Maybe a silly question, but how does one select a complete hierarchy tree in Houdini ?

In most 3D apps there's a hotkey or RMB option to select the children of a parent object, but I can't find anything like that in Houdini.

When you right-click on a node, there will be an Inputs and/or Outputs submenu which will let you select the parents or children.

Siavash Tehrani
When you right-click on a node, there will be an Inputs and/or Outputs submenu which will let you select the parents or children.

Great, thanks.

I do wonder SideFX often chooses to name stuff so cryptic ?

toonafish
I do wonder SideFX often chooses to name stuff so cryptic ?

What's cryptics about it?

Selecting inputs and outputs is general for any graph and seem like a pretty clear naming

On the other hand using parent/child vocabulary would be very limiting as only Object level represents input connections mostly as hierarchical parent/child relationships but even that is not given as connections are abused in different ways for example in object level groom tools
Also in HOM parent refers to containing network and not an input node

More on this topic, is there a way to highlight the flow of network logic, similar to what's possible in Unreal Engine?
This feature would be incredibly helpful when examining new HDAs (or even your previously created ones), especially if they contain numerous switches and branches.


I see that hou.NodeConnection doesn't offer any setColor() or setWidth() method.
https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/hom/hou/NodeConnection.html [www.sidefx.com]


The only way I know to color a wire connection is with subnet types of nodes, but you can set the color of the connections to the immediate upstream node

tamte

toonafish
I do wonder SideFX often chooses to name stuff so cryptic ?

What's cryptics about it?

...well it might be logical from a programmers point of view, but as a mere mortal user, to me "output/input" sounds more like something related to attributes as in color, normals, velocity, fumes or smoke.

A hierarchy like "parents or children" as in the Network View is something completely different to me, you don't call your children "output" or your parents "input", right ?

And no matter what one selects in the Network View, it's a hierarchy after all.

Besides that, as far as I know everyone in the industry names it something related to a hierarchy or tree of children and parents, so if you want something intuitive "input/output" is not ideal.

I suspect most new users that want to select a hierarchy in Houdini try to find something related to a parent/child hierarchy, and think it's not possible, or have to use Google to find out it's actually "input/output" in the odd world of Houdini, as usual...