Hi all,

The difficult made easy, but the easy made difficult seems to be the way to describe Houdini sometimes! This is coming from a Softimage user, so please excuse the noob question (and attitude).

For instance, how the heck do I see an OpenGL procedural texture inside the viewport???

There is SO MUCH raw power here, it is really amazing!
Just kinda frustrating when trying to do “simple” things, like seeing a texture.

Thanks for any advice you can give.

Perry

you can see it in the shader view context but not in the viewport itself i think.

I may be miissing your meaning, but you can use a Material that sources a Composite network as a diffuse texture. This will allow you to modify the texture source on the fly in COPs.

The easiest way to see this is via a Grid + UVQuickshade. Then create a COP network, apply the effects you want to the texture map, and use an op: reference in the UVQuickshade's Texture Map parameter.

I think Perry simple asks how to see anything but raster texture in a viewport, and the answer is you can't. Houdini's viewport doesn't support it. Because procedural textures are defined by vex code, they are hardly accessible by OpenGL. So unless you pre bake procedural pattern you won't see it ( except for a shader view which executes shaders via Mantra).

SYmek
I think Perry simple asks how to see anything but raster texture in a viewport, and the answer is you can't. Houdini's viewport doesn't support it. Because procedural textures are defined by vex code, they are hardly accessible by OpenGL. So unless you pre bake procedural pattern you won't see it ( except for a shader view which executes shaders via Mantra).

You could build a COP network that bakes out your shader/texture and apply it in OpenGL (we're experimenting with this kind of thing right now and surprisingly successfully, I must say – Houdini handles the implicit dependencies much better than I expected).

But it is indeed not a single-button solution.

Hi,
We can't really display procedural shaders in softimage … (unless you are using the high quality glsl shaders thing who is all but reliable), but we have fast preview via connecting the procedural shader directly to the surface output, just like in houdini no ?

In houdini, I have resolved this in three ways:

a - with the COP example mentioned above (it is actually incredibly powerful. I have even emulated ambient occlusion or photoshop like filter adjustment effects in realtime, on any geo, without writing one line of code)

b - Simply using my render region in the viewport, then maximizing it. For the most part, mantra's IPR is so dang fast that it feels pretty realtime. With this, any vex materials you make will be in almost-realtime

c - you can also write GLSL shaders (although I would love it if sidefx would implement GLSL shader creation via nodes… )

I think NNois is right on this one.

In my opinion, introducing a temp “display/render flag” on SHOP VOP networks would speed up the workflow enormously.

Some softwares like softimage emulate that by small shaderball views on nodes but the whole shaderball thing is just old style ;-). A “eye icon” to display the node in the render would just be a better workflow !

Shader ball is old skool - The Shader View tab has torus, grid and tube too

MartybNz
Shader ball is old skool - The Shader View tab has torus, grid and tube too

Galleries can execute shaders on a ball. Little help for look dev though…

SYmek
Galleries can execute shaders on a ball. Little help for look dev though…

Very useful for Ball lookDev

Thanks to everyone for the help.
Sorry I was away from the discussion, I got really sick for a few days, then slammed with work. Just delivered today, and the first thing I wanted to do was check back on the Houdini forums.

Anyway, I did mean procedural textures, yes.

While we can't see them in Softimage (except the horrible “High Quality” mode), I find being able to see them very helpful.

However, as we said (by Gray, I think) the IPR is very fast so that does help a lot.

Thanks again to all for the help.

Perry

I would like to be able to see a single procedural node textures in the viewport to adjust simple things like size of noise, it is very helpful.

Thanks.

Eliezer Carvalho VFX
I would like to be able to see a single procedural node textures in the viewport to adjust simple things like size of noise, it is very helpful.

Thanks.

That thing is missing in Houdini even today, indeed.
Let's see if it changes in H20 with the upcoming Vulkan viewport. Crossed fingers!

RodTebisx

Eliezer Carvalho VFX
I would like to be able to see a single procedural node textures in the viewport to adjust simple things like size of noise, it is very helpful.

Thanks.

That thing is missing in Houdini even today, indeed.
Let's see if it changes in H20 with the upcoming Vulkan viewport. Crossed fingers!

When this new Vulkan viewport was announced?