Thoughts so far

#1 Good Afternoon, Derek.

Things are going fairly well with HD so far. It is understating to call it a very powerful 3D program. It is a very different schema from most modeling/animation programs I've been exposed to[POSER,MAX,gameSpace,Ms3d,fragMOTION, etc...]. The 'network' structure is a little difficult to wrap the Artist brain around, as it's a lot of 'programmer' or perhaps Blenderesque command line way of thinking.

The SideFX site is very well put together, and I found the tutorials and videos very helpful. The Forum there is excellent and quite civil. Any questions I've had, have come with very helpful responses. Their archives of past program builds and current daily downloads are amazing. Everyone there is very involved with 3D graphics and that makes it nice for an 'artist'.

While the program is very powerful and quite complex, I do think there may be a solid entry point for it. The excellent exporter from Chris makes it quite accessible; as I have done nothing but Import existing Scenes as FBX files with rigid meshes, skinned meshes, bones, weights, UV's, IFL's, etc..... Collada files also can be imported as well as a lot of pure geometry formats. All of the DTS features available[I'm used to, and more!] are visualized in the HD UI, and I find that really, really, cool. Did I say how cool that is? :) Auto rigging looks really great, investigation will be needed there to see what nodes these 3 separate rigging elements export and how it will work inside the engine. That is the paramount caveat, not what is possible in Houdini; but rather what is possible to get 'out' of Houdini....and into Torque. And then again, how much the DTS/DSQ format can withstand without needing some revamp...?

I do like the approach by GG on getting 'official' about the exporters out there for the homebrew shape formats[DTS/DSQ], afterall, it's their 'baby'...as it were. There are now many different approaches to the formats for all levels of development. Keep up the good work, getting as many different as possible!


I've been hammering away with HD for a few weeks now, and I'm beginning to like it more than at first. I only now feel somewhat comfortable with manipulating nodes and how the UI interacts with things. It will take most artists some time to really get the full potential out of HD; I do think it's possible to see some very nice stuf issuing from Houdini. Some of the weighting tools are very sweet, just take a gander at the quadraped autorig video of the Helldog from Marco Di Lucca, wow. UV's seem awkward, so it seems primarily a mesh and animation tool, although I haven't really delved into Materials beyond the necessary DTSmaterial for correct export.

#2 Well I have not gotten as much time as I would liked to have been able to spend using this . Houdini is a nice application. actually went as far as to shell out for a training DVD to pick it up quicker. I was able to pretty much have it down in a matter or hours. There were some minor workflow and interface issues that I think were more my fault than the applications the exporter I found to be much nicer and user friendly than that one for Maya. at least the last version of it I used. Are the other apps like Maya and 3ds max gonna some of this love as well?

Personally I think the fact that a indie can get all of this for $99 to prototype with is awesome.

Personally I do not think that I would leave Maya for it but that is just me. it is a program that I have been using for about 10 years now. I think Houdini would be much easier for a person that is new to 3D and isn't set in their ways as far as work flow.

But I must say the way this whole thing has been handle has been top notch. The effort that I starting to be shown toward the Art pipeline gives me great hope.

That being said I think that rex is on the right track in that it is time for a for either a new file format or a seriouse revamp of the DTS/DSQ format. OR at minimum a hardcore updating.

#3 I haven't had as much time as I had hoped for this test, but I have had a few sessions with the application, using some existing character builds. I think that Chris is really on the right track with making the exporter "more exporter like", thats gonna be a big help. It seems like now, all you lose from importing an existing build is: weighting.

It would be great if Houdini could retain weighting from FBX files brought in. As far as I know, when you import in your weighted mesh, it comes in 1:1 rigid rigged. I am not sure how FBX handles weights, if it breaks them itself... Weighting is something that takes hours to get 'just right' and those of us with existing work don't want to lose any. :) I know that the MS3D exporter (by ChrisR) can handle at least 3 points of prescision and export them properly. I haven't done any weighting in Houdini, but I would hope that this exporter will handle at least 3 points of rig per vert for weights. (Even better though, would be to capture existing weighting on the way in!)

Not sure what the max poly count a project can hold in Houdini (couldn't find it listed), but I am sure its pretty high. Anyone know?

More important to me is the max group count (in MS3D its 255 and we have maxxed it out). What's the max group count?

One last concern I have is Auto detail. According to what I have seen/heard Houdini exports its autodetail meshes all within 1 mesh group (like truespace). This is a pain in the neck (unless I am missing something), we need the LODs to be separate groups with appropriate numbers in the end of the names to make them work in Torque (meshname48). If Houdini had an option to create detail levels in such a way that each level was saved as its own group (ideally with a number suffix) it would be REALLY useful for LODs.

Thats about all I have for now, though I would like to add:

Kudos to Derek and the team, this is definitely a good direction and some needed attention to the Torque art pipeline!

Jondo

#4 Hey guys,

Thanks for the replies, the information you guys are providing will help us shape the art pipeline so that you love working with it.

@James & Rex: Both of you guys said the DTS format needs to either be overhauled or dropped. Can you please be a little more specific? What needs to be updated, again this is an open forum so please list every issue you have with DTS and the art pipeline and be as detailed as you possibly can.

Thanks again guys for all the help.

-Derek

#5 Well for starters I know on the Maya exporter there were many people fussing about the fact that you can have blend animation and bone animation it would be nice to have both. But more importantly "and prolly easier to implement" it would be nice to have support for the scaling of joints.

Plus and this is not directly related to Houdini it would be nice to have the Exporters done and maintained in-house. I think the latest version of TDN for Maya is like 7.0 and not maya is at 2008 "9.0" is 3 major releases that have gone by. these should be kept up to date for each release. and kept feature complete. We should not have to search high and low and go to some guy that happen to take it upon himself to update the exporter and get it from his site. If you guys are going to rely on the community to do the work then the least that could be done is to get the code and the compiled versions and make the available at the TDN.

Houdini is a nice package but interface it a bit awkward for someone that has been using Maya for about 10 years. It would be nice if they did like XSI and Modo and some other apps have done is implement a Maya system option for the interface that allows users of Maya to jump right in. but as I stated earlier if someone is new and not already set in their ways Houdini should be fairly easy to pick up I know it is a lot easier to pickup than blender that is for sure. But it is not something I would be willing to scrap maya for. But who knows if I get a chance to work with it some more I Maya change my mind.

If you can comment on if there are any plans to "official-ize" the other exporters?

#6 I've not bound myself to any one singular 3D package and for good reason; I'm able to easily pass between several with no 'rigid' expectations of how the scene should be constructed....works for me, keeps me well fielded with all current OEM's.

The DTS/DSQ formats need a very specific hierarchy; and to this end I think it is up to each exporter to configure the Modelling/Rigging/Animation Scene's elements into what is the DTS 'standard'...not to emulate any one particular package's schema on how things are done.

I do agree with the 'official' upkeep of the exporters. Again: it's GG's 'Three Space' format baby[and NO ONE ELSES, ahem]...how could you[GG] expect the masses to follow suit[and build] exporters, with no 'leader'...not gonna happen[very well]. You may want it to happen, may need to happen, ain't gonna happen; period. The current state of all exporters proves this; none are equal to each other in terms of features exported....and do I really need to bring up "UnmessDTS"...to get a 3500$ program to export correctly???

These formats are proprietary to Garage Games...and no one else. Whinge if you like, kiddies.....it's a hardcoded factoid. Upgrade your exporters[in house], don't expect the GP to do so[for free!]...and then tell us we're not cut out for it....I will never, never, never, forget reading at this site, how if you encounter difficulties with formats or scripting....; it's your fault not the authoring house's....b'ah[fairly selfServing that is....] I figured out how to do stuf with Milkshape that seemed elusive to the most senior of coders at GG....adding nodes without destroying the current transforms. Pretty major stuf, me tinks.

I find it 'refreshing' to now see 'official' stewardship of the exporters.

#7 So I have some personal issues that prevented me from working with this the last three weeks, but I did get the whole month of April in for testing and the last couple of days as well. I've already provided some feedback to the SideFX team in regards to my testing.

I have used Houdini prior to this test, so the learning curve for the program was very small. Just had to refamiliarize myself with the UI layout and shortcut keys. Houdini is very easy to learn, and is very feature complete.

The biggest issue with the Torque exporter is the lack of documentation within Houdini itself. Digging around on forums and blindly trying several things helped me learn how to use the exporter properly, but I still feel that I may or may not be missing something. In comparison to the 3DSMax DTS Exporter, the Houdini DTS Exporter isn't in the same league. I had to manually setup my all of my base objects, bounding box, details, collision meshes, etc. It was completely manual, then the exporter just exported it. Some basic setup would be nice. Really I would like to see all of the features in the 3DSMax exporter implemented in to the Houdini Exporter and I would actually be willing to use Houdini over 3DSMax. Houdini has much better rigging than 3DSMax in my opinion.

The only other thing was the errors that the Exporter throws. Obviously it is done in Python, but a little better error handling would be a welcomed addition.

#8 Hi Trenton,

First of all - thanks for being a beta tester! Seems like Rex has been going it alone these last few months and it's great to have someone else trying out the exporter.

Which version of Houdini are you using? The reason I ask is that some work was done a few weeks ago to reduce the manual setup of detail levels and scene hierarchy which you might have missed if you have an older version.

This is covered in more detail in the documentation and examples that come with the latest Houdini install (look under Help->Houdini Help->Nodes->Render output nodes->Torque, the examples are at the bottom), but the latest exporter has:

- "Initialize from scene" button to quickly create detail levels from the geometry in the scene
- Create/Update bounds button to create or update a custom bounding box. If no bounding box exists, the exporter creates one automatically for use during export (this auto-box is not added to the scene)
- easier detail level setup, with a GUI oriented approach rather than meta-nodes with special names placed in the scene

#9 Hi Chris,

I appreciate your feedback and insight. I'm using Houdini 9.1.218. Which is the best version to be using right now? I would be more than happy to try it out.

#10 Hi Trenton,

SideFX update the daily build fairly often (I think the current is 9.1.270), though there haven't been any changes to the Torque exporter since 9.1.239.

I'm interested in hearing more about what you mean by "I had to manually setup my all of my base objects, bounding box, details, collision meshes, etc." The whole approach to this exporter was to avoid the need for a specific shape hierarchy (Base01->Start01 etc) and all of the meta-nodes (detail markers, sequence markers, multires etc).

I tried to make that as easy as possible through the Torque ROP gui, but not being an artist myself, my workflow is probably a lot different to most other people using Houdini!

#11 Thanks for the reply Chris. Let me give the latest version a quick run and see what I can come up with. I think I was taking a different approach and wasn't used to not needing the specific shape hierarchy. I'll let you know what I come up with.

#12 Hi Derek,

I just found a vimeo tutorial on how to do the export. I have version 10 and testing now. It would be a great help if there was a Houdini section somewhere in GG to help each other. Maybe a list of tutorials others have done? I will get back with you shortly on my experiences.

I got the exporter working to create a DTS file and imported into Beta5, but it shows up as invisible. My current hang up is figuring out how to texture a cube :)

Thanks for the exporter!

#13 @Scott: There are a lot of resources currently available for learning the Houdini toolset. There is a section in the Artist Corner specifically dedicated to Houdini and Torque.

Also, a major provider of 3D learning videos is currently working on a Houdini and Torque video that should help greatly. As it gets closer to being finished I will let everyone know more details about it.

#14 I just wanted to thank you all for your involvement with the Houdini exporter. I never even knew about garagegames or torque3d until I saw a strange export in the export options. Learned a lot, and am hoping to make a game in this next school year.

If Houdini works out, is the exporter also in the commercial Houdini Escape?