Hi all,
I have a few RFEs in mind for the modeling side of Houdini and I thought it would be good to get input from other modelers to improve or add to them before they are submitted. Some of the items below are not feature requests as much as “quality-of-life” tweaks to the way current tools work. IMO workflow is a big deal – it’s not enough to have good tools (which I feel Houdini does) but they should always flow well with minimal speed bumps, so a user can really get into the zone.
In no particular order:



Decimal precision of viewport handles
In this specific case, transformations done with the handles have limited decimal precision. If you use the ladder to scale an axis down to zero, what you actually end up with in your parameter field is some close-but-no-cigar value like 0.0029455. You can type 0 into the field because your pivot is set after selection, but it would be nice to stay in the viewport and have accurate scaling via handle and ladder.

Shade backfaces differently
Currently it’s possible to enable backface culling, but I feel that this is not ideal. It would be great if we could have some user defined color or shading on backfaces. This one is probably an already existing RFE.

Improved selection of radial menu items
Radial menus are awesome, but I feel they can be a bit touchy for fast work. I’ve invoked the wrong operation so many times. To help folks like me with iffy hand-eye coordination, maybe the spacing of radial menu items could be a bit more spread out, or more importantly, the active area for selection could be a little further away from the center of the radial menus, so it requires more mouse travel in the correct direction to select something.
For example, if you are on the Poly Modeling radial menu, it’s entirely possible for the cursor to be on the PolyBridge “bubble”, but for PolyExtrude underneath it to be active. There is of course pre-selection highlighting of items, but if you’re like me, once you get into the groove you’re using the radial menus more gesturally, since ~80% of the time you’re going back to the same few bread and butter SOPs like PolyExtrude, EdgeLoop, PolySplit, PolyBridge etc.

Standard and reliable way of rotation snapping
It would be nice to have standard way of snapping to 45-degree (or user defined) angles with the interactive tools, like holding down Shift in Illustrator. Currently we use the Ctrl key, which is fine. The real issue is that rotation snapping ends up being relative rather than absolute. If you let go of the Ctrl key, move your mouse, and then hold down Ctrl again, it will give you 45-degree snapping relative to the new position of your cursor. It makes using things like the Curve of Knife tools kind of unpleasant.

Bezier handles on curves generated by Curve SOP
Speaking of curves, it would be great to have the option to edit curve geometry from the Curve SOP via Bezier handles. I’m almost certain this RFE already exists.

Place Mirror SOP origin around selection
Geometry to be mirrored isn’t always close to the origin. When you invoke a Mirror SOP in the viewport, it should place the mirror handle close to the actual selection, similar to how the Clip SOP works now. That way the user can quickly snap the handle where they need it, without having to first navigate to the world origin to grab it. What might be really neat is if it could automatically choose a mirror axis as well, depending on which direction you're viewing the model from, maybe giving a bounding box preview of where it will place the mirrored geometry.

Holding down shortcuts (vs toggles) for snapping and moving pivots
This would be a great feature to have and was one of the things I actually liked about modeling in Maya. The ability to temporarily engage handle detachment and snapping by holding down shortcut keys (ideally right next to each other, so you can do both at once). With this system it becomes very fluid to snap-move a selection’s pivot and then snap-move the selection itself. As I said, radial menus are great, but I am not a big fan of using them for snapping, and the shortcuts for Pivot Mode and detaching handles are on the wrong side of the keyboard for working quickly. I would prefer the ability to simply bind Pivot Mode and Multi-Snapping as shortcuts that you hold down.

Automatic conversion of selection types by SOP nodes
For SOPs that expect a specific geometry type, having the conversion happen automatically when the SOP is invoked would be nice. For example, you should be able to select a bunch of polygons and invoke UVProject, and have it automatically change your primitive selection to a vertex selection. This was the norm for as long as I can remember, and I think it stopped working somewhere around H14, H15. Now the operation is simply aborted.

PolyBevel improvements
Co-planar ends: For hard-surface modeling, making a “proper” rounded bevel in Houdini requires two PolyBevel SOPs. One to first prep the corner with a crease, and another for the actual rounded bevel inside this crease. Without first creating a co-planar border for the round bevel, you are interpolating normals across surfaces that are supposed to be flat, and giving them a slightly rounded look. It would be great if PolyBevel had an option to automatically make the first and last face of the bevel co-planar with the adjacent primitives. This would save buttloads of time on hard-surface models.
Relative bevel radius: The original PolyBevel 1.0 had relative bevels, which was awesome. I know the original PolyBevel is still there and can be added back in via the shelf tools, but it would be great if the new and improved PolyBevel could pick up that trick.
Bevel unshared edges: Another useful feature of the old PolyBevel was the ability to bevel unshared edges. I miss that every once in a while.
More circular point beveling: Point beveling is great for lofting pipes and such, but the bevels themselves could be more “perfect” and circular in their shape. And at very acute angles, you actually get very pointy bevels.

More robust Reselect for Current Tool
I’d be very curious if anyone else has as much trouble with this as I do. A lot of times this operation simply fails or I find myself having to hit Escape -> Enter to get it to start.



The following items fall more into the bugs category, but it might be good to have some feedback or at least people corroborating them.

Undo/Redo problems
There seems to be some issues with the undo/redo stack where redo history is easily lost. If I undo a PolyExtrude, I don’t think clicking on an empty part of the viewport should erase the redo history. Also, I’ve experienced issues where the mouse cursor would have to move off the viewport for undos to register, which is one of those bugs that has crept into more recent releases of Houdini.

Some SOPs don’t work properly with “Show Display Operator” set
Some operations will do funky stuff when you have the “Show Display Operator” preference set instead of “Show Current Operator”. For example, repeating EdgeLoop with ‘q’ will leave every prior edge loop node with the Selectable Template flag set. Or the Knife tool will simply fail.
“Show Current Operator” is the Houdini default now, but for scenes with heavy cooking it can be a real liability.

PolyExtrude to PolyFill edge selections
If you PolyExtrude a set of edges, they are immediately made available as a pre-selection for the next operation, such as another PolyExtrude, PolyBridge, Edge Collapse, etc. However, this doesn’t seem to work for PolyFill. For example, if you extrude the end of an open cylinder and then try to invoke PolyFill to cap it. What you get is a PolyFill node, but with an incorrect selection and no fill geometry.

Allow primitive selection for Remesh SOP in the viewport
Currently, if you select part of a model in the viewport and invoke Remesh, it will operate on the entire geometry, leaving the Group field empty.

Make Current Value Default doesn’t work for some SOP parameters
For example, in PolyBevel I can’t set different session defaults for Offset or Divisions.

Save As Permanent Defaults doesn’t work for some SOP parameters
For example, in the Boolean SOP you can’t specify a different Operation (let’s say ‘Subtract’ instead of ‘Intersect’) and have it saved as a permanent default. Presets will also not save this change.

Pressing ‘q’ to repeat a Duplicate SOP invokes Copy and Transform
They are the same SOP yes, but Duplicate will place the handle in the center of the selection while Copy and Transform puts it at the origin.


That’s it for now. Please let me know where I goofed up, and give your comments or add your own RFEs so this area of Houdini can continue to get better and better.

Polybridge:
The current polybridge need to select first source poly/edge then select the destination,this workflow make modeling slow.
Instead select both poly/edge and execute polybridge like other soft(modo).

Edge slice:
The current add loop it can add only one loop and when adding another you need to use tranform to move it to the desire location.it lack flexibility to quickly performing small task.
Adding edge slice(like modo) will help to quickly divide geo and also adding edges. Allowing to add edges symmetry(both end of geo) with ability to chose free mode,symmetry or uniform this help in hardsurface modeling.

Q(redo action):
Need to reassign to more flexible key like shift,which make things easy during modeling because it's easy to reach than q.

Hotkeys:
They current system don't allow mixing (space,art,shift and control) to create hotkeys.i will be happy if next version of houdini support this.

Polythickness:
Adding poly thickness will enhance modeling in houdini,polythickness can to perform some of the modeling task easy.like creating thickness of shoe or cloth while maintaining the topology and avoid penetration of geometry.

Creating primitive:
Allowing to create geometry freely without the need to be qube,grid or cylinder.user can create geometry in view port by drawing freely(other soft like maya,modo and max have this kind of workflow) and making changes.the current workflow user must create primitive the dive inside and start make changes.but sometime you just nees to create door handle quickly this work flow limit this flexibility.

DaJuice
Decimal precision of viewport handles

Hm, interesting, I haven't noticed this and I don't think it's related to the floating point precision. Or maybe it is, because AFAIK the scaling transformation works with percentages of the actual points position rather than absolute values, so a percentage of an approximation is most likely going to also be an approximation - thinking on the fly here, because thorough research is so yesterday. What's for certain is that this is something other 3d programs have worked out.

Entering 0 in the channel box fails on multiple levels: unlike ladder interaction it ignores the custom set “pivot” (air-quotes because I'm referring to the custom handle position, not the actual pivot of the Obj) and for transforming points say, it's not practically useful in most cases as it transforms in world space.

Until the issues in the transformations thread [www.sidefx.com] are solved, Houdini is a no-deal for Sub-D modeling. It makes rigging and animation a quite bit harder too, as I can personally attest regarding the former, as of recently.
Good catch either way.

DaJuice
Shade backfaces differently

I have filed one. You should too.

DaJuice
Improved selection of radial menu items

If you're after fast work, forget about radial menus, embrace the hotkeys workflow. Even Maya's gesture based menus are not faster than hotkeys (or maybe on par, whilst the effort seems much higher), let alone Houdini's radial menus. But me not being a big fan of any kind of menus for modeling doesn't mean I don't support other peoples' preferences, so file RFEs and hope to see them actualized.

DaJuice
Standard and reliable way of rotation snapping

While I'm also used to the convenient XSI's rotation snapping, Houdini's ladder is good enough it seems - give away some speed and receive back some flexibility by being able to “snap” with any step on fly.
Angle snapping of the cutting or drawing tools, do indeed need some improvement.

DaJuice
Bezier handles on curves generated by Curve SOP

Yes, please.

DaJuice
Place Mirror SOP origin around selection

Mirror at SOP lvl. seems like it's behaving exactly how you want. In fact I don't seem to be able to mirror a some polys across the world origin when the object's not there, mirroring at Obj lvl is a different animal, so I'm not sure I understand this one.

DaJuice
Holding down shortcuts (vs toggles) for snapping and moving pivots

I think I filed a RFE for this, but it doesn't hurt if more users request it.

DaJuice
Automatic conversion of selection types by SOP nodes

I have no experience with this, but sounds like a good idea in theory.

DaJuice
PolyBevel improvements

Please post pics + .hip files, otherwise it's hard to figure it out via imagination.

DaJuice
More robust Reselect for Current Tool

You're not alone. I have attributed this to the fact that in there are way too many uses/tools cramped into a single one - handle tool. Not saying there's an inherent law that prohibits a single tool acting perfectly in every context, but from a practical PoV this seems to be a hard thing to achieve, so the argument I've put forth is that some “tool splitting” is in order.

DaJuice
Undo/Redo problems

Been there. Best to send scene files to Support, otherwise there's little to be done.

DaJuice
Some SOPs don’t work properly with “Show Display Operator” set

Don't know anything about this. But then again, I don't do much modeling in Houdini, so again: .gif .hip files to Support.

DaJuice
PolyExtrude to PolyFill edge selections

Indeed, I can reproduce it.

DaJuice
Allow primitive selection for Remesh SOP in the viewport

Reproducible.

DaJuice
Make Current Value Default doesn’t work for some SOP parameters

Reproducible.

DaJuice
Save As Permanent Defaults doesn’t work for some SOP parameters

Indeed, but this might be intentional for some reason. I'm suspecting this because there are many Boolean nodes “pre-set” to these operations.

DaJuice
Pressing ‘q’ to repeat a Duplicate SOP invokes Copy and Transform

Yes. And the lack of a Global Control at SOP lvl, makes some of these interactions a pain in the neck.

seifdune
Polybridge:
The current polybridge need to select first source poly/edge then select the destination,this workflow make modeling slow.
Instead select both poly/edge and execute polybridge like other soft(modo).

Yea it's a bit clunky, but how do softimage or modo deal with multiple bridges at once?

seifdune
Edge slice:
The current add loop it can add only one loop and when adding another you need to use tranform to move it to the desire location.it lack flexibility to quickly performing small task.

You can do multiple loops with EdgeLoop, but their distribution is uniform.

seifdune
Adding edge slice(like modo) will help to quickly divide geo and also adding edges. Allowing to add edges symmetry(both end of geo) with ability to chose free mode,symmetry or uniform this help in hardsurface modeling.

I really like the idea of being able to toggle on automatic symmetry for edge loops, that would come in handy all the time. I had a look at Modo's Loop Slice tool and it reminds a lot of Bandsaw Pro in Lightwave. I wasn't a fan of it in LW but I can see how the functionality would be useful. But only as it's own separate tool, because it lacks the immediacy of EdgeLoop (having to select a primitive loop first and then fiddling with extra UI elements).

seifdune
Polythickness:
Adding poly thickness will enhance modeling in houdini,polythickness can to perform some of the modeling task easy.like creating thickness of shoe or cloth while maintaining the topology and avoid penetration of geometry.

That's a good one, it would save time instead of using PolyExtrude in conjunction with a Peak or Transform.

seifdune
Creating primitive:
Allowing to create geometry freely without the need to be qube,grid or cylinder.user can create geometry in view port by drawing freely(other soft like maya,modo and max have this kind of workflow) and making changes.the current workflow user must create primitive the dive inside and start make changes.but sometime you just nees to create door handle quickly this work flow limit this flexibility.

I think you are right, although I don't have a clear idea of what a good implementation of that looks like.

inhiding
Entering 0 in the channel box fails on multiple levels: unlike ladder interaction it ignores the custom set “pivot” (air-quotes because I'm referring to the custom handle position, not the actual pivot of the Obj) and for transforming points say, it's not practically useful in most cases as it transforms in world space.

Until the issues in the transformations thread are solved, Houdini is a no-deal for Sub-D modeling. It makes rigging and animation a quite bit harder too, as I can personally attest regarding the former, as of recently.

Sorry I wasn't clear on this, I was strictly talking about SOP level. When you say “custom set pivot”, are you referring to a detached/re-attached handle at Object level? You can now use Pivot Mode to move the pivot point, and it will update the actual Pivot Translate field (what a concept). That will respect the new handle location when transforming with the object parameter fields.
Going back to SOPs, I can see this technique not being very useful for organic models but for hard surface stuff I do flatten selections along the world axes pretty often.

My brain is mush at the moment but I'll go through that Transformations thread in the next couple of days. I meant to when I saw it originally but it slipped my mind.

inhiding
If you're after fast work, forget about radial menus, embrace the hotkeys workflow. Even Maya's gesture based menus are not faster than hotkeys (or maybe on par, whilst the effort seems much higher), let alone Houdini's radial menus. But me not being a big fan of any kind of menus for modeling doesn't mean I don't support other peoples' preferences, so file RFEs and hope to see them actualized.

I find the radial menus can be pretty quick (at least when I'm not clicking the wrong thing) and a good compromise. Like I said it almost becomes more of a gesture-based workflow. I'm not sure how many existing hotkeys I'd have to unbind to be comfortable and not have to resort to tab or radial menus too often.

inhiding
Mirror at SOP lvl. seems like it's behaving exactly how you want. In fact I don't seem to be able to mirror a some polys across the world origin when the object's not there, mirroring at Obj lvl is a different animal, so I'm not sure I understand this one.

Oh really? I can only get it to mirror across the world origin. This is build 16.5.439. I wonder what's going on.

inhiding
Please post pics + .hip files, otherwise it's hard to figure it out via imagination.

Will do, I'll try to make a separate post for PolyBevel tomorrow.

inhiding
You're not alone. I have attributed this to the fact that in there are way too many uses/tools cramped into a single one - handle tool. Not saying there's an inherent law that prohibits a single tool acting perfectly in every context, but from a practical PoV this seems to be a hard thing to achieve, so the argument I've put forth is that some “tool splitting” is in order.

Interesting. I figured it's just something that's been overlooked because of lack of feedback (from a lack of Houdini modelers :lol. Either way, I'd hate for my RFE to be “Hey, Reselect for Current Tool don't work so good” but I'm not sure how easy it is to reproduce. I'll have to play with it.

Thanks for confirming those bugs and thank you both for the feedback.

Sorry I wasn't clear on this, I was strictly talking about SOP level. When you say “custom set pivot”, are you referring to a detached/re-attached handle at Object level? You can now use Pivot Mode to move the pivot point, and it will update the actual Pivot Translate field (what a concept). That will respect the new handle location when transforming with the object parameter fields.
Going back to SOPs, I can see this technique not being very useful for organic models but for hard surface stuff I do flatten selections along the world axes pretty often.

Yes, I was to talking about SOP lvl and yes, you can use the “real” Pivot (Ins hotkey), but it should work with the handle detached when entering values instead of using the ladder as well for transformations around a… let's say a fulcrum in order to disambiguate the issue, to keep pivot values zeroed out and for entering a value that's difficult to achieve with the ladder.

Houdini polybridge tool is beast.

Here's a bit more on the PolyBevel RFEs.

Co-planar beveling would be the most welcome/time-saving addition out of these. It's really important in keeping the shading on hard-surface models “tight”. Hopefully the images do a decent job of describing the issue, namely distorted shading/reflections.



The following gif shows the Relative beveling feature of the PolyBevel 1.0 SOP. It would be great to have this in the new SOP, as I bet most newer users aren't aware that the original is still buried in there.


Another thing that's missing in PolyBevel 2.0 is the ability to bevel unshared edges. Not critical but I do miss it sometimes.


Lastly, I think point-beveling should produce nicer results. The gif below is an extreme example, but even 90 degree turns don't produce very nice arcs. In most cases I think a perfectly circular bevel would be ideal. It does a great job on edge bevels (minus the co-planar issue).

Good RFEs. Submit them!