With my limited knowledge of XSI the main areas where I think ICE wins is the ease of manipulating arrays in a nodal manner that has no real parallel in VOPs. I’m specifically talking about pop, push, sort, get average, maximum, minimum, sum etc, etc. And that’s before we get into to the great array compounds that were shared by the community. None of these things are missing in VEX but approachable parallels in VOP’s are lacking. But to put the shoe on the other foot managing context is a far more logical process in Houdini than it is in XSI. 😉
I haven’t personally minded being pushed deeper into C like programming than I was previously comfortable with as I find VEX exceptionally efficient and well structured. A few well-chosen lines of VEX beats a spaghetti junction of VOP nodes any day. However the beauty of visual programming interfaces is that they’re far more approachably to artists with little to no programming experience. In many ways I far prefer VOPs to ICE but VOPs definitely lacks a compelling set of ‘compounds’ that artists can analyse at leisure and gain a greater ability for programmatic thinking at a pace they’re comfortable with. From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andy Nicholas Sent: 29 March 2017 14:57 To: Official Softimage Users Mailing List. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list <softimage@listproc.autodesk.com> Subject: Re: Random Thoughts about H. Thanks for sharing. It's useful to see where you see issues. > I miss the "sort array with key" You need two nodes: "Array Arg Sort", and "Array Reorder". Use the Array Arg Sort to sort your "key" value and produce indices, which you then feed to the "Array Reorder". Maybe that's the first Softimage ICE HDA someone could make. Just encapsulate these two to become a "Sort Array by Key" node. I think a lot of problems with learning Houdini is the complexity and the overwhelming feeling of "great, I can do anything, but where the heck do I start". Much of which is over the linquistical issues like, for example, the disconnectivity between slightly obscure naming of nodes and what they actually do. I wouldn't mind betting that if people start putting together Softimage->Houdini digital assets, the first noticeable thing will be the Softimage style names that are used! Maybe learning Houdini is a similar process to learning a foreign language? Takes a while to get fluent. A On 29/03/2017 14:33, Olivier Jeannel wrote: I'm not comfident enough to tell, and I can only speak for vop (not vex). Having to build a for each loop set of nodes, well it took me time to figure (in fact Mikael tut was the answer) Having to work with per prim vertex array seems to be a limitation when coming to sort those vertex. I have overal sorting issues : it's ok to sort ptnum but an arbitrary integer attribute I'm not sure I can. I wish there was more example (in vop) of array building and sorting. I miss the "sort array with key" I'm just starting with arrays in H but I find it over complicated. On Wednesday, March 29, 2017, Andy Nicholas <a...@andynicholas.com <mailto:a...@andynicholas.com> > wrote: Heh! Flattery will get you everywhere ;) Yes, they make sense in both packages to me, and you have the added benefit of being able to see the arrays directly in Houdini using the Geometry Spreadsheet, rather than turning on the visualisation in Softimage and have them disappearing off the top of the screen. You can do Python style array slicing in VEX too which is awesomely useful. Anyway, that's why I wanted to ask Olivier an honest question to try and understand where Houdini is lacking. Maybe I'm too close to it to see the issues. A On 29/03/2017 13:06, Jordi Bares wrote: I was wondering if using arrays in Houdini makes as much sense as in Softimage… Andy??? You are the expert here. jb On 29 Mar 2017, at 10:57, Andy Nicholas <a...@andynicholas.com <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','a...@andynicholas.com');> > wrote: Hi Olivier, where do you see the biggest difference with ICE arrays and Houdini arrays? In both you have ways of adding, removing, sorting, etc. elements in the array in whatever context you're in, no? A On 29/03/2017 09:48, Olivier Jeannel wrote: An example of something we own as ice user : One of the first thing I replicated was the Modulate by Volume. When I arrived on Houdini and saw all those tutorial with people using the Attribute transfer, I tried to use it myself and was horrified : I found it slow and not precize. Nobody was using a UV location + dotproduct method, and imho that's by far the most efficient method. The hardest thinking was "how should I wire it in Houdini way of working ?". I came up with one Vop HDA, and one SOP HDA (which is simply the vop compounded). The great "plus" with Houdini, is that it's able to transfer values of any context (point, prim, you name it, ..) I'll try to record something. I think there's a large place for improvement in H for everything that concerns arrays. In ice, there was a lot of things to do with arrays , hence the speed. And the ice tools were super efficient for that. In Houdini, there's a kind of "thinking" that as VOP by nature is looping through points it is an "enough" solution. Well, "maybe" but it's so criptic that unless you're a vex/C/python programmer I find it very time consumming to understand. Plus there are no doc samples or tut, a part from the one from Mikael Perterssen http://shortandsweet3d.blogspot.fr/. That makes me wonder if other people really consider or understand this. Also, if you compare Peter Quint and Mikael way to deal with States, hell, I'm 200% on the ice method. 2017-03-28 20:39 GMT+02:00 Olivier Jeannel <facialdel...@gmail.com <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','facialdel...@gmail.com');> >: I'm a morron, but I'd love to have exclusive pure Ice minded HDA library. 2017-03-28 20:29 GMT+02:00 Rob Chapman <tekano....@gmail.com <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','tekano....@gmail.com');> >: Thought I'd pipe in since tekano got invoked, also slowly attemting to transition and agree with most already said and thanks, is already a huge pointer to as yet unknown aspects and features of how complex houdini is. also would be interested in a more 'compounded' way of learning Houdini like ice was introduced. Everything a compound node of nested compound logic with exact same UI logic and Core nodes and complexity under the hood but still accessable in a single click and an 'easy for artists' ability to follow the logic flow into further nested compounds and see how it was made. Not so with houdini yet 😎 open one compound and is equivalent to inside of the neighborhood telephone junction box. Part of the enjoyment, for me, was building own logic and then seeing the contrast of the 'Softimage' way, and for sure, if you are building something fairly complex requiring macro detailed interactions with something of a much larger scale, eg characters running through a several fields of flowers, then somethings can be improved or optimised from the off the shelf examples. Otherwise prepare for big data and long iteration times. It seems covering all bases like the 'houdini' way is fine for examples and base setup but not so in more complicated tasks is better to be good at understanding which bits to leave out. 😀 or be able rapidly prototype your own. I think like Mr Bolland has done and Pooby is asking for is these intermediate compounds between that Softimage bought with it to help us poor artists out 😂 ------ Softimage Mailing List. To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com');> with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm. ------ Softimage Mailing List. To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com');> with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm. ------ Softimage Mailing List. 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