Hey folks, it's been more than two years now since I started diving into modeling in Houdini. While I was hearing only bad things about modeling , I wanted to see if there was more than people might know about it. And the short answer is, hell YEA!!!

Not only did I manage to find a way to do modeling in Houdini, but I also found a way where one can have a nice flow while modeling, and honestly as someone who modeled in pretty much all DCC's, even Plasticity, I can say that Houdini does some things much better then any other DCC, not to mention the fact that things staying procedural, even if you call it destructive modeling. That's why I started to call modeling in Houdini Hybrid modeling.

In case there are people interested, here you can find the environment and setup I am using plus some of the modeling I did:

https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVP06Hcz4=/?share_link_id=829218827858 [miro.com]

It's all Houdini and some of the textures are from Greyscalegorilla. I did not use any plugins. I also spent more than 3000h exploring/researching all of this.


Now, is everything perfect, no. Is there a potential, hell yea... a huge one, but in the end, its up to SF to decide where it pushes modeling if ever they decide to do something about it.


Cheers and stay well fellow artists.
Igor

P.S. - I have no intentions to argue against or for Houdini's modeling capabilities, I don't, I am only here to show what is possible if you try, hard.

Thanks for sharing your insights and experiences, Igor! The modeling environment sheet looks really helpful!
Cheers!

Enter The VFX
Thanks for sharing your insights and experiences, Igor! The modeling environment sheet looks really helpful!
Cheers!

You are most welcome. If you have any questions feel free to ask or join the PM discord channel. 😊

This is excellent. Good to see people exploring modeling competence of Houdini.

Where is the discord server link though?

kodra
Where is the discord server link though?

Here you go https://discord.gg/hux3DkbrMx [discord.gg]
, also this is my YT channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqXuTLiaL-jqvn3LK1XlwHg [www.youtube.com] , I just uploaded new video.

That's cool, but it seems that you hijack tab key for construction plane. Then how do you call the tab menu in scene viewer? It doesn't feel like a good idea to change how tab works, as it's THE most used hotkey in Houdini.

raincole
That's cool, but it seems that you hijack tab key for construction plane. Then how do you call the tab menu in scene viewer? It doesn't feel like a good idea to change how tab works, as it's THE most used hotkey in Houdini.

Thank you, I don't use it at all, if I do, I assign it to Shift+Tab in the viewport or call it from Node Network with just Tab. The point of modeling things like this is to actually avoid typing to call nodes. I have everything I need within shortcuts and Radial Menus + shelves.

PolyMarvels
Thank you, I don't use it at all, if I do, I assign it to Shift+Tab in the viewport or call it from Node Network with just Tab. The point of modeling things like this is to actually avoid typing to call nodes. I have everything I need within shortcuts and Radial Menus + shelves.

Calling something from Scene Viewer and Network View can result in very different behavior, even the name is the same, so they're not interchangeable. I guess Shift+Tab is good enough though.

raincole

PolyMarvels
Thank you, I don't use it at all, if I do, I assign it to Shift+Tab in the viewport or call it from Node Network with just Tab. The point of modeling things like this is to actually avoid typing to call nodes. I have everything I need within shortcuts and Radial Menus + shelves.

Calling something from Scene Viewer and Network View can result in very different behavior, even the name is the same, so they're not interchangeable. I guess Shift+Tab is good enough though.

Again, the point was not to use it at all because it's not the way to do modeling, thus, I have put CP on Tab, as I am using that a lot, just like I set Accept/Enter to `shortcut. It saves you a lot of pain in the long run. Reaching Enter all the time is annoying and tiring.

A quick question: how did you jump from PolyBevel SOP to Tube SOP at 10:16 here:

https://youtu.be/ROcOJfJhKQQ?t=614 [youtu.be]

And jumped back to PolyBevel at 10:25

https://youtu.be/ROcOJfJhKQQ?t=625 [youtu.be]

?

kodra
A quick question: how did you jump from PolyBevel SOP to Tube SOP at 10:16 here:

https://youtu.be/ROcOJfJhKQQ?t=614 [youtu.be]

PageUp and PageDown for going up and down the stream of nodes and Home and End to jump to 1st and last node in the stream. Those keys are above your keyboard arrows (beside delete and insert).

In my case I bind those to my mouse buttons which makes things super fast and convenient to use.

Thank you for the answer. I just realized you actually explained it later in the video

kodra
Thank you for the answer. I just realized you actually explained it later in the video

It doesn't hurt to repeat. Thanks for your interest!

I've been experiencing another issue. I've notice the same issue in your video as well:



There are "ghost" HUD handles at the bottom left corner. I've got these from time to time. Have you found a way to get rid of them (without resetting the whole viewport)? Or have you reported this to SideFX?

kodra
I've been experiencing another issue. I've notice the same issue in your video as well:

Image Not Found

There are "ghost" HUD handles at the bottom left corner. I've got these from time to time. Have you found a way to get rid of them (without resetting the whole viewport)? Or have you reported this to SideFX?

Unfortunately that was introduced after 20.0.506 and never fixed to this day. I didnt report as I just dont wanna bother at this point. And to remove that just hover over the HUD, click right mouse button and uncheck 'Visible'.

PolyMarvels

kodra
I've been experiencing another issue. I've notice the same issue in your video as well:

Image Not Found

There are "ghost" HUD handles at the bottom left corner. I've got these from time to time. Have you found a way to get rid of them (without resetting the whole viewport)? Or have you reported this to SideFX?

Unfortunately that was introduced after 20.0.506 and never fixed to this day. I didnt report as I just dont wanna bother at this point. And to remove that just hover over the HUD, click right mouse button and uncheck 'Visible'.

Well when I right click on the ghost HUD handles it throws Python exceptions and doesn't show a context menu, so I can't even uncheck 'Visible'.

I'd like to report it to SideFX but so far I can't make the exact steps to reproduce this... they just randomly appear from time to time.

kodra

PolyMarvels

kodra
I've been experiencing another issue. I've notice the same issue in your video as well:

Image Not Found

There are "ghost" HUD handles at the bottom left corner. I've got these from time to time. Have you found a way to get rid of them (without resetting the whole viewport)? Or have you reported this to SideFX?

Unfortunately that was introduced after 20.0.506 and never fixed to this day. I didnt report as I just dont wanna bother at this point. And to remove that just hover over the HUD, click right mouse button and uncheck 'Visible'.

Well when I right click on the ghost HUD handles it throws Python exceptions and doesn't show a context menu, so I can't even uncheck 'Visible'.

I'd like to report it to SideFX but so far I can't make the exact steps to reproduce this... they just randomly appear from time to time.

Just go with 20.0.506 build and you'll be fine. You are not missing anything.

I can't. There was an important fix in 20.0.6xx about KineFX that is needed for my workflow. Thank for your suggestion though.

I also find a minor typo here:



Subdivide should be Alt+S right?

kodra
I can't. There was an important fix in 20.0.6xx about KineFX that is needed for my workflow. Thank for your suggestion though.

I also find a minor typo here:

Image Not Found

Subdivide should be Alt+S right?

Ah that's a bummer. Then just report the issue to SideFX, I will too so maybe it gets fixed. Thanks for letting me know about the typo, ill uodate it right now. And yes, it's ALT + S for Subdivide.

By the way, are you able to follow workflows to model something, even simple stuff?