twod
Pressing Alt/Space in a viewport locks you do that viewport until you release the key. This is because often people will use many mouse drags to accomplish a single pan or tumble (back & forth). Releasing the focus lock when you released the mouse would cripple this fairly common case, as you'd accidentally pan other viewports (and perhaps even the network editor).

Well, just tested that on OSX and the behavior is definitly not the same and surely not working, the lock effect doesn't work between 3d views an lead to a select tool although “alt” is pressed.

MartybNz
Can you give an example steps how it prevents iterations?

Well you're right it sounds like a detail but this is more a “feeling” where we could focus on moving things and not being nervous about clicking.

If we talk about speed of interacting beetween viewport the simple fact that we need a synchronized double press on two different hands when adjusting views doesn't feel right.

Beside that if we talk about consistency, this lock isn't working when we “Tilt” or “Zoom” in conjunction with CTRL.


But maybe this “feeling” is agremented by some wierd behaviors of responsiveness, sometimes i feel sort of a delay…
For example between 2 viewport adjusting the placement of a polygon, thumbling views, at maybe 5-10 steps of polygon adjust pos i lost a sync in my shortcuts and end to or the selection tool doing a deselect or moving the polygon when i need to move the view.

All of this, definitly not a big deal but a tickbox in the settings would be cool ;-)

Noël

Simon__hayes
with the drop down menus pretty much all of them are persisting on my system (dell xps, windows 7, wacom tablet).

Can you make a video of this?

I really hope that operation do not propagate backwards through the tree if I merge a primitive sphere and a poly box I want them to only have properties affected by the merge node. On the sphere level if the icons where greyed out it would be a visual feedback as to the nature of the sphere at that level and it should hopefully till be a primitive at that level and not a polymesh.

I'm not sure that you realize that all geometry nodes output arbitrary geometry. The “sphere” node just happens to only output geometry spheres. There is nothing stopping from a single geometry node to output both a sphere and a polymesh.

NNois
All of this, definitly not a big deal but a tickbox in the settings would be cool ;-)

It important to make the little things work if they are used 1000's of times a day. One small change could really add up!

Simon__hayes wrote
I really hope that operation do not propagate backwards through the tree if I merge a primitive sphere and a poly box I want them to only have properties affected by the merge node. On the sphere level if the icons where greyed out it would be a visual feedback as to the nature of the sphere at that level and it should hopefully till be a primitive at that level and not a polymesh.

It just boils down to the ‘select edges’ mode not being able to select a primitive edge right? like a sphere.

How would this ‘greyed out tool’ indicator work when you have merged a primitive sphere and a polygon? As you can't select the ‘edge’ of the primitive sphere but you can of the polygon.

Gyroscope
If you want to add multiple items, you have to roll it back down, select and repeat for every single item you wish to add. If it stayed down for you to select multiple items that'd be great.

I don't know if its a UI redraw issue because it adds the (*) to the drop down list. And I by no means want to replace how it currently works, only add to it. Say Shift-Click.

Shift-Clicking would be rad.

jordibares
Furthermore, the stowed icons are tiny and this is the kind of thing XSI excels because there are no icons… simple text very well organised.

Agree. Would be good to have some UI control of the icon size, like the shelf tools. i.e. text, small and large icons.

MartybNz

jordibares
Furthermore, the stowed icons are tiny and this is the kind of thing XSI excels because there are no icons… simple text very well organised.

Agree. Would be good to have some UI control of the icon size, like the shelf tools. i.e. text, small and large icons.

Doesn't the compact mode just do that ? I like when you have UI options (compact mode) but keeping people doing ugly things, like big icons on a shelf with small icon on other parts of the UI, just like if you permit easly changing the font of the software ;-)

About Shelfs:
Sorry if i've missed it but may i suggest a vertical shelf mode, and a menu dropdown mode? I just don't like screens crippled vertically ( the good old Internet explorer option bar effect, or even the “maya” effect ;-) )

So i could suggest 2 missing modes
1- Horizontal just like the one today but keeping only tabs category titles but in drop down menu. One dropdown menu by category, this would be very efficient !
2- A vertical ordered Shelf, i can't find this option, like the 3d view tools

Thanks,
Noël

NNois
Doesn't the compact mode just do that ? I like when you have UI options (compact mode) but keeping people doing ugly things, like big icons on a shelf with small icon on other parts of the UI, just like if you permit easly changing the font of the software ;-)

Yeah but it's global UI. Would be good to have explicit control of the toolbox size.

Greetings, honorable ladies and gentlemen of the Houdini order!
My first post here, after playing around with Houdini for a few hours altogether.

I'm somewhat ‘spoiled’ from the Softimage UI, I thus have a few questions and suggestions… apologies in advance for any duplicates, but there's just too much to read in this subforum already…


- Can I zoom about the mouse cursor in a 3D viewport, like I can in a panel?


- Can I select ‘primitives’ (=components) across multiple selected objects, and edit them together? I have to apply a ‘Merge’ and an ‘Edit’ node, right?


- Softimage has this ‘multi-PPG’ feature, meaning you can inspect multiple operators of the same kind in one and the same property page. Is something similar possible in H.? Like setting the divisions of multiple cubes at once, etc.


- The ‘tree view’ seems to be the equivalent to the ‘Explorer’ in SI, but only one object can be selected at a time, and it doesn't seem to have any drag&drop capabilities. Am I missing something?


- It's strange that primitives (points, edges, polys) get converted automatically when changing the selection mode.
Would be cool if each primitive selection was remembered, and only converted when asked to.


- What's the trick with the transform ‘gizmo’&tripod to use a plane instead of a single axis? XY, XZ, YZ.
There's a ‘show translate plane’ menu in the RMB context menu, but that's awkward to do something as simple and important.
In Soft, a little yellow rectangle appears between the axes of the tripod, depending on where you hover with your mouse, so you can move in a plane.


- Obviously contextual menus exist. Is it possible to configure them freely? (like in C4D, for example)


- I chose ‘select front facing only’ in the ‘geometry select mode’ button's RMB menu, but still backfacing points get selected. What am I doing wrong?


- Is there something like a ‘working pivot’/'temporary transform pivot'?


- Snapping… i move something (points, objects), turn on V for point snap, and it won't snap… why not?
In Soft, snapping in combination with the working pivot works nothing but perfect… they really got this right.


- Supra/sticky keys… very nice to have!


- The coord system menu (object, world, view, parent) is a submenu - inconvenient, is it not. It's importance would ask for it being top-level.


- Is it possible to swap the zoom tool direction? Down = in, up = out. (I know, this is a bit picky… in Soft, you can configure the speed also, to a negative value as well, which then flips the direction)


- Softimage has this brilliant option to keep the axis tripod inside the viewport, even if the selection lies outside of the VP. Spares some VP navigation. Very handy!


- Soft selection radius is not color-coded in the VP, as it seems, and thus it is hard to say which primitives will be affected during transformation.


Ok, enough for one post… thanks for reading!

Ah yes… Houdini is obviously a brilliant application, and I'm literally just scratching the surface here…

Best regards,
Eugen

Tupaia
- What's the trick with the transform ‘gizmo’&tripod to use a plane instead of a single axis? XY, XZ, YZ.

You can assign keyboard shortcuts.

Tupaia
- Can I zoom about the mouse cursor in a 3D viewport, like I can in a panel?

Would (space +) z be the thing you're looking for? ‘z’ in view mode will shift the view to whatever surface is under the pointer, allowing you to dolly/zoom in directly. Or something else?

MartybNz

Tupaia
- What's the trick with the transform ‘gizmo’&tripod to use a plane instead of a single axis? XY, XZ, YZ.

You can assign keyboard shortcuts.

Control-Click on the Axis you don't want to transform on and you get a Square on the gizmo. Eg. Control-Click Y, to get ZX plane. I think this is what you're looking for?

That one is better! - a quick reference card for all these similar requests for would be excellent. Hopefully Jordi making one

Tupaia
Greetings, honorable ladies and gentlemen of the Houdini order!
…
Eugen

Hi Eugen, did you visit that tread http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=31040 [sidefx.com] I think it's also a great start as 80% you talked about is discussed over there

Noël

Hi!
Thanks for the directions, I'm already reading…

@Gyroscope:
Yes, that's what I was looking for!

Best,
Eugen

Tupaia
- The ‘tree view’ seems to be the equivalent to the ‘Explorer’ in SI, but only one object can be selected at a time, and it doesn't seem to have any drag&drop capabilities. Am I missing something?

I've found than using a newtwork view in “list view” mode on “list order” tree mode you can multi select !
editing multi parameter is working but we need a better overview when values differs, they are grayed out where we expect an hightlight

not yet but its never late.

;-)

MartybNz
That one is better! - a quick reference card for all these similar requests for would be excellent. Hopefully Jordi making one

When using the transform tool in the viewport and you click on the center to transform in the view plane it is transforming the object in relation to the xz plane rather than parallel to the camera is there any way to change this interaction. Is there any reason for this behavior?

I really like the way you can use the transform tool to quickly manipulate objects when in the side, front and front views but when I am in the perspective view i find it reasonably unusable.

Is there any way to set sensitivity of the tablet. My viewport manipulation feels slow but I do not want to change the tablet settings as they are how I want them for my other applications.

And I would really like a option in preferences to swap pan to the left Left Click and rotate to right still find it awkward to swap between 2d and 3d applications not to mention the tendency to try to rotate front and side views instead of panning.

For screen space translation you can swap to ‘view’, rmb on handle and Allign handle. That could be a good option in the new Houdini, to have dragging the centre of the handle to move in view/screen space whilst keeping the x,y,z handles in object space.

Edit:more testing and it appears this is not needed - turning off the construction grid and all works well. There is a Ground Plane grid in Display Options/Guide that looks like the construction grid but doesn't affect the dragging a handle.

Viewport tubmbling can be speed up and slowed down with option and shift, though option seems to lock it to an axis.

Thanks i knew i was missing something obvious. The fact that the handle gives a depth option in this mode is also really cool

The fact that you can select items with your transform tools and do a click and move workflow is really cool. I actually wrote a plugin to do this in in XSI because it is really cool for blocking out scenes and animations. It would be nice If locking translation for rotation would make them unselectable with the tool and Rotations. At the moment it gives you a message that it can't create the handle It would be nice if you could set it to just ignore the control entirely which would be useful for places like wrist controls (I haven't had time to check properly yet so it may well be there. I have also been spending too much time playing with L_Systems ).

The viewport tumbling is something i will get used to but is would be nice to be able to customize this.

For locked parameters; try the Handle tool, the one below Scale, use the ‘Y’ key to cycle through trans, rot, scale and it will skip the locked parameter.

Edit:

The viewport tumbling is something i will get used to but is would be nice to be able to customize this.

You can swap the MMB and RMB with env variable:

HOUDINI_MMB_PAN=1 or 0

NNois
editing multi parameter is working but we need a better overview when values differs, they are grayed out where we expect an hightlight

I haven't dived far enough into Houdini yet to know how this works. But just to clarify how it works in SI: When you look at a property page and have multiple objects selected, the parameters will reflect those of all selected objects.
If a parameter value is displayed, it means that all objects have this parameter value. If no parameter value is displayed, it means that this parameter is different for some of the objects. But I can still put in a new value, and this new value will then be given to all objects.

So for instance, if I have three objects selected and look at their render visibility parameter, it may show:
a) a checkmark -> render visiblity is currently turned on for all 3 objects
b) no checkmark -> render visibility is currently turned off for all 3 objects
c) a question mark -> some of the 3 objects have their render visiblity turned on, some have turned it off. I can now put a checkmark there or remove the question mark to give all objects the same value. This works for any and every parameter, be that transformation values, shader settings, geometry creation settings etc. etc.