Posts tagged 3DConnexion

After getting something working, and continuing off and on with trying to get it to work, I have come to develop some concepts about using a Python COM method to poll 3DConnexion data.

1. The operators at the geometry level (the Python operator and Script SOP) are unable to poll the data. This seems to be due to cooking issues as well as the geometry operators using the hou module only to create/manipulate data.
2. The operator at the object level (the Python operator) does poll the data, however it seems that this polling becomes the dominant process in Houdini and you can do nothing else or stop the polling.

So the conlcusion that can be drawn is that the Python COM method for polling data is not a viable one. The idea of having Houdini write the values of the device to certain parameters and see the results in real-time just doesn’t seem to work. It is certainly possible I am overlooking something however I’ve spent a lot of time on this and with a working and better alternative out there now there isn’t a pressing need to continue. This project has helped me learn a lot about Python in Houdini as well as the common object model so the effort wasn’t entirely without gain. Now it’s time to move on and continue to learn more about Houdini!