Thanks to Mardini I am getting into contact with more parts of Houdini than I usually do for my actual work. A couple of times now, I've been trying to use the Layout LOP and each time it would end in not being able to edit anything anymore and Houdini would freeze. I do like the idea of it and when it works it's great but it seems very unstable and missing certain features.

I don't have an Asset Library DB and usually use the possibility to read from an usd file or LOP node, so maybe that is the main issue?
This is why I would love to know if there are people using the Layout LOP on the regular and if they have similar issues, or if these are simply "me problems".

Here is a list of things I encountered:

• Sometimes the Layout LOP will completely lock up. Any changes will freeze Houdini. So far the only solution was to delete it and recreate everything.
  
• Having dual or quad view in the viewer will drastically decrease performance to an unusable state. Having two viewer panes open seems slightly better.
  
• There doesn't seem to be a way of selecting variations from a usd prim. So you have to split all variations into separate assets before importing them into the asset selection. Kinda diminishing the whole concept.
  
• You can only load one usd file into the assets at a time. All previously added assets will vanish and cause issues when you open the file again.
  
• You can't have two layout LOPs with different assets in them.
  
• The Scale brush doesn't scale inside the brush, only inside the soft radius area.
  
• Sometimes the highlighted edges of the scattered instances don't turn off. Even when you're selecting other nodes.
  

I do not rule out that there could be user errors on my part causing these but to me, it always feels like random chance if it will work or not. It would be great to hear if others are facing the same or similar issues or if maybe someone has no issues at all. That would be helpful to know as well.

Same issues here,there are so many bugs about the layout tool.I just can't use it in production.

pretty buggy tbh, needs a ton of updates to be usable

Yes, the Layout LOP does have issues. Please log the Bugs/RFE's via the webform. There are a lot of moving parts to the Layout LOP, and it's often difficult to reproduce (even when it feels super obvious and happens with no effort at all). We've had to do some resource shuffling, so as much detail, along with hip files and/or recordings you can attach to bugs/rfes, would be a big help!

One of those items I can address, is the variant selection on assets. This was a deliberate choice to simplify the layout asset gallery and this node's first implementation, so that it could even be released. The asset gallery's underlying code isn't dynamic to support changing variants on an asset. Combinations of VariantSets complicate the UX and implementation significantly as well. So the Component Output LOP supports "Variant Layers", which handles writing out variant layers w/ thumbnails that the asset gallery can digest.

Again, feel free to log RFE's for this and other features mentioned, of course! But just wanted to share some of the reasoning behind the choices.

Bah, forgot to add: can you clarify what you mean by this?

You can only load one usd file into the assets at a time. All previously added assets will vanish and cause issues when you open the file again.

Is this referring to replacing references on assets/instances by the Layout LOP?

Thank you for the answer.

What I mean by that is when you import assets into the Layout LOP by using the "Open USD File" option (or import from LOPs).


Once you import assets through that, all previously added Assets will vanish in the Layout LOP asset selection. At first, this will keep the previously placed objects in the scene but if you then restart Houdini it will say that it can't find the references.
It would be nice if we could add assets from several files to the asset selection. If not, maybe a warning would be helpful that this action will remove all previously added items (and possibly screw up that Layout LOP node).

Now that I know that I'm not the only one experiencing issues I will try to get some hip files ready to send to the support. I should have the time for that in the next week or so.

having the same issues you have. in my case its pretty much unusable because the brushes keep freezing houdini. once the layout node freezes houdini, the only thing to do is to create a new layout node. Once it freezes, if you open the scene and try to do something further it will always crash

Most of our artists have unfortunately given up on the Layout node as well. After loosing many hours of work several times they don't wanna touch it. We haven't been able to properly reproduce what is causing it but we can't gamble with days of work just disappearing or getting corrupt either.

-- Erik

Goodbye_Kansas
Most of our artists have unfortunately given up on the Layout node as well. After loosing many hours of work several times they don't wanna touch it. We haven't been able to properly reproduce what is causing it but we can't gamble with days of work just disappearing or getting corrupt either.

-- Erik

Not sure if this is the same problem, but yesterday I found the cause of what made it crash for me. I reported it to sidefx and they logged the bug and were able to re-create the issue.

The issue has to do with having animated geometry in the scene. Take a look at my video. I have one cube with rotation. When I use the layout lop it crashes the scene. As soon as I remove the animation on the cube it works fine.