Houdini 16

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McNistor
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Re: Houdini 16

Post by McNistor » 14 Feb 2017, 19:23

No need for apologizing, no offense was taken.

I agree somewhat with what you're saying. "somewhat" because I agree with the principle that you think it describes what's happening. That is, a ship with too many captains. Or an army with too many generals and too few soldiers - in this case, too many opinions for too few devs or decision makers. I agree that nothing good will come out in a situation like this.
What I don't agree with is the fact that this is what actually happens. SESI does have a mind of its own (represented by either devs, product management team, or by both) and that comes with both good and bad, but a ship with too many captains it is not, sometimes to my frustration, as I might have more chances to steer the ship more often into a direction I'd like.
To me it seems like a ship lead by a few captains very willing to listen to the grunts below the decks, most often setting a course that will appease the most. The grunts, be they wrong or right about something, are actually keeping the ship afloat and this ship's captains respect that.

What's the alternative? A company that thinks it has all the right answers and doesn't listen to their users, or pretends to listen by offering them platforms to express their views but will set their course dictated only by market metrics. They will often create the illusion of accommodating its user-base by sheer luck: sometimes their interests will align to those of the most dedicated users and they will ride that wave of hype till the next strike of luck. Of course, luck seldom has anything to do with it, so these types of companies will stay afloat by exploitation of the unfortunate situation most people find themselves locked in. Just ask the most disgruntled users of a particular 3d program why they still use it if they hate it - they'll bring up the necesity to pay the bills, time invested in training and tools, etc. All valid points and ultimately all invisible chains in the hands of those "above the deck".
The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.
-Thucydides

Bullit
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Re: Houdini 16

Post by Bullit » 14 Feb 2017, 21:31

There probably need to be a cultural shift at top to happen relevant changes. If as julca says "simply in term of fluidity and accessibility" is only in 10th's in priority order then obviously that doesn't make it fast enough.

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Fianna
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Re: Houdini 16

Post by Fianna » 21 Feb 2017, 23:35

Hi guys - we are live with H16 now, you should be able to download apprentice and play with the new tools!
here is our What's New page for more info: https://www.sidefx.com/filmtv/whats-new/

and below are a few videos showing some of those new features:






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Rork
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Re: Houdini 16

Post by Rork » 22 Feb 2017, 09:41

Just downloaded and installed it. Watching the videos now. :ymhug:

Massive release, and so many useful little tweaks and changes in the UI.

@ Fianna: Congrats to all involved, and this release is going to eat away a lot of my free hours :D

rob
SI UI tutorials: Toolbar http://goo.gl/iYOL0l | Custom Layout http://goo.gl/6iP5xQ | RenderManager View http://goo.gl/b4ZkjQ
So long, and thanks for all the Fish!!

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Mathaeus
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Re: Houdini 16

Post by Mathaeus » 22 Feb 2017, 10:59

Played with new booleans last evening, they seems to be really impressive, with consistent result, possible to put in ambitious purely procedural combination. Found possible to go with half-of-old-style node shapes in network editor, which is fine, new design is a bit too much for my eyes. A lot of new info around nodes for those who likes. A bit of negative feeling goes to larger VOP nodes, but well, they are nicer. Noticed UI glitch with Pro and Light scheme, Network Editor is still dark with both, anyway switched to Dark scheme and everything is fine - btw one advantage of ''transition'' to all other apps is that I don't care that much about interfaces, anymore.
Mantra seems to be really faster, but I'll have to try more to be sure. In some cases noticed around 10 - 30% faster VOP or SOP evaluation, nice that they still are able to squeeze out a bit more of speed.

All in all just fine, love the old school feeling of workable initial release, somehow forgotten in modern world :D. All impressions are coming from my ''use only network editor and tree view'' approach, cant say anything about view port interaction.

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Rork
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Re: Houdini 16

Post by Rork » 22 Feb 2017, 11:17

I'm playing with the new boolean tool as well, and I get a distinct 'Modo MeshFusion' vibe on this one.
So far it's very stable, but it's been only an hour ;)

rob
SI UI tutorials: Toolbar http://goo.gl/iYOL0l | Custom Layout http://goo.gl/6iP5xQ | RenderManager View http://goo.gl/b4ZkjQ
So long, and thanks for all the Fish!!

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owei
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Re: Houdini 16

Post by owei » 22 Feb 2017, 16:57

Wow Fianna, you have been pretty diligent! Thanks for sharing! :-bd
Yes, a huge release..! playing with the new tools a bit..I like the new style and those many smaller things that make life much easier in H16! Thanks everone involved!

For example :ymhug:





cheers,
oli

jonmoore
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Re: Houdini 16

Post by jonmoore » 22 Feb 2017, 17:14

There are so many surprises that didn't make the headlines yet have the potential to provide the most long term value.

The first two under the radar surprises for me are:

- Compiled SOP Blocks: These allow for a chain of compatible SOP nodes to be compiled as a block on the fly for parallel execution. The documentation makes clear that this is just the start of a larger program of optimising SOPs for threading but this looks like it could be a really efficient workflow for SOP 'for loops', essential for destruction and such like.
http://sidefx.com/docs/houdini/model/compile

- Attribute Expression SOP: This is the new replacement for the goto per point manipulation SOP of days gone by, the 'Point SOP'. We all loved the Point SOP but it was single threaded. The Attribute Expression SOP is fully multithreaded and is an extension of the Wrangle family of nodes. Yummy!
http://sidefx.com/docs/houdini/nodes/so ... expression

jonmoore
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Re: Houdini 16

Post by jonmoore » 22 Feb 2017, 22:32

Mathaeus wrote:
All in all just fine, love the old school feeling of workable initial release, somehow forgotten in modern world :D. All impressions are coming from my ''use only network editor and tree view'' approach, cant say anything about view port interaction.
I'm interested in your view of the hair and grooming tools as I know you thought of this a Houdini weakness in the past.

Bullit
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Re: Houdini 16

Post by Bullit » 23 Feb 2017, 03:04


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Fianna
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Re: Houdini 16

Post by Fianna » 23 Feb 2017, 06:13

Thanks Rork + Oli :D i think that we are all happy that H16 is out in the wild.
And Oli - there will be more videos and masterclasses to come (post GDC timeframe) :ymcowboy:

CYTE
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Re: Houdini 16

Post by CYTE » 23 Feb 2017, 14:42

Hey Fianna,
i just wanted to congrat you guys for this release. it is great! Im still using softimage for my daily work but i started to learn houdini in the evenings. and so i bought my first houdini indie version. its a great deal and a brilliant idea. houdini 16 looks and feels very good. and i love the new radial menus and the new slick network editor! so there is so much to learn for me ahead, but after the eol of softimage this is like a start into a fresh new world for me! thank you!

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Mathaeus
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Re: Houdini 16

Post by Mathaeus » 23 Feb 2017, 22:00

jonmoore wrote:
Mathaeus wrote:
All in all just fine, love the old school feeling of workable initial release, somehow forgotten in modern world :D. All impressions are coming from my ''use only network editor and tree view'' approach, cant say anything about view port interaction.
I'm interested in your view of the hair and grooming tools as I know you thought of this a Houdini weakness in the past.
This probably was about old factory setups using Fur SOP, around H 13. This SOP was designed for hair interpolation at render time, together with appropriate Mantra shader, there were additional clones (object merges) of input objects created to allow 'back' connection for view port display, something like that. Fur SOP was a pretty much generic when it comes to interpolation. Also I think it was a sort of always live spatial query, used for interpolation, so not any special cached data (like XSI hair/Shave or Xgen), not additional geometry like Kristinka Hair.

From my previous experience with ICE, such configuration, similar to well known ICE factory examples with multiple objects, was not strong enough for use in 'wilderness' or personal use. So in times of H 14, I've tried to create compact setup only by Point VOPs , without Fur SOP, where just one Geo creates everything for direct render, optionally with DOP network aside, and this worked perfectly. It was able to fit around two full res long hair setups in 16 gb of RAM for direct rendering (direct = without hairs generated at render time). Later in H 15 they enabled Subdivide SOP to work over lines/curves, so numbers are probably higher with that, now.

As a matter of fact, in H 16 I'm able to load these my custom 'compact' setup without problems. While ones having the parts of factory setups from H 13, do not displaying or rendering anything, perhaps there's need to rebuild something.

Now in H 16, it seems they added new interpolation options, direct rendering too (if I'm correct), options for this or that, but well, number of objects and nodes is even higher.... somehow too much for my 'transition plan'. My own simplified solutions are more than enough for me. For work, it's looking easier and well, more realistic option for me, to build some guides in Fabric and feed Maya xGen with that, if there's any need for procedural or half procedural styling.

Imho, in ideal world, it's not about SideFX to build superstructures on top of such strong, existing system of SOPs and VOPs. This belongs to community. However complete ICE story is looking as unique case, when entire wagon full of various character artists was just delivered into hands of visual programming system. In other word, Houdini needs artists to play with these hair solutions. We'll see what future holds.

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Rork
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Re: Houdini 16

Post by Rork » 24 Feb 2017, 11:56

For the ones who are more used to the color scheme of SI (like me...), here's a slightly changed Dark version.
It will set the selection colors the same as in SI, and changes some of the BG colors as well.
I also changed some small things, like removing the center icon and such.

Just unzip and copy the content to your <user path>/houdini16.0/x folders. Start H16, and set your color scheme to Dark.

The adjusted Dark scheme file can be found here

If you don't like it, just delete it. Be sure to save your preferences before closing H16, so it will remember your settings next time ;)


rob
SI UI tutorials: Toolbar http://goo.gl/iYOL0l | Custom Layout http://goo.gl/6iP5xQ | RenderManager View http://goo.gl/b4ZkjQ
So long, and thanks for all the Fish!!

CafeNight
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Re: Houdini 16

Post by CafeNight » 27 Feb 2017, 10:22

so New Hair really that good as hyped it is

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Mathaeus
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Re: Houdini 16

Post by Mathaeus » 27 Feb 2017, 12:34

CafeNight wrote:so New Hair really that good as hyped it is
I think you should try yourself, expectations are very very different in that field.
Personally, this time I hope I'll be focused on modeling, of course procedural based on nodes and Network editor, with excursions into hard surface, will see to which level. Beside new booleans which really are great, there is a bunch of new, interesting SOPs, from new Bevel to variances of new hole fillers. As nice ''side effect possibility'', in Houdini is really easy to create the advanced primitive presets, like rectangle with rounded corner and such. Perhaps, will be good idea to put on the internet, a small collection of those.
On another side, Maya/Maya LT with its still worst on planet dealing with numerical inputs ( or exactly, four worst on planet dealing with numerical inputs :D ), and symmetry modeling as only one usable procedural modeling feature..... does not give any other choice.

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