Houdini Roadmap Presentation | SIGGRAPH 2016

[owei]

Some news on Houdini from Siggraph 2016:

"In this presentation, Robert Magee, Senior Product Marketing Manager at SideFX, introduces the Houdini roadmap, a look into the Houdini of today and the Houdini of tomorrow. To explore this roadmap, Robert takes a look at key areas of Houdini and how they are being developed, then, sneak peeks some of the features you can expect in future releases."



Funny, as it already started a discussion about the new design of the node network, although this is just a preview and many things might change ;)

To me, it looks quite promising, as they are gearing towards more general artists. That´s great!

cheers,
oli

[Rork]

"Shut up and take my money!!" ;)

But seriously, it looks like Houdini is going to rattle some cages in 2017!
Very interesting stuff happening all over Houdini's UI and workflow, and all that is coming looks very promising and useful.
Hopefully it will take away some of the pain for people moving over to Houdini, and it's sometimes annoying workflow.
I may be biased, but Softimage's workflow is still one of the best, despite it's flaws in certain areas.

Thanks for sharing the video!

rob

[jonmoore]

Most excited by the new improvements to the network editor and the continued improvements to the direct modelling toolset including the Modo like radial menu’s (anything that makes Houdini a more fluid experience is always a win as this is where it lacks against other DCC’s especially the likes of XSI). I’ll wait for the customer release though as Houdini beta test programs can be a tad painful unless you’re fully committed.

The one thing I was looking for wasn’t mentioned (but this is only a teaser) and that’s more GPU enhanced simulation stuff, especially to the Bullet powered dynamics features (Houdini is beginning to fall behind some of the specialist plugins for Max/Maya here). Realflow is always the goto when absolute accuracy is most important but Bullet is still more than capable for most effects and the Bullet core is now far more GPU enabled so I'm really hoping that SideFX plan to make use of these new GPU hooks.

[Bullit]

Well the new nodes with dog form doesn't look cool, but is this what they say it can be changed and that was a sort of private joke?

[Mathaeus]

Regarding "dog form" nodes, I think I'll complain, because I don't see anything for cats . They should add some form of mouse or such. Some people on odForce aren't excited about new look, nicely to say. We will see what's going on, anyway according to few latest versions of H, I'd believe they are serious about this part...

[Hirazi Blue]

Very impressive presentation...

[jonmoore]

Whist I'd agree bone shaped bone nodes is a tad playschool I like the idea of graphical indicators that can be spotted from a birds a view in large networks. Many already use colour coding for this but alternatives are no bad thing (as long as we don't lose what's already there).

[Bullit]

A user in odforce says:

"I'm sure he mentioned that the user can customise the node shape yourself. That might indicate that you could keep the old design.
I do love the idea of faster and more stream line workflow though."

[Bullit]

Whist I'd agree bone shaped bone nodes is a tad playschool I like the idea of graphical indicators that can be spotted from a birds a view in large networks. Many already use colour coding for this but alternatives are no bad thing (as long as we don't lose what's already there).

Visuallly you can detect color change from much further than an icon form change unless we limit ourselves to circle, square, triangle. Form can be necessary for color blind people.

[Mathaeus]

When it comes to interaction, it seems they already don't care about industry standards, so I'm afraid anything is possible . For small example, in H14 it was unique 'helping' behavior of rotation manipulator, to just hide the some handle by angle to viewport camera, forcing me to constantly rotate viewport, trying to catch the damn handle, because I'm using gimbal mode, not possible in (yet another) '3d' rotation mode. While viewport switching in H, of course, is also an unique system of 'modes' , view and object mode, with appropriate combinations (plural....) of hotkeys.
In H 15, they added a preference to disable mentioned behavior of rotation handle, but, more than half of my custom controller's shapes disappears, randomly by each loading of H, as result of 'performance boost' in H 15, which was (in this case) a plain limit of shapes displayed, when they are parented to nulls. For comparison, SI or Maya traditionally are able to run a tons of such things, with just moderate slowdown.
Anyway doesn't matter about rigs and animation, because complete app just doesn't fit into really-not-so-ambitious pipelines where I'm participating - it has different *fixed* bone local axis and bone rotation order, inverse polygon winding order compared to Maya or SI, FBX importer don't understand Maya in-between blend shapes, so on. Or, maybe it is possible to override all that, by writing the custom solutions, but why, as only one available artist (that's me) become chronically allergic to animation solutions in H. According to long threads, same story with direct modeling in H. So again, forget viewport interaction and everything will be fine.

But...... network view, while design probably is not best on planet, it was really functional, full of small workflow helpers, things like automatic reconnect with pasted nodes (not good for every case, but generally usable). Now, some brilliant mind at Side FX is focused on Network View. Oh no....

[SamHowell]

Well the one overriding feeling I get from this presentation and SideFX is that they want to attract a whole new generation of users without annoying the old school guys too much. So far I think they have done a good job.

The complete redesign of the node network is very welcome. The current one is very utilitarian, bordering on ugly. I know this shouldn't be important as long as the tools work well but we are all artist and when you have to stare at this stuff all day long it matters. It puts off new users and everything looks the same at a glance. As long as they keep a preset available for the old users it can only be a good thing in my opinion.

As for the rigging, well they are almost caught up but not quite. They must not stop now. It's not enough to match the competition, they need to excel. It's astonishing how much they have done in just the last few years. If they can keep going at this pace then it could be very impressive in the next few versions. That's when they may stand a chance of poaching some customers instead of simply being at a level that is not embarrassing. Next area to focus on should be viewport performance, that muscle system is limited if it can't be used in real time.

[Rork]

Yeah, all of this looks really good going forward. AD has to look more alive the coming years.

On a side note: this morning I was - again - contacted by AD, to see if I was interested in this great deal so I could upgrade my Softimage license.
When I said 'no thanks, I'm looking into non-AD solutions, like Houdini', the AD rep response wasn't really understanding or 'client friendly'...... ;)

If SideFX is continuing to make Houdini more user friendly towards people coming from other applications, Maya could see a drop in clients quickly.

One thing SideFX should do though, is to clean up the tutorial database regarding older versions and newer workflows.
Often you start off with a tutorial for say.. H13, to find out in H15 there are new nodes that will do the same stuff with a few clicks, instead of elaborate networks.
Or that the H13 workflow just doesn't work anymore, and that doesn't really help trying to get your feet wet in Houdini.
Maybe new adding videos to explain new features, and referencing to the existing ones on the "GoProcedural' Vimeo pages.
On the other hand, Jeff Wagner's videos are top notch and a treasure trove of information.

rob

[Hirazi Blue]

On a side note: this morning I was - again - contacted by AD, to see if I was interested in this great deal so I could upgrade my Softimage license.
When I said 'no thanks, I'm looking into non-AD solutions, like Houdini', the AD rep response wasn't really understanding or 'client friendly'...... ;)

Yeah, I got a similar call. They must be getting desperate, if they start to call us in such an "aggressive marketing" manner...

[Rork]

Haha... yes..

But they should have figured out by now that the people who wanted to move on to Maya/Max already did so, license wise. ;)
And besides the calls, I received a bunch of emails from AD reps as well over the past last couple of months. At some point it gets really annoying, telling every different branch of AD 'no'.......

rob

[Mathaeus]

Yeah it's looking like campaign, perhaps born at corporate meeting. Must be some acronym behind, that sounds important. My favorite is AD offer for help with installing the software - few months ago I've started download of AD Fusion 360 trial (around 25$ monthly), but stopped when figured out that thing is, still, web based app, so no chance to work on my home internet connection, which sometimes has tendency to go backward . Next day got a message from AD, offering help with my broken (by their records) installation....

[telepatam]

If anyone from sidefx is reading this, it would be great if the autorig would also generate a shadowrig that could be used with unity mecanim.
And also easy to use gator like thingie