Inspired by HardOps / Fusion 360 / Modo / Modo - Polystein etc. I made myself some HDA (tools) in Houdini to help myself model more efficiently in Houdini. This is the results so far, I've used a base shape I saw in some HardOps post since I thought it was a good test case for the different HDA's (tools).
The HDA's (tools) so far I've named: ‘edge sweep’, ‘edge clone’, ‘edge warp’, ‘mesh_split’, ‘hex_screw’. They all revolve a lot around beeing able to create interesting mesh to use with Boolean rather quickly. And the ‘mesh_split’ I have done to facilitate myself a new workflow where I work from a base shape and split of pieces with the ‘mesh split’ to further refine that inside a ‘subnet’ which helps my node graph in Houdini to not explode into 1 million nodes.
You can view things in better quality over at Artstation here:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8nmmm [www.artstation.com]

Looks great! Would be nice to see the tools in action (maybe on Vimeo).

What mechanical machine is this from ?

Konstantin Magnus
Looks great! Would be nice to see the tools in action (maybe on Vimeo).

Yeah. well see about that, there are some more HDA's I want to do and mature the existing ones. But one day…perhaps

Christopher_R
What mechanical machine is this from ?

General shape is inspired by a post I saw several months ago from the HardOps guys, the detailign is just random stuff out of my head.

@MagnusL3D I wouldn't mind a tutorial how you began to create the shape ?

Entrancing intricacy to the orderly industrial cuts along with the smooth, flowing curves. Conveys a sense of no-nonsense, hardened equipment developed with technology just a bit ahead of contemporary capabilities.

Christopher_R
@MagnusL3D I wouldn't mind a tutorial how you began to create the shape ?

Who knows what the future holds

Cyzor
Entrancing intricacy to the orderly industrial cuts along with the smooth, flowing curves. Conveys a sense of no-nonsense, hardened equipment developed with technology just a bit ahead of contemporary capabilities.

Such nice words for my doodle thank you

Looks good!
I'm curious, how did you deal, if at all, with the shading artifacts caused by so many n-gons? Did you control the normals for each continuous surface part or you didn't have to deal with shading artifacts at all? One solution to get rid of those shading artifacts is to go Sub-D, but that's obviously off the table with the topology you have there.

McNistor
Looks good!
I'm curious, how did you deal, if at all, with the shading artifacts caused by so many n-gons? Did you control the normals for each continuous surface part or you didn't have to deal with shading artifacts at all? One solution to get rid of those shading artifacts is to go Sub-D, but that's obviously off the table with the topology you have there.

Thanks! The way I deal with shading this thing is just using the Normal SOP with the “Weighting Method” set to “by Surface Area”.

Yeah, I figured as much, thanks.

This is so cool! Teach me Obi-wan.