Jed Frechette

timurproko
For instance, having many thin separators between windows is an outdated approach to UI design.

Out of curiosity, what is the issue with this approach? Is it entirely stylistic or does it introduce functional problems and if so what are the more modern solutions to those problems?

eikonoklastes

timurproko
mess

for someone with so much design experience, you should understand that presenting a massive clot of text like this makes it extremely tedious to read.

You mean a post consisting of paragraphs containing 2-4 sentences each? I'm not sure I agree with the post's conclusions but calling its text a "mess" seems like a weird criticism.

lmnoc1
Consolidation and simplification are the keys!

I'm pretty sure the only node anyone actually needs is an Attribute Wrangle. That would certainly simplify the network UI, although it probably wouldn't make Houdini much easier to use.

SWest
The thing with Houdini that make it superior to the other competitors, as a main package, is the fact that it started out with dynamics (please inform me if I have misunderstood this).

I would go even farther and be even more general than that. I basically never use any of the dynamics and what makes Houdini great for me is that it is basically an operating system for building 3D tools.

When I was first exposed to Houdini about 10 years ago I completely misunderstood what it was. I thought it was just another 3D application for building and rendering assets like Maya, 3DS Max, Blender, etc. and all of the associated ecosystems around them. What I completely failed to understand is that Houdini is fundamentally a platform for building 3D tools, which also just happens to include some prebuilt tools out of the box.

Ever since coming back to Houdini about 5 years ago, and actually realizing what it was this time, I've been kicking myself for not getting it the first time around and wasting all of those years.