Lightwave is emerging from the ashes of hieroglyphics and visions. It would be interesting to pull some GalacticA pursuits into the Houdini Bar.

"gpu acceleraction in mind" means everything acceleracted by gpu? viewport, rigging,rendering,simulation,comping?

Quelltroi
Lightwave is emerging from the ashes of hieroglyphics and visions. It would be interesting to pull some GalacticA pursuits into the Houdini Bar.

yes, I received and email from VizRT stating they had purchased Lightwave now "if" anything comes of it we shall see

luoqiulin
"gpu acceleraction in mind" means everything acceleracted by gpu? viewport, rigging,rendering,simulation,comping?

I read it as "we don't have GPU acceleration for feathers working yet...". maybe that part will be in beta at launch?

Hi,

What I wish to see soon in the Houdini is:

• 
  
• 
  
• Improvement in wrangle and other scripting windows UI. Font management (changeable font and size etc.), additional option to save script in list in current session or for common use.
  Better viewport. Better shadow and transparency for example. Or Solaris viewport in SOP. I really like to preview and enjoy my work in viewport of Houdini instead to save FBX and preview in Unreal for example
  3 or more bone IK solvers as presets
  Improved sculpting, noting fancy like ZBrush. Just simple Push, Drag, Inflate, etc. Often I just need to add small correction to my character proportion
  

Throwing my hat into the ring, here's what I would like to see:


Modelling:
1. SYMMETRY SYMMETRY SYMMETRY!
Better support for symmetry in the viewport. Compared to other DCCs, Houdini is dead last when it comes to modelling with symmetry.
Here are the symmetry features I would love to see:

• Selection symmetry. (and not in a per-tool sense, globally at any context). This one exists in practically every other DCC and it is surprising that when they overhauled the selection system a few years back this feature didn't make it in.
  
• Symmetry in Topobuild. It's the one drawback that keeps me using the edit node way more often than I should be.
  
• Symmetry in the Curve tool.
  
• Factory defaults for symmetry axis should be X for all tools. Many brush tools default to Z for symmetry axis. This makes no sense from an artist's perspective.
  

2. Soft transform in Topobuild.
Being able to soft transform points/edges/polys with a falloff controlled by the scroll wheel. I know the edit node already does this but it would be nice to be able to do it all from Topobuild.

3. Fix the sculpt tool. I know that there are far better packages out there for sculpting - ZBrush, Blender to name a few, but in those occasional scenarios where I need to make a small adjustment that doesn't necessitate a round trip to another software it would be a big help. The sculpt tool in is current state is completely broken. It is unintuitive and even after spending more time than necessary messing with parameters it still barely functions.


KineFX:

1. "Rig Constraints" node for designing rig controls.
   I love the KineFX Skeleton node, why not make a counterpart for adding constraint handle geometries to a rig? The workflow could be exactly the same with the simple addition of selecting from a set of packed primitive shapes to represent your rig controls. Perhaps adding a 4th "constraints" input/output on all KineFX nodes so you can make isolated modifications on constraint geometry/transform relationships.
   
2. Make a custom rigging context or overhaul VOPs to better fit this purpose.
   Using VOPs feels like a total hack in its current state. I don't want to set up my rigging constraints in some submenu of VOPs in an unconstrained context they call the "Rig Attribute VOP". Using CHOPs was no bargain but at least it was a sensible context for rigging and transform relationships. I like the fact that KineFX operates as a flattened hierarchy and all the data is visible in the Geometry Spreadsheet, but I would be perfectly happy if Houdini did some behind-the-scenes magic to make constraints "just work". If they truly intend to replace the old (and reliable) OBJ/CHOPs rigging system with KineFX, they need to make some additions to the KineFX data model with regard to transform relationships.
   
3. Rig Tree window usability improvements:
   Make the indents smaller between hierarchy levels. The indent is huge and makes navigating deep hierarchies a pain.
   Better exception handling. When that window is open, the amount of Python errors I get is ridiculous.
   

Solaris:

1. Address the poor performance of the Layout node. It is SLOW. Complex components (even with optional payloads) take forever to load from the database and even minor manipulations using the layout brushes can take forever. To make matters worse, it is uninterruptible and freezes the main thread so you're doomed if the layout node doesn't like your asset. I'm not sure how they achieve such stellar performance with the tool in their presentations but even when I try to use fairly low-poly Megascans assets, the tool locks up pretty quick.
   
2. Solaris export rops. I am a big believer in USD as an interchange format, but sometimes there's just no way to export to some other package with crappy (or no) support for USD. Having a GLTF and FBX ROP for exporting a stage would be quite useful.
   
3. Complete the tooling for round-tripping between contexts: obj->stage->obj. Houdini does a pretty great job with the first (obj->stage) but there is no support for the opposite (that I know of). I had to write a mountain of hacky python code in a shelf tool to accomplish the job.
   
4. Documentation in the shell for the pxr Python module. Not sure if this one is possible since it is third-party source code, but even just having typing info for the many, many functions within pxr module would be incredibly useful.
   

Other stuff...
Houdini Engine for Blender.
It seems like Blender is going to absorb most of the market share in the coming years (that is if AI doesn't wipe everyone off the market). Having a Houdini Engine modifier within Blender would be a wonderful life raft to have. I find myself being contracted more and more often by companies which use a Blender-centric pipeline. Considering Blender has virtually no ability to stream files other than sparse support for Alembic and VDB, doing interchange from Houdini/Maya to Blender can be such a pain, re-importing and manually reassigning each and every material every single time I have to make a change for a client. Ranting aside, if I could save even 20 minutes a week with Houdini Engine in Blender it would be a great success.

As much AI tooling as possible.
AI is a looming threat to everyone in the animation/VFX industry. If you can't beat em, join em.
The more AI tools in Houdini, the better IMO. I would love to see stable diffusion in COP2 and generative AI in SOPs.

That's about all I can think of at the moment.

UI for animators have to be seriously updated. Animating is about moving curves all the time. Recent update to MAYA and Blender is good example where it should head:

https://help.autodesk.com/view/MAYAUL/2024/ENU/?guid=GUID-149E5FC2-94C7-4317-91B9-820B9DFFF157 [help.autodesk.com]

also pose library have to change. so it will be possible to blend poses, mirror etc. Blender unerstads that (also "easy easing" is cool):

https://www.blender.org/download/releases/3-5/ [www.blender.org]

.

asorgejr

Very good list. When it comes to modeling>symmetry, I wish the mirror SOP would be fixed before adding more features around this.
The way the seam consolidation is handled is absolutely atrocious, no other 3d DCC solves this so poorly. When you finish a re-topologized character for example and mirror it, you have to disable the useless "Consolidate Seam" and manually select the medial borders of each half and fuse them.

citizen
The way the seam consolidation is handled is absolutely atrocious

For stuff like this, I'd log a bug with the specific example so that it's on their list somewhere.

citizen

asorgejr

Very good list. When it comes to modeling>symmetry, I wish the mirror SOP would be fixed before adding more features around this.
The way the seam consolidation is handled is absolutely atrocious, no other 3d DCC solves this so poorly. When you finish a re-topologized character for example and mirror it, you have to disable the useless "Consolidate Seam" and manually select the medial borders of each half and fuse them.

I use the Mirror sop all the time when I model, if there was a snap to the points of the mirrored side, that would be nice, but all in all it does what I need.

edward
For stuff like this, I'd log a bug with the specific example so that it's on their list somewhere.

I did.

Tser
if there was a snap to the points of the mirrored side, that would be nice

But there's, it's what "Consolidate Seam" supposed to achieve, only it doesn't work in a very useful way, by snapping the points of the newly created half to the original, instead of (or in addition to) snapping midway. There should be additional options like in the Fuse SOP, with "average value" set as default.

Tser

citizen

asorgejr

Very good list. When it comes to modeling>symmetry, I wish the mirror SOP would be fixed before adding more features around this.
The way the seam consolidation is handled is absolutely atrocious, no other 3d DCC solves this so poorly. When you finish a re-topologized character for example and mirror it, you have to disable the useless "Consolidate Seam" and manually select the medial borders of each half and fuse them.

I use the Mirror sop all the time when I model, if there was a snap to the points of the mirrored side, that would be nice, but all in all it does what I need.

I agree it's sufficient in the early stages but if you are making edits to a model with UVs using the mirror sop is not much help at that point:


If they integrate symmetry into topobuild it would be a major improvement for the modelling workflow

citizen
But there's, it's what "Consolidate Seam" supposed to achieve, only it doesn't work in a very useful way, by snapping the points of the newly created half to the original, instead of (or in addition to) snapping midway. There should be additional options like in the Fuse SOP, with "average value" set as default.

Agreed, that would be super useful.

Id like a way to add color to prims / points that shows up only when its template geometry for costume motioncurves ect.
something like @CdT


Also I`ve come to the conclusion that having some sort of wrapper way to easily access rig HDA with kinefx__rigpose default state.
From lops so you can do your animations with it's environment without having to lop import the environment. although it might be better to lop import the environment.

I think this AI threat may delay Houdini R20 as they may consider using some integrated AI, especially for Vex coding.
I think there could be AI nodes configured to work with the current nodes. I have already been doing this myself and it seems to work 80% of the time with the right prompting. At some point, an AI-assisted version of Houdini will be developed.

nicolaas.tanghe
Id like a way to add color to prims / points that shows up only when its template geometry for costume motioncurves ect.

I think the best solution would be a viewport toggle, when it's toggled on the geo gets tinted with the color the corresponding node has.

As I mainly model and use the PolyDraw sop, the integration of the functionality of the Edit sop would be a great help, with it's the ability to select a point on a mesh in the Perspective view and manipulate it with the handles, PolyDraw really needs this, at the moment I have to go into top, right/left or front/back views to move the PolyDraw selected point/s for any accuracy.

I hope they keep improving the Layout tool in Stage, it feels half cooked at the moment.

dreamblk
I think this AI threat may delay Houdini R20 as they may consider using some integrated AI, especially for Vex coding.
I think there could be AI nodes configured to work with the current nodes. I have already been doing this myself and it seems to work 80% of the time with the right prompting. At some point, an AI-assisted version of Houdini will be developed.

Think bigger! An AI context where we can noodle up our own training models!

Soothsayer

dreamblk
I think this AI threat may delay Houdini R20 as they may consider using some integrated AI, especially for Vex coding.
I think there could be AI nodes configured to work with the current nodes. I have already been doing this myself and it seems to work 80% of the time with the right prompting. At some point, an AI-assisted version of Houdini will be developed.

Think bigger! An AI context where we can noodle up our own training models!

For Stable Diffusion there is this already:

https://github.com/comfyanonymous/ComfyUI [github.com]

jparker

Soothsayer

dreamblk
I think this AI threat may delay Houdini R20 as they may consider using some integrated AI, especially for Vex coding.
I think there could be AI nodes configured to work with the current nodes. I have already been doing this myself and it seems to work 80% of the time with the right prompting. At some point, an AI-assisted version of Houdini will be developed.

Think bigger! An AI context where we can noodle up our own training models!

For Stable Diffusion there is this already:

https://github.com/comfyanonymous/ComfyUI [github.com]

Exactly! That's why I think it's a very doable idea and with things moving so fast now would be the time to implement it!