Very exited to see how Houdini evolves.

Any thoughts on this?

Watched this 2x already. Absolutely killer. The Character/Rigging upgrades and muscle sim/deformation toolkit made me drool all over my keyboard. Seriously so stoked for this.

cheers

I'm just hoping for .fbx blend shape export. It's crucial for game characters.

Werner Ziemerink
Very exited to see how Houdini evolves.

Any thoughts on this?

Can't wait to get my hands on it. Great stuff.

it just came in mind will be there a global theme system for the nodes with animation support?

mandrake0
it just came in mind will be there a global theme system for the nodes with animation support?

You're thinking of making a node that forms a bubble around the mouse so that you can't click on it, for April 1st?

Overall I think it looks great. I'm skeptical about the different shaped nodes, seems like it'd be a lot of visual noise once you have more than a few nodes.

The radial menus and animation/rigging improvements are exciting; thanks for the sneak peak!

Looking forward to new muscle tools, really could've used it a couple weeks ago.
Modeling section was a bit disappointing; making procedural assets still requires inefficient workarounds to SOP limitations/glitches (but at least can be done, which I think is part of the problem).
Nothing for compositing or previz? I would love to do both in Houdini (especially comp given VOPs and Houdini comfort features), but get burned almost every time.

UI changes are a worry as they usually come with a performance & compatibility hit, EG: running Houdini 8 just fine on the cheapest nastiest hardware, then after the glasnost update its: buy a quadro, lusers… Anyway speed = confidence as it suggests some degree of mastery.

Looks like an epic release! I'm really looking forward to the new boolean and smoothing tools.

Looks like some exciting updates… as always!

Just a quick question… at 13:45 Robert says… “Mantra's …… will be removed in favour of a feature complete principled uber shader”. I can't understand what he says. What will be removed?

great,but dop still not support sparse field. Hope H17 will support it.

aty84122
great,but dop still not support sparse field. Hope H17 will support it.

+1

Native VDB support would indeed be nice in DOPs. VDBs have been in Houdini for a long time so it's not great that they still not supported in DOPs natively.

In the new network editor, can we restore/reset zoom scale to 1?

In fact, the support for sparse field is not so important now. It is important that the developer whether going to do it.

With different shapes for nodes, What I would like to personally see is the ability to create larger nodes overall for things like OTLs. If I create a larger asset where I want to plug other Otls into, then I will need more inputs. I would like to create nodes that are 2-3 times wider so it makes things easier to connect into. currently if I set a lot of connects for a node the inputs just get more and cramped.

So cool!
Thanks for sharing this! The new rigging stuff is really exciting, I reckon if there are some stretchy bendy limb options in there it would be amazing!

HenrikVilhelmBerglund
I'm just hoping for .fbx blend shape export. It's crucial for game characters.

Agreed, it really surprised me this wasn't working, they are only going to be more common in games as things get more powerful.

It would be nice if new icons' separated inputs and output dots, support dynamic positioning of themselves around the icon's main shape.
so we would be able, for our biped character, to sort out vertically spine bones with standard connection ports placement, and horizontally hand bones with connection ports placed at left and right side of the operator.
even it would be nicer if we have the ability for scaling and rotating of the icon's main shape.
so spine bones icons' main shape, will being rotated 90 degrees to emphasize more, spine bones placement is vertical.

Seems now i am looking to the network editor as a painting canvas

ndickson

mandrake0
it just came in mind will be there a global theme system for the nodes with animation support?

You're thinking of making a node that forms a bubble around the mouse so that you can't click on it, for April 1st?

well i had something different in mind but your idea is much more funny. :-)

i was thinking more like interactive system when you delete a node it destroys it self. so you get on the end a node system that looks like a game but you'r working. :-)

or something like this: https://bip.io/ [bip.io] (only the animated ring the arrows are awwwkk)

fgillis
Just a quick question… at 13:45 Robert says… “Mantra's …… will be removed in favour of a feature complete principled uber shader”. I can't understand what he says. What will be removed?

Probably the ‘Mantra Surface/Uber shader’ will be removed, depreciated to concentrate on an artist friendly feature complete Disney shader.

Looking forward to these, especially the UI changes, modeling and character tools and the rendering improvements, however there's something that worries me slightly: I hope the development of those radial menus doesn't mean that the work into a robust hotkey system is going to take a hit.

Very nice additions!

I trust the the rig will create a game-friendly bone chain? With game-friendly I mean a bone chain that is uninterrupted. Or to put it differently: Can the animation be exported by baking it to the deforming bons and then deleting everything on the rig except skin and bones, and having only one root joint for the whole bone hierarchy?

As for visual changes of the nodes: Not sure if I am a big fan of that. I'd much more welcome a way to construct my graph left to right instead of top to bottom, and readable input socket names would be welcome too (insterad of having to hover the mouse over them). Could the scene graph nodes not just look like the shader building graph nodes? Similar look and feel throughout?