Greetings all,
Given the nature of the visualisation work I do, I model in real world scale, and use centimeters as my base unit in other software.

Are there any notable downsides to setting Houdini prefs: Hip File Options to Unit length = cm and Unit Mass = 10grams?

Mike_A
Are there any notable downsides to setting Houdini prefs: Hip File Options to Unit length = cm and Unit Mass = 10grams?

the main downside is that it will make working in DOPs confusing if you are used to thinking in m and kg, there is no real reason why you would want that
also those units don't apply to already created DOPs

another downside is that Kinefx FBX import uses those units for some reason even though they are really meant only for DOPs and ideally would not have any effect on rest of Houdini whatsoever, so be careful

why would you want to change those units if you are doing just visualization work, does it involve DOPs?

OK - in that case I'll stick to Metres and Kg.

The reason for considering cm rather than metres was simply that most of the time I'm dealing with values less than 1m, I'm not a great enthusiast of the value ladder - I find it awkward to use (blasphemy, I know), and find it a little irritating to be frequently down in the 0.0XXX unit range given the current slider UI interface. A move to cm would shift me up a couple of decimal places.

Thanks Tomas

just to clarify, the hip file options units are just for DOPs

the values in Obj or SOPs are mostly unitless (apart from maybe that FBX oddity) so feel free to pretend they are in cm and use larger values

just when you go to DOPs, scale your inputs down to represent meters or if you like you can still alter the units either in the hipfile options or just alter the entered values in your forces etc., it's really up to you and what you find easier to use within DOPs

tamte
just to clarify, the hip file options units are just for DOPs

the filmback size is specified in mm or inches, so the hipfile unit is used to compute the depth of field in Mantra.