I found this thread about Visualizers, I would like to ask you guys if anyone have problems with doubled text attributes in the viewport.

Every time I use the “x” shortcut to visualize my text or integer attributes it always shows a duplicate of that attribute one on top of each other, to work around this I have to manually create my own visualizer, is it that just me?

Thanks!

Yeah I get that too. I logged it with sidefx, make sure you send it in too, that way the massive weight of our 2 complaints will encourage sidefx to fix it.

Done!

Two things:
Even if SideFX were not to fix this, you could use expressions to copy the string from the input into the other fields. You could then make that the default preset for the node and never worry about it again.

Because I work a lot with locking nodes, I was sad to see it gone. But I put the function on a custom hotkey and it works perfectly.

DASD
You could then make that the default preset for the node and never worry about it again

It seems that the Name, Label and Attribute fields in the Visualize node doesn't evaluate expressions (yet).
Tried with python:hou.node('/obj/geo1/visualize1').parm('attrib').set('test')
That doesn't work either:Traceback (most recent call last):
File “<console>”, line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: ‘NoneType’ object has no attribute ‘set’

-b

True, didn't check that.
-But I see that it is a (fairly simple) digital asset. Dive into it and change it according to your needs. That is, if SideFX doesn't fix it.
{edit: You will probably want to work with a copy.}