hsolomon

Its sad to miss the heat of the Houdini 17 Launch Event. How expensive it is to set up a live stream event now a days….?
Any way for the rest of the “participation-challenged-folks” around the globe the Launch event is “LIVE-FOR-EVER”!?!!! at Vimeo-GoProcedural may be on October 3rd…4th…5th depending upon when the SideFX-Vimeo-Loader guy wakes up from the pub@LaunchEvent :-)
Eagerly waiting@Vimeo-GoProcedural
(<:-(

Houdini 17 - Modeling Feedback
The boolean based Workflow by Fiana is awesome. This is Houdini's key strength and please keep improving the complex model building by boolean Ops and think of every possible proceduralism to improve this workflow. Good
Now… Thanks for the sneakpeek of Polydraw 0.1 not a bad start.
I have been modeling for 25 years started with 3Dstudio 1.0 then to Alias and then Maya… then tried Modo for a while then gone back to Maya for my Box(Non-organic) Modeling workflows. But recently I stumbled with Zmodeler and blown away by its simplicity and power. Hands down… Zmodeler is the next generation Box(Non-organic) Modeling tool. I was amazed how some one like Mr.Alexey Vanzhula's could create some thing like the Zmodeler kind of UI in Houdini.
Don't copy Maya or other DCCS in this box modeling approach but please come with a typical “SideFX -Worflow”

Retopology workflow:
Please… Please…Please stop copying what Maya or other DCCs does for Polygon strip creation where we need to seed points after points by mouse click after click say on a sharpedge/groove in order to just lay an edge flow. Its the most slowest and dumbest way in today's world when you have a wonderful curve drawing tool where we can sketch curves directly on the model and then simply weave quadstrip along those curves. Houdini already has this Curve drawing functionality BUT its not implemented in the way it can be made useful for the modeling functionality. Please can you guys dust it off and give a fresh outlook to sketching based modeling which would be a real innovation.

Here is my dream retopo tool.
Either I bring in a hirez sculpt say from Zbrush or create a complex polygon model using Boolean and VDB workflow and then run edge, plane, curvature (Gaussian curvature, thereshold, fillets, radiuses rtc) detection on the model. In the end I expect curves procedurally laid out on the model along the creases, grooves etc which basically tells the edge feature flows on the model which in turn can be used to create Isoparms that would create the Quadmeshes. Further we, the users should have the option to draw our own user defined “feature” curves on the mesh that should be integrated in to the Quadmesh building as well. (Infact I was in the product development of a retopo software called Paraform - Stanford incubator project started around 1997 which did exactly this for which we were awarded Technical achievement award by the Academy in 2002. Paraform went into so many acquisitios and finally its with Dassault now - just a side note).

Retopolgy should be like Sculpting where drawing a stroke on the model should give the quaded mesh. When I see seeding point after point and create a Quad and then strip….. come on….. am I in 90's timeline?. This is 2018 Come on guys.. SideFx can really do better.

Also Man… I don't have time to figure out how I have to cut thru the N-gons and take the edge flows across the model to make a full Quad Mesh. This Quading - meaning breaking N-gons into Quads with Isoparms -edge flows solved to create Grided mesh MUST be automated. I would rather take my Mesh to Zbrush and do Zremesher to get the quaded mesh.
Quad Remeshing needs to be made even more smarter. Can I bing in a quad model and with a click of a button can I make it a quadmesh? I don't think so. CAD models has nice edges and boundaries… the only stupid thing with them is this sliver long skinny polygons. In Zbrush we can do polugrouping of the surfaces based on Orientation and use the edge boundaries for the Quad mesh boundaries and build Quaded Meshes nicely.

Here is my suggestion for Houdini's Modeling revamp:

For box modeling: - Go with ZModeler/Alexey Vanzhula' kind of approach. Tool behaviour and Target mode paradigm. Simple and straightforward. If you can do more.. its even better.

Houdini's current boolean based workflow is awesome: - Keep it up. Iterate and improve if you get a chance as still there are some bugs and failure cases thats annoying especially since I am in Procedural paradigm. This same failure cases dosn't bother us much say if we are in Maya because I can always delete it and move on by building fresh.

Retopolgy: - As I said it should be one click Quad-ReMeshing based on the features thats already in the mesh. Period. If I don't like the edgeflow done by the automation, then I sketch my intended “feature” curves and Houdini should figure out the way to integrate my intended edgeflow weaved into the Gridded/Quad mesh.
I am sure you guys can do it. I revere you guys.

God bless.

Thanks for your time.
Srinivasan Samuel.

Here is me(hsolomon) back who started this thread 2 years back and I happen to see my own thread accidentally while browsing. Its sometimes amazing/fun/sad how the time/history is progressing.
FabricEngine is closed(My heart goes out for those wonderful guys for the hard work they put especially the key demo guy who created the demos by burning his mid night oil). Good luck guys. I strongly recommend the FabricEngine team to join SideFx and be a part of creating the most advanced CG Tool man kind has ever created.

Houdini 16.5 preview - another tip of iceberg I see.
https://vimeo.com/239828144 [vimeo.com]

SESI, To whom I can compare you to now !!!!!!……..

Goodtimes SESI: