moving around

move around the interface

left click with your mouse button to rotate .
middle click with your mouse button to Pan .
right click with your mouse button to Dolly .

to change the view from one panel to four or more

method 1: hit cntrl +#

Cntrl +1 = one view
Cntrl +2 = 4 panel view
Cntrl +3 = top /bottom split, top perspective| bottom right fixed
Cntrl +4 = left/ right split , left “top view”, right perspective
Cntrl +5 = 3 panel split , top: perspective , left bottom: front, right bottom: right.
Cntrl +6 = 3 panel split, left top:top, left bottom : front| right : perspective
Cntrl+7 = 4 panel split, top:perspective| bottom right : top |bottom middle : front | bottom left:right
Cntrl+8= 4 panel split left| left top: top|left middle : front |left bottom: right | right:perspective

Method 2:

select a view from the white square

in the upper right corner of the view finder.

3: spacebar +b to toggle between 1 and 4 views

Space + H = Home view ( same as frame in Maya) or space + B on an out of the box houdini9

like maya there are many ways to do things:

we will now create 3 “geo” nodes

under file there is a “create tab “, the first object is a “Box”,

select the “box” and drag drop it into the object space.
a node appears in your network view called “box_object1”

Next
put your mouse over the view port and hit tab , a tab menu appears .
Select “Geometry menu” select “geometry”
a node appears in your network view called “geo1”
and a square like place holder , in the object space.

Last

position your mouse into the network or object view
and tap “tab “
the tab menu pops up.
Now start typing g e o
“geometry” immediately pops up ,select this .
a node appears in your network view called “geo2”

I prefer to use the tab drop down menus

ok now that we have some objects . In our scene .
Lets look at the user interface

next we will look at the SOP level

you can get here several ways.
the way I find the easiest is in the network editor .
click on the node you wish to enter and click "enter".

Select geo1 or geo2
and click enter

you will see a new network with a node called file in it.
The File Sop is used to pipe in geometry from outside Houdini.
Like BGEO's or OBJ files.

We don't need this right now so delete it.

Just select it and hit delete on the keyboard .

In it's place are we going to make a box .

Mouse over the view port , tab , type BOX, select or hit enter..

now like maya it will want you to drag the box shape..

alternatively you can just click anywhere
then in the parameters tab , put your dimensions in the scale parameter .
I prefer this because I like my dimensions more precise.

Next we will practice moving the object .

Mouse over a view port .

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