So, the threads about improving modeling [sidefx.com] and animation [sidefx.com] in Houdini are already going.
I want to bring up another topic and that is the UV workflow in Houdini.

I appears to me that me many, if not most, Houdiniusers are not very happy with Houdinis UV workflow, and so am I (among other things).
Since I'm a Maya user you will recognise some features from Maya, if you have better ideas I'll be happy if you share them here.

I took the time to prepare some of my suggestions and illustrate them, hinting where I would like to see Houdinis UV tools some day…..soon
If some of these requests are already implemented in some way I don't know, then feel free to correct me.

Nice! These Mission Impossible are rad!

Point 6 - Reversed UV display - try Display Option/Markers/Fill UV Backfaces.

Does that do what you want?

hm….not really. It's a start but it neither shows front facing nor overlapping and the color is quite intense.
It would probably best show these states
- front facing (ff)
- back facing (bf)
- ff overlapping ff
- bf overlapping bf
- ff overlapping bf
and to carry it to the extreme you could make the colorsheme editable in the preferences

These are very good. Thank you!

Would be good also to link to some movies that show the Uv tools in other apps.

I would have to agree with your mission. I have never worked for a firm that uses a Houdini UV workflow for anything more than the simplest of tasks

Rob

2. Those are SOP node guides. You can either turn them off in the display options, or append any SOP that is not a UVPelt.

5. Does Maya even support shared point uv's? I had always assumed that it only had vertex uv's and all that fusing/sewing/etc was just a UI artifact of keeping those unshared vertex uv's together.

MartybNz
Would be good also to link to some movies that show the Uv tools in other apps.

mother of uv layout
http://www.uvlayout.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=67 [uvlayout.com]

the workflow blown my mind while i was modeling and uving four years ago.

Thanks for share. I hope Houdini unfold uv tool coming soon.

For #9, if you stay in the Handles state rather than the Select state, you'll get the behaviour you want (selecting a node enters its state). You can also select components in the Handles state. When you press Enter, all you're really doing is hitting the hotkey to enter the Handle state. Since it's pretty natural to hit the Select icon (or ‘s’ key) to enter the select tool, this may just be a matter of reworking the left toolbar tools a bit.

a few things I would like to add in that list:

- The UV viewport currently does not seem to activate until you dive into a SOP network. This is very bad as many digital assets that do work on UV need to be jumped into (by users) to even get UVs to show up. you can repro this by

opening a new scene,
creating a sphere object and a box object,
inside each SOP network, unwrap UVs,
exit SOP context,
save and open a new scene,
then re-open the scene

Note that UVs will not show up in the scene view until the user dives again into those sop networks

- User should be able to specify in the viewport display option what attribute is the UV attribute to display (a bit like how the override color attribute option works) and it should not be “hardcoded” to attributes called UV. Currently, layer nodes have to be used in order to switch the UVs displayed.

- When I think of UVs. I REALLY feel we need to think on ways on how to minimize to remove the need to do too much thinkering with UVs. I feel implementing new unwrapping algorithms could go a very long way. The least Squares Conformal maps (LSCM) method probably has one of the best methods for both unwrapping and laying out islands within their organic boundaries (note that this is available in other software)

http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~misha/Fall09/Levy02.pdf [cs.jhu.edu]

The current unwrapping method of pelting does not generate ideal UVs, and the UVUnwrap lays out pieces on rectangular bounds, wasting a lot of space and requiring a lot of manual work (I was working on my own implementation of a fitting algorithm, but I feel this should be available in the main package

- UV smoothing “evens out” uvs across the 0-1 UV mapping surface, but this is not ideal. UV relaxing, where UV spacing adjusts itself to match the area of the primitive surface in 3D space is much more ideal (see maya's relax UV option with pinned borders)

- I feel UV viewport should respect the same rules that the other viewports follow in regards to the “other objects” visibility controls. Currently, once UVs “activate” in the UV viewport, a user has to hide objects in order to hide UVs. If a user enters a SOP network, and Hide Other Objects is on, UVs should follow suite

I will add to this: Kudos on allowing the user to both use geometry functions such as paint inside of the UV viewport (VERY USEFUL) as well as UV operations in the 3D viewport such as UV Paint. Love that I can mix and match the 2d and 3d operations!

circusmonkey
I have never worked for a firm that uses a Houdini UV workflow for anything more than the simplest of tasks

I think this is due to Houdinis history. So far modeling wasn't a big topic in Houdini. Houdini was rather aimed to TDs and to accomplish very specific technical tasks, like all kinds of particle effects, writing/building custom shaders or procedually generating cities and stuff. That's, by the way, why I think that Houdini is rather structured like a programming language then like an actual 3D software. All these different networks remind me more of a programming languages library instead of a digital 3D artists workingenvironment, so you could call Houdini a UI for a programming language. But since more and more artists are asking for a procedual nodebased 3D software and for artist optimized workflows, now UV workflow becomes a topic.

edward
2. Those are SOP node guides. You can either turn them off in the display options, or append any SOP that is not a UVPelt.

Can't find it in the display options

edward
5. Does Maya even support shared point uv's? I had always assumed that it only had vertex uv's and all that fusing/sewing/etc was just a UI artifact of keeping those unshared vertex uv's together.

Somehow yes and somehow not. Maya only has vertices but that's pretty much the same as points in Houdini. So Maya vertices = Houdini points. But vertices are not very interessting in UV context because they rather are a geometry attribute then a UV. What in Maya matters, in UV context, are the UVs which are actually just like shared vertices but in UV space. Something like Houdinis unshared vertices doesn't exist in Maya and as I said, I never felt the need.

twod
…if you stay in the Handles state rather than the Select state, you'll get the behaviour you want (selecting a node enters its state). You can also select components in the Handles state.

1. It's working in a way but not very well. As soon as I want to move/rotate/scale something I'll have to change to the corresponding tool and that's the same as taking the select tool. If I now want to come back to my PolyExtrude node and its handle, I again have to select the node and hit enter instead of just selecting the node.
2. It's not only that. I also have to press enter everytime I call a node from the 3D viewport. Let's say I have a box with some edges selected, I want to bevel these edges so I call the PolyBevel node from the viewport and now it wants me to select geometry and hit enter to confirm. It could instead automatically recognize that I already have a selection and just create the node as I click on the PolyBevel icon, so I don't always have to confirm something with enter I already selected beforhand.

Can't find it in the display options

It's in the Markers tab, top of the third column.

2. It's not only that. I also have to press enter everytime I call a node from the 3D viewport. Let's say I have a box with some edges selected, I want to bevel these edges so I call the PolyBevel node from the viewport and now it wants me to select geometry and hit enter to confirm. It could instead automatically recognize that I already have a selection and just create the node as I click on the PolyBevel icon, so I don't always have to confirm something with enter I already selected beforhand.

That's odd, when placing a node in the viewport via TAB or the Shelf, it automatically consumes the selection and enters the tool for me. The only cases I've run into where I have to press Enter is when the tool has multiple selection steps, or no selection is made in the viewport.

twod
It's in the Markers tab, top of the third column.

The SOP node guides?….no (see attachment)

twod
That's odd, when placing a node in the viewport via TAB or the Shelf, it automatically consumes the selection and enters the tool for me. The only cases I've run into where I have to press Enter is when the tool has multiple selection steps, or no selection is made in the viewport.

I'm running apprentice version 13.0.288 on Win7 x64 and I have to confirm almost everything with enter. Maybe I missed some checkbox in the prefs?

Sorry, Guides tab.

Ah ok, that's why I am so confused. I tried that one before and it doesn't change anything….at least in this context.

twod
For #9, if you stay in the Handles state rather than the Select state, you'll get the behaviour you want (selecting a node enters its state). You can also select components in the Handles state. When you press Enter, all you're really doing is hitting the hotkey to enter the Handle state. Since it's pretty natural to hit the Select icon (or ‘s’ key) to enter the select tool, this may just be a matter of reworking the left toolbar tools a bit.

Handle State appears to combine the 4 tools above it. Perhaps depreciating those other tools, or making them harder to access - promoting Handle State functionality more.

Korny Klown2

twod
…if you stay in the Handles state rather than the Select state, you'll get the behaviour you want (selecting a node enters its state). You can also select components in the Handles state.

1. It's working in a way but not very well. As soon as I want to move/rotate/scale something I'll have to change to the corresponding tool and that's the same as taking the select tool. If I now want to come back to my PolyExtrude node and its handle, I again have to select the node and hit enter instead of just selecting the node.

To rotate or scale did you try the 'Y" key to cycle through the handles?

I would love to see LSCM algorithm as option in Unwrap SOP. Select edges as seams and do unwrapping. Also options to scale UV according to pixel size, pack them, and of course support to multi tile UV, udims support.