Dynamite is a Python script for Houdini that fits perfectly for the iterative 3D asset development environment, where changes to low and high poly geometry are introduced on a frequent basis.

The script streamlines the process of creating cages and reduces tediousness of recreating them whenever the model is replaced by a newer version. With Dynamite you won't need to redo cages of objects which weren't modified in the last iteration, and only those that were altered will require your attention. This reduces the time that would otherwise be spent on redoing all cages from scratch on each consecutive asset iteration.

Link: https://github.com/ajz3d/dynamite [github.com]

The initial commit is a beta version (0.9.0) and might still have some bugs that I wasn't able to spot after some major refactoring, even though I did my best to find them before releasing the tool. Please report any of them here or on project's GitHub page.

A sneak peak video of an older version is available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuTmLXSn-eQ [www.youtube.com]

The tool was updated to v1.0.0.

FEATURES

• Homing of isolated groups was implemented, but it requires the Isolate button to be pressed twice. This is a known problem which will be fixed in one of the future releases.
  

CHANGES

• Directory structure was modified in order to ensure easier installation and development. Previously, installation required from user to copy files from the archive to multiple destinations. Now the archive can be extracted to any directory, provided the path to it is included in HOUDINI_PATH global variable inside houdini.env file. This mimics the second installation method of SideFX GameDevelopmentToolset.
  
• Data tab is now hidden by default as it is used internally by the Dynamite script and should not be exposed to the artist, unless it's for debugging.
  
• Smooth Normals checkbox in the Import tab will now smooth reference mesh normals only. There was no need to smooth retopo normals because retopo mesh usually comes with its own custom normals/smoothing groups and altering them might lead to some problems down in the pipeline.
  
• Shelf tool got an icon.
  
• Corrected some typos in README.md and updated it to include recent changes.
  

BUGFIXES

• Fixed network homing on network initialization/update. Previously the network viewer wouldn't scale properly in some circumstances.
  

Readme: https://github.com/ajz3d/dynamite/blob/master/README.md [github.com]
Download: https://github.com/ajz3d/dynamite/releases/latest [github.com]