Update (Nov 2017)

[Andy Nicholas]

Hi all,

Just thought I'd ping you guys an update. I'm guessing that from the outside it might seem that this project isn't moving forward, but don't worry as that's not the reality! Since Stable Noise was released, I've been working hard on the next drop. I generally only get around 2 hours to spend on it a day during my commute, so it's moving forward; just slowly :)

Anyway I just wanted to quickly share this with you. The next release is going to feature the following:

• Locations
• Better Array Support
• Vex Unit Testing
• Vex Documentation Generator

While the last two items aren't probably of much interest to the majority of people, they are both essential for developing the first two items on that list for various reasons:

1. The Location and Array Vex comprises of a lot of functions! They're all quite low level and it's essential that they're properly tested as they'll form the basis of other higher level tools. It's too easy to make mistakes or typos when writing this stuff, so proper unit testing is important. To give you some idea, there are currently over 1000 tests in place.
2. Documentation has to be written for this to be useful to people. Undocumented Vex code would mean it wouldn't get used.
3. The automatic documentation is really handy to make sure that I've covered all the different attribute types. I can quickly spot if I've missed something.

That's why this has all taken a bit longer than anticipated.

There's still some Vex code that needs to be written, but hopefully that won't take too much longer. After that I can assemble the various nodes that need to be made for the interface. That should be a much quicker process as all the hard work is already done.

So! That's where I'm currently at. Let me know if there's anything else you need to know.

Cheers,

Andy

[Andy Nicholas]

Hi all,

Happy New Year folks! Just posting a long overdue update. 

I had to take a break from this project last year as work pressures meant I had to divert my efforts elsewhere. However, I'm now continuing where I left off, and after talking to Kai from SideFX, I've found a better way of generating the low level VOPs by using a build system (rather than a large amount of error prone manual point and click work directly in Houdini). This will hopefully mean much faster progress for this step.

I'm not going to make any guarantees about when the next release will be ready, but at least feel reassured that this project is far from dead! Feel free to hit me up directly or on here if you have any questions.

All the best,

Andy

[Daniel Elliott Jones]

Good to hear!

Looking forward to more tool goodness on the horizon.

[Andy Nicholas]

Thanks Dan :)