Eugen Sares

Regarding modality: obviously Houdini is.
Softimage isn't, really. That, among many other things, make it such a joy to use.

No disrespect meant, but as a user, I couldn't care less what paradigm the developers chose, and for what reason. I just care for ‘complexity made simple’ and the least possible number of mouse clicks.
Isn't this one of the main topics around the SI-Users forum here?


EPS: cool, it works when compression is turned off! Thanks!
The docs (which I could have consulted first… ;p ) state that open curves are unsupported - that's not true anymore. I just managed to export open and closed curves from AI, CS6, compression off (the ‘create PDF compatible file’ checkbox has no effect).
Text, however, has still to be converted to paths.

Best regards,
Eugen

Thanks, guys!
Have to try things out and learn…

Anyway, in the meantime, I watched
https://vimeo.com/40771484 [vimeo.com]
and in fact there seem to be the most wanted curve tools in place, but the whole workflow feels convoluted and fiddly.
The price for flexibility? Nah, this should become simper, and I'm sure it can.


ad #4
There's
Display Options > Geometry > Shade open curves
… but I can't find something like ‘shade closed curves’.


ad #5
DWG is the native AutoCAD file format. It's binary, and I think you need a dev license from Autodesk to get access to the parsing library. That's something SideFX must be willing to do. F.e. 3ds max or Cinema4D natively support it.

EPS import is there, true, but it simply does not work, or is very unreliable. When you try something newer than ‘Illustrator 3’, Houdini locks up. That's poor.
Does it make sense to log a bug for this?
Data exchange is very important, and Houdini is somewhat exotic anyway. Hope this will improve.

Cheers,
Eugen

Ad #2
Found out that you need to be in ‘Show Handle’ tool to be able to move or add points. Better than nothing.

The hotkey for ‘Show Handle’ is ‘Enter’ - I'd like to redefine that, but the Hotkey Manager seems not to list that command when I search for ‘Enter’… bug?


Something I notice:
It's very easy to get completely swamped in some ‘mode-hell’ when switching tools… horrible! Hard to explain, but suddenly I'm not able to edit that curve anymore with the Handle tool…

This whole viewport interaction business needs some serious cleanup… I believe there has been a lot of discussion already, and I can only confirm that.

Why do I need to switch to Camera tool to be able to switch view, for example?

Got sidetracked, sorry. The topic was Nurbs curves…

Thanks!
Eugen