About modeling.

Houdini is more focused on big studios needs, don't think current development plans could fit abandoned modeling tools improvements. Besides, it impossible to compete with Modo or Maya in this area currently. Team is heading different direction currently with all the USD improvements, character stuff, which is kinda cool.

The only hope are labs team, which could come up with some additional tools..

As for now, if you want to be more productive - grab one more weapon into your arsenal, it's free - Blender. Made for people : D

Tser
I mainly do modeling and then look dev and I can say that Houdini is one of the best, I started with 3D Studio on to Max then Softimage then most of the available 3D softwares like Blender, Lightwave etc before landing on Maya for many years and now Houdini. In my experience the best was Softimage XSI, Maya inherited most of what XSI had, but Houdini is my favourite, sure it needs a bit more functionality with non procedural modeling, but what is there works well.
True, from time to time the viewport needs to be reset and the zoom sometimes goes out of whack and some of the functionality could be more accessible, but I like it.
If Polydraw had a mirror function built in and more of what Edit has, then I would be like a pig in mud.
T.

Yes! Boosted Polydraw node!

My two cents:
Edit SOP functionality in it.
Inset, extrude.
Smooth selected Edge aka Labs Edge Smooth SOP.
Drop primitives.

NicTanghe
YOu can ezsaly set up a workflow that is faster then maya or z modeler. just right click the tools and ad a keybind to them.
Now you can model super fast and with a lot of tools semi procedural.

There is also a payed addon that is basically this but al the keybinds have been set for u. and costum tools have been added.
you can find it here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_SI5MMWkYs [www.youtube.com]

Hi, thanks!

Yes, tried to comprehensively model stuff and also checked shortcuts stuff of course at first steps.

Yet you are still having only procedural like approach to modeling for your blockouts let's say?

You still have to create tons of nodes for blockout where procedural approach is not needed and could be done in one distructive node. Not to mess up your clean procedural tree for example, without need to group and hide all the blockout "garbage"?

And lots of sop nodes are not completely manageable in viewport, therefore you have to jump to node tree to adjust, connect and manage lots of steps.

And my thoughts were - boosted polydraw aka z-modeler could fasten things up significantly.

Maybe Alexey tool solves these problems, does it? It is hard to find detailed guide for this tool, only abstract videos.. I believe it is all the same but with nice interface, shortcuts and some tunings?

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?

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.