Guys, I finally decided to leave Softimage alone and study houdini after 3 times of non-understading tries.

I was trying to draw bones (nothing difficult) but everytime I need to move or adjust it a kind of cluster keeps to attract my action of moving to it.

It appears like a blue selection everytime I draw the bone and this is not like other versions. Is it something I activate because I'm still getting familiar on UI?


This issue is driving me crazy and I must study.

Change the Placement Mode from “View Based” to “Freehand” in the top right corner of the bones toolbar.

I a) feel like I've heard that before today and b) it might be time for a RFE to change the default placement behavior of said mode …

Marc

“View based” sounds like “screen space”, but it's not - it's a sort of snapping.
“freehand” is screen space, but it's called like a tool that draws something w/o clicking repeatedly.

“View based” uses the orientation of the viewport to define the plane.

Yes, that's also known as screen space in some applications/circles, a 2d plane parallel to the screen, in which you also translate objects with the handle aligned to “view” in Houdini.
The issue however, at least on my end, is “view based” setting for bones does not draw bones in screen space. I mean it does when there's no geometry “on top” (ray shooting from the user's position) but as soon as there's some geometry, it turns into a… I don't know what that is. A snapping? Something that activates the polys under the mouse cursor (described by the op as “It appears like a blue selection everytime I draw the bone”)
Not very intuitive/predictive as far as I'm concerned as the resulted chain is neither in screen space nor does it seem to obey a clear snapping rule. A bug? Paint me utterly confused.

to get what you're calling screen space the Placement Method in the Bones Tool should be on “Freehand”
the other two options DO turn on mid-point snapping - this allow you to draw a bones in the ‘centre’ of geometry - the centre is calculated from with either along the ‘view’ direction, or using the Normal of the geometry.

arctor
to get what you're calling screen space the Placement Method in the Bones Tool should be on “Freehand”

Surely you must see the naming problem here. For transformations, “view” is used as in screen space while here
it's no longer applicable, but “freehand”, which for many users coming from other applications, or even Houdini as it seems, has another meaning. I said this before, I don't care for features caring the same familiar name from other programs as long as there's consistency within Houdini. For all I care the “view/screen space” could be named “ashishkabou”, but just keep it the same across features.
This is another thing I have to keep tabs now regarding conventions in H along with “divisions means in fact edge loops, so add -1 when you need n poly loops, except for cases where there's a closed circular primitive (oops, I don't mean polygon) such as a sphere, cylinder or torus because edge loops number is equal to poly loops in those cases”.

arctor
the other two options DO turn on mid-point snapping - this allow you to draw a bones in the ‘centre’ of geometry - the centre is calculated from with either along the ‘view’ direction, or using the Normal of the geometry.

Well, that may be so, but to be honest I can't figure out how they work from the tests I've conducted. I'll admit that I haven't been thorough here so it may be the case of ignorance rather than a design shortcoming so I'll come back on this. One bug I can't yet reproduce is bone drawing tool sometimes no longer displays any options in the top tool bar.
Thank you for your time, Michael.

What does imply if I found the new snapping incredible cool and easy to understand then

McNistor
Surely you must see the naming problem here.

What do you think would be more appropriate names?