I think one of the major mistakes that SideFX has made in Houdini is choosing grey as the default color for both viewport background and UI color and also making it so difficult to change these colors. Im going to lay out the steps that need to be taken to make the UI more comfortable and useable:

1) Now lets get rid off that awful OpenGL highlight you have in viewport rendering. First create a sphere in your scene. Then put the cursor over the viewport and press D, go to the misc tab in the window that pops up and uncheck specular highlights (be sure to click save to defaults). The sphere looks a lot nicer now doesnt it.

2) The grey UI color is awful, most 3D apps have an option for dark UI as does Houdini. Go to edit>color settings and in the user interface tab of the window that pops up change from houdini light to houdini dark. Looks a lot better now right?

3) The grey background color in the viewport is awful, I dont understand how anyone can work with it. But you can change it. Go to:
C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 10.0.595\houdini\config
and right click on the 3DSceneColors.bw file and select properties in the right click menu and uncheck read only. Open 3DSceneColors.bw in a text editor and the very first configuration setting is BackgroundColor, change it to whatever you want, I like 20 25 30 which is a dark blue with lots of depth.
(If the new viewport background color doesnt show up you may have to switch to black background by pressing D over the viewport and then clicking the background tab in the window and changing color scheme from light to dark)

Heres a pic of what this new UI looks like on my netbook. Notice that light grey gizmo halo that surrounds the sphere, you cant see that with the default background.


Its just crazy how the most powerful 3D package on earth would have grey 3D objects over a grey background in the viewports. Ive attached a pic of this insanity, grey over grey, how can anyone stand it??

I also choose black for my viewport background which can be selected using the Display Options -> Background -> Color Scheme (though I do like your bg colour you use). Strange I don't see the transparent sphere on the handle though.

There was talk of switching the default color to Houdini Dark or my current fav WW_DarkHiCon from Wolfwood. There are also the downloaded ui configuration files that you can get to from the Edit > Colors menu option dialog as you mentioned.

If you have your favourite UI configuration, by all means upload it to the Side Effects Exchange and make sure to set it to a Color Scheme when submitting it. That way your choice will show up with all the other download UI configurations in the Color Settings dialog for all users to enjoy.


With volumes cropping up more and more (almost invisible with a gray background) plus ipr being used quite widely with it's default black background, there are cases to be made to go to a black background for the viewport or at least one that is not default “gray”.


As for the specular highlights in the OpenGL viewport, you may want to rethink that one in the very near future. Yes that highlight is not the best for some things but for lighting previews of renders it does give you an indication of the final render. I turn it off for modeling and then on for lighting and look dev.

You should also mention that once you set up the display options the way you like, pres the “Save As Default” button to capture these for all future sessions with that major release of Houdini.

More items I would add to the list:

In the Edit > Preferences > General User Interface I will turn on Color Pane Headers with Network Contents.

Change the default desktop to “Technical”. I think it is wise for new and intermediate users to get a solid grasp as to where they are by using the Tree View to navigate. No faster way to go to /out for example than the Tree View other than a hotkey. Plus the technical desktop starts to reveal more of the UI to you and befits a powerful software package.

Ha ha, thank for these stuff. But really, i prefer the default theme. The only thing i change back and forth is viewport color, when i work with particle, i change it to black.