The ability of Karma XPU to be able to handle larger resolution environment maps without using up all the available GPU memory.

Would be nice if it were possible to edit multiple objects at the same time in Houdini 20, as mentioned in this thread [www.sidefx.com], from 2014 already.

I wish to see more kinefx and ready to go IK and FK human rigs. More motion clean up tools including facial clean up plug and play nodes for Kinefx is highly required. Animator should not spend time to play with VOPs or Attributes. Why shall we leave Maya or Blender for character animation ? To learn vops ? (Challange your business ideas for a day)

Please kill Mantra!
Please kill Mantra!
Please kill Mantra!
Or pay those who would consider installing it for the pain you caused them. Srsly shoot that thing down!

This renderer should not exist in any dictionary! Invest in Karma and make it better if you are planning to charge extra for it!
Come up with real time Karma viewport that does not crush Houdini.

Ready clothes presets for vellum wont do anyone harm. This is the user friendly that users are looking for...leave the numbers dailing option for those who want to use it.

Welding points node could allow group options for the points pin and target similar to vellum stitch node instead of doing point by point welding through the whole geo!

Sculpt with brushes. Not to turn Houdini to Zbrush, but at least to add some touches.

Any updates from Sidefx comes under new solver or fast simulation means no updates and we did not do much!

As someone who does preview rendering in Mantra cuz i am too lazy all i can comment on your suggestion is "yikes"

Mantra is EOL so no new developments. Karma and in vulkan they are investing ressources. Everything is fine

The reason why houdini exist is where other tools fail houdini will solve the problem.
I am sure H20 will bring many cool things it takes time and beer. To overcome the waiting...

Pavel Breiva
Hi, would like to talk about the old as the world of computer graphics topic - MODELING.

Particularly where the pain starts.

Houdini modeling tools are unique and perfect for procedural modeling and overall procedural structure and other very cool stuff.
BUT, what if in certain parts you want to jump in and just quickly blockout smth destructively, without having your node chain to grow significantly where you can be lost, where you could be able to do it quickly and not to spend 3x time on it?

Modeling is a demanding stuff, and I want to be creative, achieve results as quickly as possible, and not being destructed by creating nodes for each blockout step without need.

Theoretically there is Poly Draw/Topo Build nodes, which are solution for current situations, but far not enough, these are abandoned and stuck in the past with limited functionality, not to compare to modeling packages functionality.

Why not to increase Poly Draw potential, make it more similar to Zbrush Z-Modeler tool/brush for example, where you could just jump in and quickly inset, extrude, drop primitive, make more flexible splits, align edge/points in more flexible way, add Edit Sop functionality to it with peak, soft move etc.

I believe(probably) it is not a big resource for development but could be relatively big step to make Houdini a win-win package for quick modeling also.

YOu can ezsaly set up a workflow that is faster then maya or z modeler. just right click the tools and ad a keybind to them.
Now you can model super fast and with a lot of tools semi procedural.

There is also a payed addon that is basically this but al the keybinds have been set for u. and costum tools have been added.
you can find it here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_SI5MMWkYs [www.youtube.com]

osong
As someone who does preview rendering in Mantra cuz i am too lazy all i can comment on your suggestion is "yikes"

You do realize that you would be able to do the same if Karma is the main renderer in Houdini ?

NicTanghe
YOu can ezsaly set up a workflow that is faster then maya or z modeler. just right click the tools and ad a keybind to them.
Now you can model super fast and with a lot of tools semi procedural.

There is also a payed addon that is basically this but al the keybinds have been set for u. and costum tools have been added.
you can find it here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_SI5MMWkYs [www.youtube.com]

Hi, thanks!

Yes, tried to comprehensively model stuff and also checked shortcuts stuff of course at first steps.

Yet you are still having only procedural like approach to modeling for your blockouts let's say?

You still have to create tons of nodes for blockout where procedural approach is not needed and could be done in one distructive node. Not to mess up your clean procedural tree for example, without need to group and hide all the blockout "garbage"?

And lots of sop nodes are not completely manageable in viewport, therefore you have to jump to node tree to adjust, connect and manage lots of steps.

And my thoughts were - boosted polydraw aka z-modeler could fasten things up significantly.

Maybe Alexey tool solves these problems, does it? It is hard to find detailed guide for this tool, only abstract videos.. I believe it is all the same but with nice interface, shortcuts and some tunings?

I do a lot of modeling in Houdini, I came from 3DSM to Maya to XSI back to Maya and now to Houdini and I can tell you that modeling in Houdini is a better experience than all the rest. If you don't want the long chain of nodes just delete the history like you would in any other program and all the nodes will be gone.
T.

Pavel Breiva
And my thoughts were - boosted polydraw aka z-modeler could fasten things up significantly.

Topobuild? Of course it could use some more improvement

Tser
I do a lot of modeling in Houdini, I came from 3DSM to Maya to XSI back to Maya and now to Houdini and I can tell you that modeling in Houdini is a better experience than all the rest. If you don't want the long chain of nodes just delete the history like you would in any other program and all the nodes will be gone.
T.

I find that packing certain sections in a subnet is the cleanest and allows me to backtrack often.

Yep,I prefer to keep the history, but if I am using Polydraw a bit, then I'm not too concerned as the history before the Polydraw isn't editable anymore for nodes under it. I use Polydraw if I want to work as if I did in Maya.

John31

osong
As someone who does preview rendering in Mantra cuz i am too lazy all i can comment on your suggestion is "yikes"

You do realize that you would be able to do the same if Karma is the main renderer in Houdini ?

yes, alas the mantra preview rendering takes virtually 1 click to preview, and it works well with preview shaders that your drag and drop from /mat context, and the environment lights and all that work both in viewport and in the mantra preview rendering
amount of clicks it takes to do super quick previews in karma is a larger number

liberalarts

Versalight
Comparing Blender and Houdini UX makes no sense.
Houdini is more of an IDE mixed with a DCC rather than pure DCC and in it nodes are laid out in a unix filesystem fashion (hence the "nodepath", attr, slot format).

Sure. But could Houdini learn from other software? Yes. Could Houdini be more user friendly? Hell yes.

Versalight
(assuming you use an external code editor for wrangles)

100% with you on external text editors, but UX could be improved there so that external editors are easier to setup / use.

Who is saying that Blender UI is user friendly ?
I am a 25 years + CG Artist and been working on Max / Maya / Autocad AME / 3Dstudio Dos and finally our lovely H.
Blender has always been a big problem for me due to its UI. Same for C4D.
I am not saying it is horrible I am just saying my brain cannot function in it, UI is all about personal taste.
You should have seen H 15 years ago, then YES your statement would have been quite valid. Today, mheee

tanguybc
UI is all about personal taste.

Hence the need to dial up the customizability of the UI/UX and let users create their preferred work space.
I personally don't find radial menus all that useful apart from a few cases. I prefer hotkeys, but the amount of entries for various options and tools lacking in the hotkey editor is mind boggling, albeit somewhat understandable given that sidefx's focus thus far has been solely on the "hit Tab > type node name" workflow.

citizen

tanguybc
UI is all about personal taste.

Hence the need to dial up the customizability of the UI/UX and let users create their preferred work space.
I personally don't find radial menus all that useful apart from a few cases. I prefer hotkeys, but the amount of entries for various options and tools lacking in the hotkey editor is mind boggling, albeit somewhat understandable given that sidefx's focus thus far has been solely on the "hit Tab > type node name" workflow.

I am also a hotkey guy and it took a lot of work to get the UX to a level I enjoy using. The defaults have a lot of room for improvement IMO but I am just glad I can script the missing things using the Python API with Qt or the last effort the hscript commands.

So it might not be within everyone's comfort, time, skill, or willingness to do the same.

Customization is nice but I still hope the default is better. Learning Houdini itself is already very taxing. I don't think expecting everyone to learn its UI API is reasonable. I've done a lot (like, a lot) Blender python scripting in one of my previous jobs. And it was my least favorite part of the job.

I really hope they invest in polishing and improving the UI/UX. The viewport is a big one, so would be excited about changes there. Atm it works alright as a visual inspector for whatever work is done in the network editor, but the moment you start working in the viewport itself, be that selecting geometry or actually applying operations (such as modelling) the workflow tends to become unnecessarily complicated.

I think this problem involves many features, including hotkeys, selection, undo, UI layout, gizmos, handles and visualizers, and this needs thorough redesign. Now work on a new viewport with support for Vulkan was mentioned in the last release video from SideFX, so fingers crossed.

CAMERAS
Cameras need to be made intuitive for general use, camera matching and animation. Every usable control and feature of real cinema cameras should be available in Houdini, including custom film back sizes. Ability to control Houdini scene camera with external device such as iPhone, VR set. A natural way to shoot a scene, inspect a model or walk around a digital set.

REALITY CAPTURE
RC to Houdini. Cameras, image planes, un-distorted images and model export to Houdini with single click. Useful for modelling, groom, texture baking. Includes ability to look through cameras and see back-plate image align with scan-data model.

CAMERA MATCHING
Footage matched/ tracked in Houdini. Quick and slick way to match cameras, add models, set extensions, FX to footage.

HOUDINI TO ZBRUSH (Much more than GoZ)
An advanced Houdini to ZBrush workflow. leverage Houdini for it's strengths in proceduralism, object and asset management, object versions, posing models with KineFX,and leverage ZBrush for its sculpting tools. A FACS workflow and ability to sculpt animated models. It would make it possible to create a Houdini scene for exporting displacement maps using Houdini instead of ZBrush, which is more production friendly. Houdini would carry everything and only fingers ZBrush's brain for sculpting. (I cant tell you how frustrating ZBrush is in production, particularly when working on assets between artists and particularly in ensuring standards when exporting displacements). Bringing most of that work to Houdini will make it manageable in a studio environment.

RIGGING
Auto rig presets including facial rigging and pose libraries.

LOFTY WISH
..this is very lofty and possibly stupid but I wish SideFX would buy out smaller companies that do tracking and compositing. just as Solaris is a competitor to Katana, I wish for video tracking and compositing out of the box. It doesn't have to be amazing but just good enough to do basic stuff. Id love to explore a very slick video track, match, add models and FX and light comp workflow without having to use so many other tools.

I was just commenting the other day with friends about how cool would be to have a tracker built-in, here's me hoping for a better COP.