Don Nash

McNistor
If you don't mind me answering your question too, I'd say - a bit of facial rigging, techniques aimed at both cartoon as well as realistic, if time permits.

Same here. I'm coming from 3ds Max, and was impressed with the improved rigging tools in H16, but there is precious little about facial rigging, online.

It would be nice to see a facial rig component to the new Auto-Rigger, similar to what you see in some of Blender's auto-rigger addons. This is a good example. You see an auto-rig for the face about midway into the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLmiE1_HBZQ&t=91s [www.youtube.com]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTbIk5tz5-k&t=766s [www.youtube.com]

The Face Rig portion is early in this video:
https://cloud.blender.org/p/blenrig/57343500c379cf109d9e4ecc [cloud.blender.org]

Just because you don't personally use one, that has no bearing on the merit of Houdini adding support for it. People coming from other apps that DO support it, will want it. That is enough reason alone.

No, I'm not missing the point. I'm NOT going to learn or use Houdini without this support….period. Where “the power lies” and what one needs to learn doesn't have jack squat to do with the topic. Just because you don't spend much time in the 3D viewport, MODELING or doing other NON-VFX tasks, it doesn't mean others won't.

If someone is a modeler or 3d generalist coming to Houdini, they are going to spend a lot less time working with VOPs than the average Houdini user would. That is the part you keep missing. Not everyone evaluating Houdini is a TD, and SideFX is trying to attract more and more of the non-TD crowd.