I spent some time recently with a PDF from the Tutorials [sidefx.com]section on this site.
The tutorials are very useful but having them as PDFs is not very comfortable. One has to either print them or constantly switch between Houdini and a PDF viewer.
This is in stark contrast with the very convenient interface offered by the “built-in” tutorials coming with the online help & documentation. They are available inside Houdini (in a pane if needed), flexible, searchable, they offer buttons for loading files etc.
I think it would be very useful to have a kind of “package”, installable format for the tutorials on this site. Those packages would extend the built in help, and would be downloadable from a browser and then installed from the built in help or they could be downloaded and installed directly from the built in help.
Even better, the built-in help could look on the site for new tuts and announce the user if they are available.
As for videos, they could be also launched from the built in help, and played with the available player on the user system, or there could be a plugin (VLC?) integrated in the Houdini browser for playing MP4 files.

What do you think?

Dragos

And we waiting for new tutorials! :roll:

Just a bump. I was dumb enough to post this in the holidays, so maybe it was overlooked by many.

Dragos

The Houdini browser is just Mozilla (1.7 last time I heard but that might have changed) so you should be able to install Acrobat Reader plugin, plus various video plugins in the $HFS/mozilla directory.

However, I don't like video (my preferred tutorial format) embedded in a web browser, since webbrowser video viewers tend to have less control than a standalone one. I usually just position the viewer above Houdini over an unused pane and I'm done…

Cheers,

Pete RB

is there any option to completely override the default Houdini browser with lets say firefox?

Nope.

following up on lowell's question. Since the browser is mozilla, i.e. a seperate app embedded in the interface(?), would I be able to embed some other app, say zbrush, the same way? Through the HDK or even HOM?