antc
OneBigTree
It's just crucial to have an overview over your scene content and access to your scene structure without having to navigate a complex node tree.
@OneBigTree if it helps there's a column that displays the currently bound material of a prim in the SGT pane:
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Parenting the material under the geometry prim so it displayed as a child might be a little strange because materials are usually bound to lots of prims. If you really wanted that structure you could simply reference the same material many times. However I don't really see what it buys you and it would be probably be quite inefficient for Hydra to process because material instancing isn't currently supported afaik. Therefore the render delegate would wind up processing a load more materials than necessary.
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For me the goal would be to have as much information in as much a condensed space as possible. Meaning finding all information about one object in one spot.
The thing in Houdini is, and that is the whole reason for me starting this thread, everything goes
somehow and you can find everything
somewhere.
But the amount of time one has to spend to bring it all together is significantly higher than in any other software even if the outcome can be potentially much more sophisticated. And it can be confusing and requires a lot of finding-out-how-things-work-time as well, while one is trying to get a job done at the same time.
The advantage of having the material right under the prim is the interaction. I can just open the prims's branch, see all the data I need to see and if I want just drag and drop the mat from there onto another(this worked pretty well in XSI) as opposed to object check the spreadsheet go to another place in the graph, find the mat there and then drag and drop.
Thing like that do not seem like a big difference but in the end it is the sum of all actions you have to take to achieve multiple things that determine the efficiency of the software.
In the case of solaris you have to take into account that you have to have done a lot of steps to get your object into solaris and organized there. All that adds up because everything you do in solaris is
on top of everything you'd do normally anyway.
To be honest, the I do not care about
how this is solved in the end. I'm all open for everything that is more efficient and allows for a more fluid workflow.
This means in general: less clicks, less multiple steps, shorter "paths". For example one (1) hotkey to change the viewport or focus on an object instead of a combination that requires you to look down to the keyboard. Or not having to change to a different part of the software to find a property of an object. Things like that.
I do see the potential to achieve that in solaris if SideFX manages to integrate everything more transparently.
Let me just add that insight of everyone here helped me a lot along the way already. So thanks again.