So it seem the ROP FBX is currently limited when exporting vertex caches (in my case .pc2 files) It currently only names them (and the mesh) by the last node before the ROP. You can use the @name attribute and check 'build hierarchy from path attribute' but that will only work for non animation exports and only export the named mesh and no vertex cache files.

from the help - "Support for animation export using this is currently limited to only exporting primitive transforms and each primitive must have a unique path attribute value. There is no support for exporting to vertex caches nor changing geometry topology."

Is there supposed to be a better way or am I looking at needing tops to rename my files after they're saved to disk?

Hmmmm…. fixed a “different” problem more related to max meshes and now I'm not getting that particular crash. will hold of until I can get it to happen again.

Heya

With any of the non-production builds above 1.60 I seem to be getting a houdni crash on boot(17.0.386).

ERROR: Couldn't open resource file “resources” (No such file or directory)
Could not initialize the help server:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “<stdin>”, line 1, in <module>
ImportError: No module named houdinihelp

ERROR: Couldn't find ‘SI_ColorEditor.ui’ for reading. Looked in:
CUsers/dave.mcdonnell/AppData/Roaming/SideFX/GameDevToolset/17.0/1.69/config/Applications

Attached screenshot as there was another warning dialog as well.

BrandonA
Can you submit a bug to support with the error log and any other info so that I can investigate this particular crash further?

Thank you for reporting these issues!

Can do. As I'm stepping through this I am coming up with a list of questions that I'll try to post in here as well.

Had a houdini crash with this error

File: c:\houdini_tools\windows-x86_64-cl19.15\3dsmax\3dsmax-2019-0\custom\include\tab.h
Line: 360
Function: Tab<class MaxSDK::VertexNormal *>:perator
Expression: th && i < th->count

It seems to be consistent with showing the modifier stack results while creating geometry the HDA modifer cant deal with. I have a HDA which basically take in polygon shapes and does POlyexpand2d inside a for each loop for each polygon island. (polyexpand is set to Warn and output empty geometry)

My Max modifer stack is a set of spline shapes with an edit poly on top. if the geometry is all good it works fine. If I go into the editable spline and cause a broken piece of geo by breaking a point while seeing up the stack it crashes houdini and then Max. If I'm not seeing the stack end results it seems to be able to handle it.

Next bug

1. Max will insta crash if you select(via the node input) an unsuported type, i.e a spline, dummy basically non mesh objects. Probably needs a check for classes it can accept.

So just to check it looks like if your HDA outputs packed instances then inside max it will create instanced individual geo. This is super nice and solves one of my R&D tasks which would be how to solve replacing basic geo with other object class (i.e. helpers, vrayproxies and other things not able to be sent to houdini engine)I can just have basic geo that I replace ps

I'm currently on the hunt for a way to pass bezier spline data(not nurbs)to houdini engine

BrandonA
Ah, I see now regarding #3. I will log a bug for this.

Thank you!

Thank you guys for developing this plugin. I've been waiting a while for this to help us being able to introduce some houdini into our pipeline. As 20 year max users with projects that might have tail that is active for years its hard to jump ship completely in one go so to have ways to slowly introduce houdini so that it works with what we are doing and can develop over time is great.

Hey Brandon

1. using Houdini version 17.0352 - I'll try a new daily build today

3. steps to repro - note rotations aren't broken just the parent level dummy can have a different world rotation on build than expected

1. put focus in left view
   
2. use shelf tools to create Surface Instancer
   
3. choose your inputs
   
4. inspect local axis of parent dummy compared to instance surface Y will be up instead of Z because left view was active on creation.
   
5. fix is to zero rotations. might be more desirable for the dummy creation to be forced to create with rotations zeroed
   

Hey

I've been playing with houdini engine (indie) in 3dsmax 2019 for about half an hour and have found several bugs, most are related to a specific .hda I've built but I've tried to also test against the supplied demos where applicable or a basic example. New ones I continue to find I'll keep listing in the thread but the first ones are.

1. A mesh without UV's will insta crash max - the most basic copy to points hda will do this for me in both create object mode and modifier HDA mode

2. a max modifier stack will not be respected on recook - it looks like the current stack selection is used rather than top level. therefore if your UV's are at the top of the stack and you're doing things like moving splines at the bottom of your stack when you go to recook them it wont find UV's and will crash. Also preferred behaviour for me would be to cook the result of the entire stack not just what is displaying in the max viewport (show end result toggle can avoid this but not always on) not usually a problem if you use Modifier HDA mode only create object mode

3. Various rotation issues, mostly linked to which active view the Create object dummy is created in and its offset of axis compared to objects created in other viewspoints…. i.e. if you create a dummy in perspective its up axis is different than if you created it from an ortho view.

Thats all fro first pass

ndickson
I have no idea, but the video you linked to says (around 6:20) "There's a 3D Studio Max [plugin] coming later in the year."

Yep, thats the part I was so excited about

So this video showed up the other day with the first glimpse and concrete info I've seen in regards to Houdini Engine for 3dsmax.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/262842928 [player.vimeo.com]

I'm pretty excited about as I've been dabbling with Houdini Indie on and off for the last couple of years trying to upskill and find ways to make it a possibility for our very entrenched 3dsmax pipeline.

I've been hanging out for more info about this as I see it as a way to start bringing houdini into our workflows to solve small problems at first and over time replace a few of the mroe cumbersome ways we do things.

Anyone know if there will be a beta soon?

Dave

I have exactly the same question. All I get is a noticeable pop trying to do it inside crowd.

Thanks for that Damian.

Looks good Strob

I'd like to see a thread for HE 4 Max too. I started to play with it today and although it looks promising there's a whole bunch of things which are tricky to figure out about on your own. I've already been stumbling over the initial problems of input geometry and preservation of pivot points (so far it doesnt AFAIK) and getting inputs to work at object level instead of SOP level (creates a node input picker but doesnt pipe it through to the Operator path)

I get that its not an offical plug-in and massive props to Hideki for getting it going, but having somewhere official-ish to discuss it would be good.

Cheers,

Dave