re: Bevel improvements as ‘low-hanging fruit’;

hopefully this will be strawberries rather than blackberries, spiky!, to implement

Why do primitives have the normal in Z axis instead of Y?
If Y is ‘up’ in world space in Houdini, then in the local space of a primitive (polygon) wouldn't its normal be towards ‘up’ and therefore towards pozitive Y?

How are you coming to that conclusion? If you add a vertexSop and put 5 into Y with Add Normal - the Y normal extends

You can make Houdini ‘Z Up’ too in the Preferences/3D Viewports.

Chevita - cool penguins!

Just do a poly extrude and you'll see.

Wouldn't you just call that the ExtrudeSop aligns it's Local Z axis to the normal?

Which other nodes do that? Looks like the EditSop doesn't.

MartybNz
Wouldn't you just call that the ExtrudeSop aligns it's Local Z axis to the normal?

It's not just a gizmo (visual) alignment of the Z axis to the normal, also in the parameter box the value on Z is modified.

MartybNz
Which other nodes do that? Looks like the EditSop doesn't.

I don't know which other node does that, but if not all do it (like EditSop) then it's an inconsistency and should be addressed.
I'm not claiming that this is actually how things are, because I'm obviously not a an experienced Houdini user to know all the ins and outs, but if it is… then it's a problem.

it confused me first too but once you get used to it somehow i kind of like it. its easy to tell this way if you're using global or local space. cause whenever you use local you will know you use Z. Therefor Z = up in local! Y = up in global.

changing this would be wrong!

It doesn't make sense, sorry.
This is not a rigorous method to know in which space you're in, by eyeballing what value changes where.
But again, maybe I'm lacking the necessary knowledge to understand an underlying reason for why Houdini does this.
Awaiting a dev or an experienced user to come and clarify.

another small thing that might seem stupid, is selection of fields. Why not highlight the filed on click? I find that I spend allot of time fixing exploding meshes because I forgot to click–drag to highlight a specific field.

It will save tons of time if a click on a field selected the value by default.

What do you guys think?

It doesn't make sense, sorry.

take this simple example:
X and Y in 2d are the sides while Z is the depth.

It makes perfect sense.

Doudini

It doesn't make sense, sorry.

take this simple example:
X and Y in 2d are the sides while Z is the depth.

It makes perfect sense.

In 2d perhaps, although what relevance does Z have in 2d? A 3rd axis is present in 2.5d and 3d environments.

Further more, if that makes sense because that's the way it is in 2d then the world axis with its Y axis pointing upwards doesn't make sense.
What I'm talking about here is consistency: pick an axis that represents “up” and stick with it.

but why change it if its correct and actually working? i dont see what is wrong with it.

please note that with the polyextrude you actually take a 2d face and extrude that. So depth axis for extrusion will always be Z. if you dont like that you can switch to global transformation which actually will move the face from its local null position and won't do a depth extrude. you could also set this to default.

hope it clears up things?? sorry.. i'm no expert either so maybe someone else could explain further… :roll:

also the Z axis is the actual up axis in 3d if i remember things correctly. you can cahnge it in preferences if you want.

Actually it's not correct.
It's not that obvious because apparently Houdini lacks a local mode for translating polygons which dare I say, should be implemented.
In that circumstance, having the Y up for the world space, would only make sense to also have Y up for local spaces, such as primitives (polygons).

If you change Z up in prefs then it's consistent, but right now (the default set up) is not.

p.s. before someone mentions “peak handle”, no, it's not the same and that's useful only for polys. Sometimes. It's a mess for edges, or at the very least, doesn't replace a local mode

Best to point us to a good ‘local’ mode implementation.

Testing Nuke, Blender, Silo, Maya ‘15; they all have relatively different implementations. It’s unclear the advantages. Also reading up on the SI, Max & Rhino manuals. Consistency doesn't appear to rate highly.

there is absolutly no advantage but making oldschool users frustrated if you change this! Z is the depth and should stay this way. with extrude you push something in depth and dont push it in X/Y/Z!

i dont understand why you want to change things that wont bring improvements at all but just make older users frustrated.

McNistor
p.s. before someone mentions “peak handle”, no, it's not the same and that's useful only for polys. Sometimes. It's a mess for edges, or at the very least, doesn't replace a local mode

agree on this one. this is something that needs to be improved. there is no true local mode for your selected points/edges and peak handle doesnt help.

At the present there's no real technical problem with this other than what I said earlier, consistency.
But should a local mode be implemented there might be other considerations such as rigging and animation, but since I'm not experienced with Houdini in this area (or any other for that matter) these might be unjustified concerns.
I do rigging and animation in Softimage and local mode is important. You practically set keys on local coord. and if there was no consistency between local and world space I'm pretty sure there would be a mess.

Frustration among old Houdini users might be unavoidable if SESI are serious about improving Houdini.

I think we can agree we have a different opinion about this. thats okay.

But if we're at it. Here's some other inputs:

Better Layout for Shortcuts:
i love the way shortcuts are layed out in cinema 4d by using 2 keys binded. so you can do like w-s, w-d, it will give you a little popup and show the shortcut asigned when you press the first eky. I've also seen this in a lot of linux command line tools. Ranger the filemanager for example uses this and its amazing!

this way you can setup a ton of shortcuts without breaking other shortcuts. Cause atm its kind of hard setting up shortcuts that make sense in houdini.

polybevel:
- being able to make better curved bevels.
- when beveling 1 point on a grid subdivided bevel doesnt work. you will need to extrude and bevel the edge.

Snapping:
- sometimes bugs out and doesnt snap to points that are highlighted as selected.
- doesnt work if selectable flag of geometry is turned off.

Curve Tool:
- being able to select multiple points and move them without droping an edit sop

- The whole right click menu is just weak and with tons of polygons on weaker graphic cards can make houdini stop working.

- oh and yea please add a polybridge tool.. ♥

McNistor
Why do primitives have the normal in Z axis instead of Y?
If Y is ‘up’ in world space in Houdini, then in the local space of a primitive (polygon) wouldn't its normal be towards ‘up’ and therefore towards pozitive Y?

I think this convention comes from Houdini's cameras, where the “look at” is always in the Z axis. Thus if you want a polygon to “look at” something, the normal is treated as the Z axis.

edward
I think this convention comes from Houdini's cameras, where the “look at” is always in the Z axis.

Why is it in the Z axis?
Explaining a mystery with another mystery gets us back to square 1. That is, if we even left square 1.
Never mind, I'm joking.

McNistor

edward
I think this convention comes from Houdini's cameras, where the “look at” is always in the Z axis.

Why is it in the Z axis?
Explaining a mystery with another mystery gets us back to square 1. That is, if we even left square 1.
Never mind, I'm joking.

Well, it can't be the Y axis because Y was already chosen to be “up”.