raincole

PolyMarvels
Hey folks, it's been more than two years now since I started diving into modeling in Houdini. While I was hearing only bad things about modeling , I wanted to see if there was more than people might know about it. And the short answer is, hell YEA!!!

Not only did I manage to find a way to do modeling in Houdini, but I also found a way where one can have a nice flow while modeling, and honestly as someone who modeled in pretty much all DCC's, even Plasticity, I can say that Houdini does some things much better then any other DCC, not to mention the fact that things staying procedural, even if you call it destructive modeling. That's why I started to call modeling in Houdini Hybrid modeling.

In case there are people interested, here you can find the environment and setup I am using plus some of the modeling I did:

https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVP06Hcz4=/?share_link_id=829218827858 [miro.com]

Is it possible to print out this cheatsheet? I can't find how to export a PDF or PNG from this site.

Unfortunatelz, exporting Miro page in PDF renders file really poorly. So my suggestion would be to just take a screenshot. Miro board should be high res so things should be clear enough with .jpg image. Let me know if that works for you.

Cheers,
Igor

Eroc999
Ah! wonderful. thank you!

You can also use Radial Menu = for his, just find this Icon/Feature

Eroc999
Will you be releasing a comprehensive documentation page like you had for Modeler 2023? One thing i can't seem to find is how to jump between geo nodes without going up to object level. It was double click at one point and then I think might have changed again. I love the feature but can't figure out what the hotkey is for Modeler 2025?

You can still double click as that is Houdini's feature, you just need to enable it from here:


If you want to use Modeler for this, then hovering over the object or empty space in the viewport then pressing O on your keyboard will have the same effect.

Modeling in Houdini is truly uniqe even though learning curve can be a bit longer, but in my opinion, it pays of big time. Its just super unique and things you can do its actually amazing, I always feel like ninja when modeling. Now that I added Modeler to my arsenal after making sure to know every little thing about modeling in Houdini I can really say its a beast now. Modeler really gives it another flavor and 2025 really covered and fixed many of the issues I had with previous versions. I spent quite some time with it already and I can say I didn't have many issues, but what I have found is that I can use both worlds now, Modeler and Houdini vanilla witch is actually for me pretty awesome discovery which will allow me to not only be faster, but also it will allow me to stay procedural in cases where I couldn't before with vanilla stuff and probably will discover some more cool techniques for certian problems.

Among many things, Alexey really nailed it with the Menu Editor this time. Its super easy to add any SOP you might need for modeling inside sop list which is really golden feature. Ill continue to test and see how I can utilize best from both worlds and keep informing folks about Modeler, but if you can afford it, go and buy it. Installation is also super easy and straight forward. Well done Alexey! Keep improving and good luck with this release...

Congrats Alexey, you seem to have listened to the feedback which is always great sign. Now that you made some of the critical changes I was hoping for, I would also like to try demo if possible.

Once again, congrats seems like a huge release!! Keep up the good work.

I believe Crease was meant to be used with Object level Subdivision Surface feature.

Yes, you can...but you need to use Construction Plane.

1. Set CP to a polygon or set of polygons you want to be in a frame.
2. While CP active, in viewport top right corner click on Persp menu
3. Scroll down to Home and select 'C-Plane Normal'
4. Select desired Camera and lock it
5. In viewport click 'Spacebar + H'
6. DONE

Basically, Camera view will align with CP normal. Hope that helps!

BabaJ

PolyMarvels
Like Alexey said, we are all beta testers at this point with this kind of release.

Actually we are not...only for a small part of the program...that's the part you missed from my post.

There is so much more in Houdini that one can utilize for a wide variety of purposes that simply just works with no issues;
That means, it's not Beta.

kodra
- An actual QA guy
- A person who made probably the best Houdini modeling tutorial online.
- A developer of a quite advanced Houdini plugin.

Only 3 people....you forgot to mention the hundereds that don't even come on the forums because they are busy using Houdini for their own needs, and using the many aspects of Houdini that do work with no issues.

kodra
But of course, it's their own defect, not Houdini's. In the interesting world of software design, the customers are always wrong

In this case yes - there is a difference, like in your case when you continously are harping on the negatives, which are actually in a minority when you compare it to the positives - and I already mentioned that - but you ignore that.

Hopefully this thread gets locked down.

It's one thing to bring up issues, discuss and submit the bugs/rfes if it becomes clear it's not user inexeperience/mistakes.

But then, it's time to move on.

'Users' like yourself though, prefer to keep harping on the negatives repeatedly(and not move on) which serves no one who hopes to come on the the forum and learn something without having to wade through complaints.

Again, hope it gets shut down(these threads that keep harping the same issue) and that I've contributed towards that.

Buddy, while it's great that you are positive, that doesn't mean you are right. When software costs 5000€ you simply cannot go with that logic. There is a reason why studios don't switch to latest releases just like some artist cannot afford to switch due to instability of the software and bugs. I am getting crashes all around, even when saving, or opening new files etc.. That is unacceptable and no amount of positives can justify that. Try to say that to your client. Also SideFX is not bound to any release dates so they can afford extra time to polish the software but for some reason I guess, financial, they don't do it. I don't know how they test software internally but obviously not enough QA staff as I know many that reporting issues simply because they love the software and want to see it thrive, myself included.
We all love Houdini, but at some point one has to admit that some things are just not justifiable, like so many issues in this release.

UI/UX is probably second worst thing to develop after viewport as its interconnected with everything, everywhere. If it was easy, it would already be done.
Changing UX demands changes in workflows which by now is probably lost battle. And its also not really clear what is wrong with UI and UX to actually be drastically changed to better. Its and we can only hope some things will be changed to some extent for better overall experience.

BabaJ
SideFX doesn't have a quality control problem whatsoever - SideFX is actually very high quality.

They actually do have issue with quality. You cant release software in this kind of state...you can, but you shouldn't. Like Alexey said, we are all beta testers at this point with this kind of release.

toonafish
The longer I use Houdini, the more I realize how brilliant Softimage was.

I still use it for modeling, and it’s a relief to simply focus on the task at hand, instead of being in a wrestling match while trying to get a job done.

What happened to those SI developers, did any them end up at Sidefx ?

I knew one while I was at Maxon, but then Maxon started doing what they are doing and lost him among many others. Not sure where rest of the people went, but I assume some went to Autodesk, some SideFX maybe, Unity, Epic etc.. Unfortunately, developers don't have much in saying how something should be developed (except code), they mostly do what they are told. So people should start blaming upper management, not devs or QA.

Ill just add one thing among many other that leaves me scratching my head and that is new Clip SOP, which is great when looking the feature set, but then once you start using it, you notice its using different type of handle that actually is missing many features that can be bound to shortcuts that are actually useful for faster modeling etc...
Honestly as QA, I have no idea how this could be released in this state, its just not good at all (Houdini overall). Why SideFX is doing this its beyond me. Damaging the good established reputation is no way to go. And Alex, if you wanna be in Alpha/Beta, you must own FX license, which is another wth for me.

Also, many bugs coming from Vulkan as its very tricky to replace and develop due to many complexities.

It would be great to fix that Search field that was in the top right corner. It's quite essential to the Hotkey Manager. I was hoping its gonna be fixed in the first daily build, but unfortunately, it is not.

Ondrej
Houdini 20.5 is using a new hotkey system, with new default configuration files and a new keymap file format and extension (.keymap2).

The documentation on all this is a little behind, so please bear with us.

You can bring in your bindings from an old .keymap file into a new .keymap2 file, with a helper python script, but it's a little involved. First you need to save out a new .keymap2 file from Houdini to act as source from which we will look up the bindings in the old .keymap file and generate a new .keymap2 file with your old bindings.

Then, in a python shell, you can run the following, replacing the arguments to match your file paths/names.

import keymaputils
keymaputils.importV1KeymapBindingsToKeymapFile("path_to_new_keymap2.keymap2", "path_to_old_keymap.keymap", "path_where_to_write_the_new_keyamp2_file", "KeymapName")

Thanks Onder, that will help, especially to Ikoon, for me I could do it manually and refresh the whole sheet, but I'll probably try the script first.

Thank you!

I still didn't have a chance to try it, but it could be hardware-related and also Vulkan viewport could cause a lot of these crashes as its always very tricky to change viewports. I even doubt its ready but rather pushed. Ill update the post once I try it out and test it properly. And I don't think its a real news that every new Houdini release is buggy as hell.

ikoon
I have over 300 hotkey overrides.
(some of them are assignments, some of them were automatic "un-assignments" of default hotkeys)

Thank you guys for the information. I hope there will be some way to convert them from 20 to 20.5

Ill cry for you too my friend, my condolences.

kodra
I contacted to SideFX support for this.

They suggest recreating the hotkeys in H20.5. No kidding.

I really don't know why they changed how hotkeys work.

What I would like to know is, what was improved!!!?

Unfortunately, hotkey manager is totally broken, and to add salt to the injury, none of the shortcuts from H20 will work if imported. I need a vacation to chill off at this point.

kodra
Actually neither method achieves the same result as old PolyExtrude. The only simple way to do what old PolyExtrude does is... old PolyExtrude, I guess.

Not saying they're not good techniques to know!

Like I mentioned in the video, to me it is a bug that should be fixed...

Mike_A
That's a good tip Igor.

Another technique I use for this situation is not to use Inset at all, but enable 'front transform' and scale down.

Indeed, plenty of ways to tackle that.

@Kodra, I am using this Frameio for the first time in hope its an easy way to share videos, so here is the link for you about how I utilize Smooth when stumbling on a similar issue.

https://f.io/Meum8IMA [f.io]