I'm a new Houdini Apprentice user with experience in Lightwave and a little Blender.
I'm trying to learn how to model in Houdini but i find it to be very slow, and i can say veeeery very slow comparing to LW.(the time to hit tab and type the name of the node, or even hitting the shelf buttons is longer then just hitting shortcuts)
1. Can you give some tips and tricks for speeding up the modelling in Houdini?
EG: I want to make 4 pillars and connect 1 face for 1 pillar to another face on the second pillar and so on.
2. How should you approach this? (I really don't think that the 4 pilars should be different geo objects)
I just want to say that I am also coming from Blender 2.45-2.49b and am figuring things out: like the rab3d bearing and the Blender: Architecture,Buildings and scenery(Sofa..)…
For the 4 pillars I feel as of know with my knowledge to just use a bridge sop to the primitives(faces) of the pillars that you want connected. That way you can move the pillars around by themselves much easier.
I find that even though using nodes is a little slower in Houdini than the way it is in Blender I feel that with time and tutorials, I am getting a little faster each day. DJ
“Nothing is just Black & White”- look at the Yin/Yang symbol
Modeling in Houdini can be extremely fast and efficient once you get the hang of working procedurally. Most avid Houdini users rarely use the shelf because its usually quicker and more efficient to call nodes up within the network by hitting tab or middle mouse click. I recommend learning how to use the “copy sop” which is one of Houdini's most powerful tools. Have you seen the tutorial on creating a procedural forest? here's the link:
You can put points down using the curve sop and then use the copy sop to copy tube sops (pillars) to each point. You can create some pretty intricate pillars by modeling the tube sops procedurally as well. I'm not sure what you mean about connecting the faces. It all depends on the look you're going for. If you explain more of what you're trying to do and/or have a reference image, I'd be happy to give you some more feedback.
Use q to repeat the last modeling operation (ex: laying down edge loops in quick succession). Assign your most frequently used modeling operations to the function keys on your keyboard. For example: F1: PolyExtrude F2: EdgeLoop F3: Blast F4: Fuse F5: PolyBevel F6: Dissolve F7: PolyKnit F8: PolySplit F9: Subdivide
i have difficult to make this easier on Houdini, to make a car's rim…, maybe “faster” is a better word. I used the fuse sop to merge the points….but before i have to delete the primitives sides, to make it work well….if someone have a better way to do that, i appreciate to learn
There is a commercial version downloaded onto Exchange, if you need it. It's a little different from this version. If I remember correctly I cleaned wires here so it's easier to make modifications while Exchange version was mostly testing version.
Can you post an image or a hip file showing what you are trying to do? It would be helpful to see your target topology to then make the best suggestion for your modelling approach.
Robert
Robert Magee Senior Product Marketing Manager SideFX
About an image or a hip file, i'll put them later, no problem, but what i want to know is just a simple “bridge” operation, just like in the link i put above.
Nothing fancy, just 2 polygonal boxes where i want to “bridge” 1 face of the first box to another face of the second box.
)
just kiddin'
