I was about to necro this thread [sidefx.com] (google sent me, so blame it) but then I thought I'd open a new shiny one.

What I've been searching is how to move points in global (world) coord. system, ‘cause I said maybe I should start actually modeling in Houdini, something simple with not many bevels, cuts and poly-knitting.

If I select a point in Soft (pretty sure it’s the same in Max and Maya) and I want to translate it to (5,-5,5) in relation to the center of the world, I switch to “global” and simply input the desired values.

Did something changed in meantime in H or is the Spreadsheet the only way of doing it?

Seems like in Houdini the Handle Alignment is just that - an alignment, it doesn't change its frame of reference.

Softimage does have two modes which are just an alignment, view/object (gizmo aligned to world) and local (gizmo aligned to component), of which the frame of reference is the object center but also a global mode with the gizmo aligned to the world and ref. sys set to world.

Kinda of a bummer, this makes it downright impossible for me to pick Houdini up for modeling if I don't have this flexibility at my finger tips.
I think any modeler coming from outside would be dumbstruck by this… I strongly believe any planed modeling features should be put on hold a bit and deal with this uber important issue. I wish so much to be wrong on this one and Houdini to have a quick easy solution to this already.

p.s. All this is applicable to edges and polys as well.

At one point there was this guy

Albin
But how can I enter specific :roll: coordinates for point in world space with the edit sop?

and his question hasn't got really answered. He was probably probing around and was interested in modeling as well. His posting count remained to 5.

That's crazy talk using the spreadsheet to edit a world space position, use an attribute wrangle with @P = (2,2,3); instead…

Editing the spreadsheet creates a softlock, green icon on the node, the edit node will then do strange things.

Yeah, I've read about the soft-lock in there.
Using wranglers to do this is kinda crazy as well - I can imagine someone working in archvis trying to scale complex objects at SOP level by moving points with the intention of achieving some given dimensions using wranglers - it's not looking good in this thought bubble of mine.
We clearly need an easy to use solution, something like I've described in the above image.

Well just post RFE …

SreckoM
Well just post RFE …

I will. Wanted to bring it in the attention of the community first. It is weekend time so it's probably the same as submitting it Monday.

Besides, I will refer this thread in that RFE so a few more PoVs will be welcome, regardless of them being in accord or against what I'm presenting here. As I said with other occasions, I'm always looking to be proved wrong since my ultimate goal is not to “be right” in a discussion, but to get to the truth :!:

How do you move the controls of a character in global space when they're parented to different objects?
There are instances when animating and having the possibility to move two or more ctrls to the same coord. in world space comes in very handy.
This a very useful feature in various instances which you don't know you're missing until you use it.

As a side note, the “Global Control” (from RMB menu on a gizmo) bug is still there unfortunately.
Let's forget about modeling for a second, how do you move two rig controls in their local (or parent) space simultaneously? The “Global Control” bug which makes no difference in the way the objects are translated (the only difference between ON/OFF is the gizmo placement) doesn't allow you to do this. I've submitted a RFE about this problem half a year ago, but since it hasn't been tackled and by my judgement being a serious bug related to translated objects in the viewport, I'm thinking that perhaps this is not a bug and it's working like intended? I'm asking so that I'll readjust my RFE from a bug report to a feature request.

+1 from me.

When it comes to modeling, workflow is most important…before any tool functionality. If you can't do it in the viewport on the model it is wrong. Nothing should happen in the details view or wrangle SOPs.

Translating selection/components in local space is another one that I find is missing from the modeling toolset.
As per this discussion from months ago…
https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=41286 [sidefx.com]

Indeed.
That link you posted gets me nowhere.

The Edit SOP does have a local space toggle which causes it to interpret its parameters in the local frame, but this is limited to point selections, and still isn't quite what you want (since the Edit SOP parameters specify a translate, not a final position).

It sounds like you want handle parameters to tell the handle to behave as if the user moved it to a specific location. Which we don't have.

But but… we must have the precious… :shock:

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by you want handle parameters to tell the handle to behave as if the user moved it to a specific location.
I want to be able to move components and objects in global space, by either dragging them in the viewport or by entering values manually which implies displaying the position in relation to the center of the world.
Make sure you analyzed the attached image above as it's worth a thread of words.

These are extremely useful features, bumping up productivity not only in modeling, but in rigging and animation too.
I will open another thread (in SI subforum) pointing out all the features currently Houdini is missing as far as translations go, both at SOP and OBJ level. These things tend to get scattered in various threads and as you probably have observed long before me, new comers from various apps ask around about things which most likely have been already discussed and so at least it'll be easy to point them to a single thread.

McNistor
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by you want handle parameters to tell the handle to behave as if the user moved it to a specific location.
I want to be able to move components and objects in global space, by either dragging them in the viewport or by entering values manually which implies displaying the position in relation to the center of the world.
Make sure you analyzed the attached image above as it's worth a thread of words.

I simply meant that you want a field associated with the handle that displays its current position and let's you type in a value to set it to a specific location. In some variety of spaces. I'm trying to differentiate this from a SOP parameter to move the selected entities to the specified location. Associating this capability with the handle would make it instantly available in any SOP using that type of handle. If you didn't know that handles could have parameters, try hitting ‘p’ in the viewport.

Ondrej
I simply meant that you want a field associated with the handle

This might be a stupid question as I'm clearly not familiar with the vernacular - a field as in a row of value boxes, other than the current TRS ones? That is under Handle rotation and pivot in the Handle Dialogs window?
If that's what you meant, then think about the fact that an Obj (or component) has to have Local (already present), World, Parent and Reference (to be picked by the user) coordinates (for all transforms, TRS) displayed based on the handle alignment.
These coord. havbe to be displayed in the Op. param. window, in the same boxes the current local ones for the sake of simplicity.

Yes, that's what I meant. I was just using field as a synonym for parameter, but was trying to differentiate handle parameters from node parameters. Since it's the handle that's aware of all these space transformations and is responsible for translating any changes into parameter value changes for the underlying node, this is the best place for handling such operations.

Ondrej
Since it's the handle that's aware of all these space transformations and is responsible for translating any changes into parameter value changes for the underlying node, this is the best place for handling such operations.

I strongly disagree this being the best place for handling this.
Besides, I don't understand (I'm aware that this might be my fault) what's an Obj (or component) transforms values have to do with the handle position(or other transforms). The gizmo can be anywhere and it will certainly be in some instances when the user toggles the “attach to geo” on/off for some modeling tricks (which I'll be happy to show some time in the future), but the transforms values in the param. window should show the selected frame of reference of the entity's center (centroid for OBJ, center of mass for polys, mid-poitns for edges).
Having to go someplace else to transform Obj or components in different spaces seems like an unnecessary complication.

Tomorrow I'll open that thread I mentioned earlier with a few pics and explanations as well.