raincole
Why do you need a specific AI context tho. Why not just TOP + some AI-related nodes? I'm pretty sure you'll need to call some external python code in the process, so just TOP.

This. Another context is one more place I have to manage in the mental map of what is going on in the shot. I would much rather have fewer contexts and additional nodes in the existing context, e.g., nodes like Copycat nodes in SOPs, TOPs, COPs, as appropriate. Then, train away.

by the way, something pretty cool, i noticed that if you ask chatgpt for vex code for something you have in mind, it does give you answers. Sometimes a bit off, but sometimes pretty much spot on.

Actually, I found Bing Chat (precise mode) to work better even though it is based on open ai.

houdini usd lop Currently, it's too easy to die

Hope to be stable, stable, and more stable, replacing Clarise

zf3d
houdini usd lop Currently, it's too easy to die

Hope to be stable, stable, and more stable, replacing Clarise

Clarrise is dead btw.

Link [www.cgchannel.com]

I wish for more advanced, faster sculpting tools with layers and weights. For static geometry but also for sculping animations! By that i mean freeform, free hand manipulations of animated caches. So it'll be possible to (nondestructive) sculpt not only corrective shapes of character cloths, face morphs, muscle and posture elements but also all kind of particles, grains, destruction elements and so on.

Basicly manually manipulate and edit anything that is cached. It will save a lot of time instead of re-simulations also itll be possible to apply all small changes requested by director or VFX superviser in almost no time.

Something similar to Mush3D or Otoy's Sculptron inside SideFX Houdini would be great! There was even one from ex Lightwave but i forgot name..

Edit: Lightwave one was called Chronosculpt.
.

is there a typical time of the year when new houdini versions get released?

rickapex
is there a typical time of the year when new houdini versions get released?

Yes and No
March or October where some releases but no date is safe. SESI is too funky in that case but when they are very quiet it is near.

Btw. 18.02.2024 would be a nice date that would be 10'000 days after H1.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houdini_(software)#Release_history

mandrake0

rickapex
is there a typical time of the year when new houdini versions get released?

Yes and No
March or October where some releases but no date is safe. SESI is too funky in that case but when they are very quiet it is near.

Btw. 18.02.2024 would be a nice date that would be 10'000 days after H1.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houdini_(software)#Release_history

Oh, please not another half excruciating year of waiting...

I think part of the reason for the anticipation and excitement is all the goodies that sidefx mentioned during 19.5 launch event or surfaced separately over last year:

- D-box improvements as a central control
- more curve parametrization
- multi shot editing
- meshing tools improvements (hopefully the long time ago promised quad remesher)
- full on animation and dynamic rigging
- new frameworks and architectures?
- white water in sops
- art directable curves in crowds
- feathers and grooming improvements
- finished muscles
- new viewport based on Vulcan
- compositioning redone or at least started (sounds to me like the next great thing!)
- basic painting of attributes textures
- karma cpu enhancements and karma gpu out of beta

Those are the things I have noted. Doesn’t mean they will all be here and finished but h20 looks like a massive upgrade.

During 19.5 launch they had mentioned that next release would be early to mid 2023

"During 19.5 launch they had mentioned that next release would be early to mid 2023"
it's way above "early" and little bit above "to mid 2023" already..

Anyway it will be big release about karma GPU, about migrating dops into sops, about new remesher, about machine learning nodes and other good stuff, but I really hope it will also skyrocket in physics based and facial animation, also hope to see some decent unwrap tools, not sure about modeling tools though.. modeling is real Achilles heel for H.

oldteapot7
I wish for more advanced, faster sculpting tools with layers and weights. For static geometry but also for sculping animations! By that i mean freeform, free hand manipulations of animated caches. So it'll be possible to (nondestructive) sculpt not only corrective shapes of character cloths, face morphs, muscle and posture elements but also all kind of particles, grains, destruction elements and so on.

Basicly manually manipulate and edit anything that is cached. It will save a lot of time instead of re-simulations also itll be possible to apply all small changes requested by director or VFX superviser in almost no time.

Something similar to Mush3D or Otoy's Sculptron inside SideFX Houdini would be great! There was even one from ex Lightwave but i forgot name..

Edit: Lightwave one was called Chronosculpt.
.

Yes. That would be amazing and game changing in Houdini.

Erik Ws
"During 19.5 launch they had mentioned that next release would be early to mid 2023"
it's way above "early" and little bit above "to mid 2023" already..

Anyway it will be big release about karma GPU, about migrating dops into sops, about new remesher, about machine learning nodes and other good stuff, but I really hope it will also skyrocket in physics based and facial animation, also hope to see some decent unwrap tools, not sure about modeling tools though.. modeling is real Achilles heel for H.

Where specifically do you see gaps in modelling and unwrapping?

LukeP

Erik Ws
"During 19.5 launch they had mentioned that next release would be early to mid 2023"
it's way above "early" and little bit above "to mid 2023" already..

Anyway it will be big release about karma GPU, about migrating dops into sops, about new remesher, about machine learning nodes and other good stuff, but I really hope it will also skyrocket in physics based and facial animation, also hope to see some decent unwrap tools, not sure about modeling tools though.. modeling is real Achilles heel for H.

Where specifically do you see gaps in modelling and unwrapping?

for me, it’s the UX! it just needs work, sometimes it feels like houdini really did expect anyone to be doing typical box modeling with it even though it’s very capable! it almost seems surprised! by that I mean some SOPS behave like they cant select components sometimes like the extrude and polysplit SOPS, so I have to manually drop down an edit SOP to select components, sometimes as you’re modeling, nodes come in at the wrong place in the graph(somewhere in the middle and not at the end as you’d expect) among other bad UX stuff.

For UVs, again it’s very capable, but my gosh the nodes are unstable! UV flatten and UV layout SOPS can crash the app anytime! and again, like with modeling, bad UX with component selections. Also a better UDIMs interface would be much welcomed!

I do a a lot of modeling in houdini, it’s the only DCC I use now, and sidefx should that this area needs a bit of gospel!

Now, interms of remeshing, It was sad to see the remesh to grid node just being poly/vdb HDA, I thought it was a quad remesher, poor me. So, a proper quad remesher would be huge!

I still don't understand why sometimes when I select some components and call a modeling node via radial menu, like PolyExtrude/Transform/whatever, it completely ignores my selection.

In theory by carefully arranging and customizing your radial menus, box modeling in Houdini should be as fast as in Maya or Blender (minus sculpting). But it's never the case for me. It's just so clumsy.

Working in Houdini is like being kissed and slapped at the same time.


Powerful but some basic things are too hard or take too long to set up.
The UI is not intuitive at all. I personally think they need to make a level
system in the UI from basic to advance. So when you need to do simple things
it does not take forever to set up.

dreamblk
Working in Houdini is like being kissed and slapped at the same time.


Powerful but some basic things are too hard or take too long to set up.
The UI is not intuitive at all. I personally think they need to make a level
system in the UI from basic to advance. So when you need to do simple things
it does not take forever to set up.

I think the UI is intuitive for the most part, I think it just needs to work! of course there is always room for improvement, but anyone familiar with node based workflows will love the way houdini works and honestly, there’s nothing anyone could do to get me working back something like c4d with that ridiculous object manager style thing or even maya, it just wouldn’t feel right. Once you go houdini and get the hang of it, you’ll never go back! but of course you choose the right tool for the job and if side effects plays the cards right, houdini should be the right tool for most jobs!

Blender's UI/UX could learn a thing or two from other software but they won't. They're too arrogant. It's pretty cr*ppy they still use this strange drag/drop from corners to collapse windows and pull out new windows. ALL other software allows you tear off panels and windows and configure your workspace a lot more freely. No one using Blender can tell me they've never spent A LOT of time doing the endless window dragging game when all you're wanting to do is collapse a singe damn window. 4 horizontal and 3 vertical extra windows later you're hitting the right spot to collapse.... one.. by... one. I saw last year someone had proposed a better way and even made a fork but it doesn't appear it was given any thought by the devs.

N-Panel is a joke. It's a shame people needed to build addons to manage addons (see clean panels). ALL other software has plugins integrated into the interface via menu options or a plugins/extensions drop down. Anything past 6 or so addons that require an interface panel, and you can't see the names on the tabs. Also, addons don't have floating panels. Nothing in Blender typically has a floating panel. No floating panels and no tear off panels means you can't reconfigure your UI outside of the main blender window without making a copy of it and reconfiguring that. It's a sh*t show.

Many times addons overwrite settings and hotkeys for other addons or vanilla blender, without warning. One day my e key works for extrude then I add RanTools and my e key is swapped with a Rantools pop up. Was I asked about this change? No. I then have to spend time unf*king what addons do to my hotkeys or other addons. Even when changing a hotkey, no where does it warn you that you'll overwrite an existing hotkey for "x" Collections? Ok.. everyone else uses groups and standard nomenclature but I'll follow along. Oh wait, with the outliner I can't move objects and sort the way I want to? Nope. Blender either forces alphabetized sorting or when the object was created. It's 2023.. we can't sort our own objects the way we want to in Blender? Eevee.. meh. Great for viewport. crap render. I'd pick RS, Arnold or Octane over Cycles although Blender has some pretty nifty nodes in the material editor. I'll keep using Blender for modeling tools but other apps like C4d and Houdini are more fun for mograph.

The grass isn't always greener in Blender despite the toxic positivity by its userbase... but hey Blender x.xx will take over the industry (heard this over the past 8 years)....

Looking forward to news about H20, hopefully soon. Jumping back into Houdini, I feel like it's intuitive enough as you start to learn it and go through the motions. I found Blender's UI (besides what I posted above) very cobbled together and looking kind of ugly. I could see Houdini's UI getting a refresh similar to C4d and Maya with new icons, removing button outlines and the gradients on the UI background as a default flat look. It's kind of what's been happening for a few years in the space.

Weird to me how damn religious people get about software......damn SOFTWARE!?!?

And out of all groups, I think CG artists tend to be the worst (although video editors are a close second...try suggesting Premiere to an AVID guy and there'll be blood).

Midphase
Weird to me how damn religious people get about software......damn SOFTWARE!?!?

And out of all groups, I think CG artists tend to be the worst (although video editors are a close second...try suggesting Premiere to an AVID guy and there'll be blood).

When you learn a software you invest quite a bit of time, so it’s only fair to feel a vested interest in its development. The religious thing is unnecessary lol. But the working environment is very important IMO, like getting used to this free form node based approach with houdini, it feels limiting jumping back into a more rigid environment. I need houdini be to great because there is nothing else like it and I nonsensically religiously stand by that lol. If something else like it comes along, well…