Jason Iversen

Could you post your OS / license type / version numbers / etc?

Is Karma able to start up okay otherwise? I remember seeing issues with Apprentice limit-resolution and such.

Have you ever opened the node editor in maya ? what do you see ? node, node with connection, that all you see, there nothing else, it just a bunch of node with a bunch of connection, similar to apex, maya core is the dependancy graph, maya is also a input-output engine.

Yes, and the reason I chose Houdini over Maya from the first place is that SOP network is clean, easy to ready, unlike Maya. I'm not the only one who thinks this is Houdini's advantage over Maya:

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Perhaps for rigging/animating this kind of evaluation engine is necessary, but I absolutely don't want it to be "the new SOP". If it's the future of Houdini, I hope SideFX makes it clear, so I can cut the loss and completely stop using it now. As I said, the cleanness of SOP is the main reason I chose Houdini. If it's gone then I'm gone. I fully understand people have different mileages, and those who like Houdini for other reasons can continue using it, just not me.

All you said is technically true, and that's what made I concerned about Houdini's future.

I'm seeing this as all positive observations here. Certainly Maya is the central standard for many reasons, and should be acknowledged as the current popular state of the art.

Having the idea of a non-contextual execution nodegraph "airlifted" into Houdini could be seen as a good sign, but I believe APEX can be way more than that. SideFX have a very different and well evolved approach to editing and managing graphs, which I hope will mature well in APEX as we go forward. Also, much of the architecture is new and GPU-enabled. So I'd think it'll well worth experimenting with some characters using APEX and sticking with it over the next couple of years and build up your knowledge and your toolset as you go.

Some reading on the proposal:
https://graphics.pixar.com/usd/release/wp_stage_variables.html [graphics.pixar.com]

I will say that while I can appreciate the desire to put dynamism into path resolution, I'm torn about that being a DCC feature versus a USD feature. USD is already s complicated beast and this will make it more so. Eh, it's inevitable, opinion opinion opinion.

But this is completely unrelated to the OP, so apologies for that.