Enabled in Viewport on the vray light dome does not respect node visibility

[daeschri]

Using Houdini 18.5.563




The setting "Enabled in Viewport" on the vray light dome does not respect node visibility nor viewport lighting modes.



If I disable node visibility on the vrayLightDome node the hdri is still visible in the viewport.

This happens even when you have the disable lighting option for the viewport enabled.





If the display flag of a node is off, there should be nothing related to it visible in the viewport.



To replicate, create a light dome, path it to a texture, make sure enabled in viewport is checked and then turn off visibility on the display flag of the node, also try toggling to Disable Lighting in the viewport side tools bar. There is no impact and the hdri stays visible.


I've tried this on various builds and they all have the same behavior.


David Eschrich
CG Technical Supervisor
Zoic Studios

[hsz]

That is the same behavior that you get from H lights by the way. That is why you have an option in the light for "enable light in viewport".

[daeschri]

You are correct that this is happening with H lights too and I'm happy to have the option, but what's the point of having display flag on lights then?
It's extremely annoying and using a callback that runs when the display flag is changed could be a solution. If the display flag is off and the enable in viewport is on, treat it as if its off.



In our scene files we might have an HDA for a turntable setup with its own self contained rop and lights.
Then we have shot lights etc. All of these enable in viewport lights add on top of each other in the viewport.

Updating this to factor in display flag logic would provide a better user experience imho.

[hsz]

The display flag is to turn off the annoying UI of the lights in the viewport which works the same way in H lights and other engines as well, they all follow the same rules. Not sure if I would change this behavior either. Maybe if it doesn't affect anything else.

[ronald_a]

please don't change anything here, there is really no obvious disadvantage of this workflow. changing stuff (that is standard houdini behaviour) only leads to annoying another part of the user base plus the fact that stuff gets potentially broken.

[daeschri]

As much as I am annoyed by this behavior of the display flag I do agree with both of you that changing something from the standard will only cause issues for others.

Lets consider this "issue" solved and closed. Carry on

If I need to account for nested light domes and their viewport visibility in hdas I'll add the logic to the tool internally.