nicholasralabate
Yeah, that's the one I was talking about. I'm using a stylus btw, not sure if that matters...

Probably should have clarified in my previous post, but the handle can be picked from where the mouse cursor is in my screenshot.

eikonoklastes

lewis_T
...the anim handles. I cannot fathom why you need sniper level precision in order to simply pick something to move.
L

If you guys are referring to this vertical time handle, while it is slim, the hitbox for it is around 10-11 pixels, which is reasonable? I can't remember struggling to grab these ever, and I use them pretty heavily.

Ignore the black Photoshop cursor I accidentally included in the screenshot.

I'm referring to the bezier knots, ramp knots, and yes the above. Compared to Maya it's woeful.

lewis_T

eikonoklastes

lewis_T
...the anim handles. I cannot fathom why you need sniper level precision in order to simply pick something to move.
L

If you guys are referring to this vertical time handle, while it is slim, the hitbox for it is around 10-11 pixels, which is reasonable? I can't remember struggling to grab these ever, and I use them pretty heavily.

Ignore the black Photoshop cursor I accidentally included in the screenshot.

I'm referring to the bezier knots, ramp knots, and yes the above. Compared to Maya it's woeful.

They can definitely use some pre-selection highlighting to indicate when they are ready to be grabbed. While the hitbox for it is reasonably wide, the only feedback you have is when the value pops up, which is not quite intuitive.

Hope to add more languages

Not a rumor,

But if they revamp Cops that would make my year.

- Modern codebase, Speed like resolve / autograph.
- Comp nodes let background through when bypassed. Curently bypassing shows fg
- Some smart caching so the whole node tree doesn't need to be cooked on higher rez when changing something down stream. Some timeline cache indications could also be nice..
- No need to make a ton of nodes eather, just low level ones. The rest can be made by the community.
- File cache Node ala sops.
- Switchnode that shows a visual que what is piped. ala sops.

One can dream .

Can we perhaps get some support for WebP images in H20 and on our forum? They are becoming more and more popular on the Internet, supplanting JPEG images and to some degree 8-bit PNG images (WebP supports transparency and lossless compression).

liberalarts
What is clear is that there are ongoing efforts to make Houdini more user friendly. See tab-menu node aliases which are brilliant. The Align to flooralias is one of my most used Houdini nodes.

How does it works?

Hi, would like to talk about the old as the world of computer graphics topic - MODELING.

Particularly where the pain starts.

Houdini modeling tools are unique and perfect for procedural modeling and overall procedural structure and other very cool stuff.
BUT, what if in certain parts you want to jump in and just quickly blockout smth destructively, without having your node chain to grow significantly where you can be lost, where you could be able to do it quickly and not to spend 3x time on it?

Modeling is a demanding stuff, and I want to be creative, achieve results as quickly as possible, and not being destructed by creating nodes for each blockout step without need.

Theoretically there is Poly Draw/Topo Build nodes, which are solution for current situations, but far not enough, these are abandoned and stuck in the past with limited functionality, not to compare to modeling packages functionality.

Why not to increase Poly Draw potential, make it more similar to Zbrush Z-Modeler tool/brush for example, where you could just jump in and quickly inset, extrude, drop primitive, make more flexible splits, align edge/points in more flexible way, add Edit Sop functionality to it with peak, soft move etc.

I believe(probably) it is not a big resource for development but could be relatively big step to make Houdini a win-win package for quick modeling also.

Nikyone

liberalarts
What is clear is that there are ongoing efforts to make Houdini more user friendly. See tab-menu node aliases which are brilliant. The Align to flooralias is one of my most used Houdini nodes.

How does it works?

Inside a Geometry node, add a Cube node. Connect the Align to floor node. Cube is now sitting on the floor.

It's a Match Size node that simply defaults to Min Y, but you would never guess to use that node for floor alignment, so the alias makes things easier.

liberalarts
The Align to flooralias is one of my most used Houdini nodes.

Where is the Align to floornode?

jerry7

liberalarts
The Align to flooralias is one of my most used Houdini nodes.

Where is the Align to floornode?

Apologies, it's a node called Labs Axis Align, part of the SideFX Labs toolkit. It does the same - plug a cube into it and it aligns to the floor (a much less useful name though).

I guess I copied that node and renamed it Align to floor a long time ago and then convinced myself Labs team had done the smart thing. Sorry.

Match Size node is such a powerful node when doing stuff procedurally

still waiting for the "make it pretty" node

bobc4d, i insert my screengrabs from viewport to stable diff, it serves that purpose pretty good

I have a huge problem with how network grid snapping works. I like to keep my networks tidy and laid out logically (to avoid spaghetti networks). Proper grid snapping is half of the success. The thing is, that for some reason (magical, I presume), operators always wander off grid points they were snapped to. There's always this teeny-weeny offset that is applied to operators within a network after a while of working with them. I tried to pinpoint the culprit by turning off some settings, like "make room for new nodes" and things like that, but I was unable to prevent this from happening. It seems that having nodes being offset after a while from the network grid is something inevitable. Just like death.

I don't know how ops positions are calculated internally, but there's something definitely wrong with it. I mean, what's the point of having network grid snapping if one can't keep the nodes snapped to it?

And there's also the issue of A+drag up/down gestures, which completely ignore grid snapping.

Is there a chance that network grid snapping could be improved in H20?

I'm really surprised that no one has mentioned a Shadow Catcher (Shadow Matte) for XPU in the same vein as what is in Arnold, this is very important for anyone using a Dome light with an environment texture. The existing compositing method is just not good enough. A Shadow Matte material which you place on a grid under your geometry to catch only the shadows and is transparent to everything else.
T.

Tser
I'm really surprised that no one has mentioned a Shadow Catcher (Shadow Matte) for XPU in the same vein as what is in Arnold, this is very important for anyone using a Dome light with an environment texture. The existing compositing method is just not good enough. A Shadow Matte material which you place on a grid under your geometry to catch only the shadows and is transparent to everything else.
T.

Shadow Catcher for XPU is more or less confirmed:
https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/76995/#post-382509 [www.sidefx.com]

I would love if Houdini gets a bit more accessible Price-wise.
7000 USD for a floating is quite a lot for smaller houses, even thought smaller studios might not be the target audience in the first place.

Maybe even go the way of Maya Unlimited back in the day, make one version and one attractive price :-)

Blenders Geo Nodes will soon support particles, so competition might get a bit stronger in the coming years.

Did anyone had a thought that Poly Draw SOP could be boosted to a level of ZBrush Z-Modeler brush? For a quick distructive blockout in one place.

Do you think that would be useful?

Path guiding and more accurate caustics in Karma.
It can be a game changer!