In choosing to interpret the reasons for the current state of affairs in the most charitable way, because managing and tracking info in a forum or a RFE database is a daunting task, I will mention a few things here. They are an absolute must to be fixed/changed/added. Before anything else is done regarding modeling, before going into the actual poly-ops (bevel, split, fuse, etc). So
instead of not
on top of, hence your resource management related issues should have little bearing on this.
These are off the top of my head and certainly there are others. No pics or gifs this time, for reasons I will describe at the end.
- remove the constant switching of the current tool to the handle tool, after various operations. Most of the time, the user ends up switching to select or the transformation tool that was active. So a key-press needlessly added on top of every thing else, every few seconds or so. The only time this is arguably a good idea is at the object creation (at obj level, not in context). And a few others modeling non-related (paint node, groom, etc). This was touched briefly by someone else
here [
www.sidefx.com] and I'm pretty sure it's not an issue for just the two of us.
- I end up having an inactive gizmo (greyed out) - no idea how
- I end up having an active gizmo (colored) that can interact with, but nothing is selected - hold S click on empty space
- the newly introduced “handle alignment” tool (and change its name to “object alignment”) is behaving erratically; sometimes it snaps just the handle, sometimes the selected component (I have read the docs and am aware of the different modes with shift/ctrl); the current muddiness of the concepts and naming behind these alignment tools is in tune with other things in Houdini that are needlessly confusing
- sometimes I try to delete selected faces and nothing happens other than being prompted to select faces; other times it works as expected
- viewport switching ‘space+B’ works for a while then it decides to stop working; and shortly after works again
- the first time you enter in point mode, no points are shown; going to edge mode and back, will show them. (not a big issue, but mildly annoying)
- local transformation of components is poorly implemented or buggy (no independent transformation)
- no GC at SOP level
- GC at Obj level is buggy since previous versions (deactivating it doesn't return to the last object selected)
- no global/local/ref values in transf. channels
- many others I can't recall right now
If a bevel or extrude op doesn't produce exactly the results I want, I can go in and make the corrections. Most of the time you actually end up modifying the resulting geometry of that bevel/extrude anyway. But if I'm having to fight an insane interactive system with almost every action I attempt, then a good bevel or extrude op is going to do little to soothe my pain.
For many of these I can't go to Support with RFEs, since I have no idea how to reproduce them. And I'm not particularly eager to persevere in looking for ways to reproduce them since older bugs already reported are still there. And more than this, some of these wrinkles are probably best ironed out in a back-n-forth in depth discussion between a dev. and a tester, the kind that is taking place in the alpha/beta forum. So my apparent saltiness about not being invited to alpha is about the fact that these issues still exist and nobody in there seems to have cared enough. Or was ignored. And the few new features (interaction and modeling) don't seem that optimal from an usability pov and seem also poorly tested, with bugs. Either way, I don't care much about invites, I care about having a working direct-modeling solution inside H, so please achieve that however you wish, me invited or not, but please DO achieve that. You have the option to act as other companies and come up with a “bells & whistles” new features list or to forgo some of the glamour and fix the indispensable nitty-gritty.