I've got some wishes for Houdini 13, although I've seen this on Odforce i think it's better suited for Houdini forum, feel free to add your own, stomp on my ideas or elaborate on them!

New materials, I read and interview with the head of advertising of frame-store in which he encouraged SESI to rip off every Render-man material and every mental ray material, it wouldn't be too hard, pay one artist for a year and they'd get it done, 3-4 would speed things up surely, although you can make every material from scratch within Houdini, it would be nice to get some production ready things set up instantly, like how they've done Pyro, I'm talking: Ocean shaders (Dark - Tropical), Plastic shaders (Glossy and Matte), Metal Shaders (Possibly one with lot's of configurations) And so on, Not to mention A good skin shader.


Some Predefined Presets (Possibly a check box to enable them), this would allow you to get access to cleverly planned out node configurations, from putting a box on top off the ground to having some good Mantra configs for a place to start, this could really help newbies get into how stuff is done, and save everyone else time.


*For personal use* If like me you don't have access to a render farm you'll find H-Queue to much of a hassle, it would be really nice to have a simple jobs scheduler built inside of Houdini, that remember which frame you'd cancelled on and resume when you click resume, you could this way schedule 5 jobs, and every night at bed time have your computer eat away at them.


Speed Improvements.
Make more SOPS Multi-threaded, like the Iso-Offset.
Multi-thread everything pretty much.
Add OpenCL support for FLIP, POPs and even stuff like rigid bodies, anything that could take advantage of it.
*I'm aware it's near impossible for all of this to happen in one version change, but it sure would be nice to have as much of it as possible, also I don't know much about opencl so excuse me if it doesn't work for the things mentioned*


Some more starting objects, (this is a really simple request).
A corkscrew shaped thing, Cone (Yes I'm too lazy to drop down a tube, change it to poly, change the scale of the top, than fuse it), and any other basic objects people can think of.


*Maybe* Add some getting started tutorials with Houdini, just a thought.


Better way to have RBD and Wires interact, it should be easier to have an RBD affect a Wire object, this includes other dynamic interactions.


Compile the HOT to come with Houdini, Maya has an ocean, and the HOT is better than that (You can deform anything, and it looks rather realistic ), so why not put it in there?


Add the poke command from Maya (So you can turn the top of a tube into triangles cleanly) The other way I know of doing this is by poly extruding the face, adding a fuse which snaps them to the average position then finally adding another fuse to clean it up.

This is really for speed and convenience because thanks to the low level abilities of Houdini you can do anything anyway.

Add your thoughts!

Any one know how to use Xtools?

first of all i think we should wait till siggraph and wait for the sesi announcement they will give :-)

when you have seen the ari danesh first steps webinars you would have see a houdini 12.5 program in his program folder. :-)
i think there will be some news about it.

or if you have seen on facebook the new icon: http://www.facebook.com/Houdini3D [facebook.com]
and the note on fxguide:
http://fxguide.com/featured/siggraph-things-to-watch-out-for/ [fxguide.com]
i cant wait to see the funky news…. :-)

yah ! cannt exactly count how many hours are ahead to wait for that icon , but couldnt resist just to post that waiting isnt easy here .

it really smells like something ‘ unusual ’ . if SESI says that , it will be . im confident ..



.cheers

I'm pretty excited about the icon, pity I'm like 3 continents away. I doubt these things will come with a .5 update, but it might be good to give them some time before requesting things again.

Instead of new features I would like some of the existing features brought upto scratch. Like UVing & Mplay, lights etc which although work to a degree just lack that extra touch to make them really useful without having to resort to other tools to get the job done on a production.

Rob

I agree with Rob. There are alot of small missing things that make the workflow less than optimal.

I find this interesting, SideFX, have produced a group of fuss pots, who care about every little detail, there's no going back for them now, no Autodesk styled moves (Buying there market share), they've shown us what they can give(In my opinion the best), so now we're going to be hassling them to produce the best in everything. Yes other packages win on certain things, but there is not other all round package that achieves near perfection with just about everything.

Delight0092, your wishes is …. funny )) Really, don't get me wrong, but all those requests for presets, materials, newbie tutorials and so on…. it so boring. “Compile the HOT to come with Houdini…..”

Have you something against the HOT? And any better suggestions are appreciated. Don't get me wrong, I don't want it numbed down, but in the end you'll create your own presets, so having some in place is a good idea, since orbolt though, maybe add preset options there, like liquid presets, or whatever. This came from someone up late with nothing to do, who's used Houdini for 2-3 months, just thought the community might have some ideas.

Ill throw in there: node based glsl shaders

I think HOT built-in would be very useful. One less thing to think about.

grayOlorin
Ill throw in there: node based glsl shaders

+1

pusat
I think HOT built-in would be very useful. One less thing to think about.

+10

Little things

-For me some UI enhancements would really be nice in the parameter interface. Maybe allow images to be embedded in the interface. And a few different/prettier control types. Like tangent handles on the ramp parameter.

-Remember the onscreen sliders? It would be lovely is those could see some attention. Different types of sliders, vertical, horizontal, omni. Possibly if you have a collection of sliders that they could be collapsible/hidden in the viewport.


-Also i keep hearing how good PSD (Posed Space Deformers) are, and ive never really used them so that could be something.


-The only other thing is a hint/ solid guide for bringing in custom curves to use as guides with fur. I feel fur is excellent and there is everything we need there but for the non math phd folks i dont know how to (solidly, i have played with alot of workarounds) bring in custom guides to help with the styling on long fur /hair. Short fur/hair, current toolset is brilliant.


Big Things


- COPS :cry:

I can only wonder whats going to come from dreamworks now, openVDB sounds great, and knowing of the deal with SESI I don't doubt there's more to come.

its better to implement something like vray's lightcache or final render's harmonics instead of using old photon mapping.
photons has alot of disadvantages compared to lightcache.
one of them - there is no need to set up photons count - only detail treshold.
photon maps cannot properly distribute samples on detailed surfaces or corners - thats simply impossible with photon maps to distribute samples based on distance between surfaces because its light emitter-based.
i personally think that vrays' bruteforce with lightcache is the best solution of rendering scenes where flickerless highquality GI is needed.
mantra has a similar approach - photonmaps with bruteforce detail enhancement.
but photonmaps should be replaced, imho.
for now photonmaps can be used only with still images. well, it can be used in animations to but not in every case.
P.S.
i hope that side effects will do something about that because i love mantra alot and photonmaps are only holding mantra out of progress.

@qbick
I agree, mantras got some great things: Volumetric renderings fantastic, it's got cheap motion blur and cheap displacement, as well as other strengths like free render tokens, this all makes it very top notch, but it has to keep up, they've proven they're willing with PBR, so I hope 13 Brings more!

Also because I'm working on a project that needs it I think I'll mention it, a sand solver or a shelf tool to set it up in FLIP! That is all, or they could make a Multi solver like lagoa, that would be a dream come true.

What do people think of OpenVDB?

Packaged numpy, scipy and PIL on windows built in python distributions !