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From Odwiki

Ways of approaching modeling in Houdini

• Are you being too careful? You may find your self carefully placing every sop just like in the tutorials. but what about when you only want to model a fairly un dynamic object or when you need to model a character. I have included characters in here because you need to model in an interactive way and just get in and do it. This can be done just by modeling and not looking back. Maximise the viewport (alt ') and treat the tools like you would do in max. the network editor may be a mess but sometimes that is the only way to get some work done, after all the geometry is all that really matters. If all else fails model it in max and import an .obj file.

• Stupid Houdini wanting me to reselect the operation all the time. To make Houdini behave more like Max turn off the Secure Selection button. It is located on the left of the viewport and is second from the bottom. This can be useful in sub object mode and in object mode. In 6.5 it is off by default in object mode.

To collapsing your stack, lock the SOP where you want to collaps to and delete all the previous SOPs, effectively deleting your history, or ...

• EdwardLam: A much better way instead of deleting your history is to simply collapse portions of your network into subnets. (shift C)
• JasonIversen: Now in Houdini 7.0+ you have the option of putting nodes into NetworkBoxes. (ctrl n)

Extremely long chains of sops can fail to cook next time you re open the file. It is a good habit to save out a .bgeo every 20 - 40 sops and start again with a file sop.