Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Eric Turman]

Hi Jordi,

Did you ever assemble your Houdini migration notes into a PDF or an ebook?

Cheers,
-=Eric


On Mon, Jan 4, 2016 at 6:52 AM, Gerbrand Nel  wrote:

> Yeah Mantra has this ability to make the same looking render, take 4 min
> or 2 hours, depending on your settings.
> But for transparent stuff.. stay away!!! its worse than Arnold with
> internal reflections.
> Really can't stress enough how important blender has become for rendering
> in my pipeline.
> I've tested cycles against redshift, and octane, and in my tests, cycles
> came out top.. plus its free!!
> It's a real pain to learn yet another piece of software, especially
> blender, but I don't think we can afford to ignore it any more.
> If someone put a gun against my head and asked me to choose between
> blender and maya as the only tool for the rest of my life, I would probably
> go with blender.
> At least its not #mylife's future looks bright bullshit.
> If mantra can get gpu rendering for those smaller but annoying jobs, that
> end up paying most of my bills, life would be sweet, Until then its a mix
> between houdini and blender for me :)
>
>
>
>
> On 04/01/2016 12:23, Tim Leydecker wrote:
>
>> Regarding rendering in Houdini.
>>
>> Currently, in H15 (15.0303) I´m finding UDIM support a bit limited, f.e.
>> for all those cases where one
>> would want to do adjustment stuff to a texture put inside a Cop2net and
>> then pointing to that in a map slot.
>>
>> op:obj/cop2net/OUT
>>
>> The limitiation is that the file import available inside a cop2net dosn´t
>> provide UDIM extension resolving,
>> the workaround would be to do the adjustments to the UDIMS as if it was a
>> sequence (e.g. 1001, 1002, etc)
>> and then write the results out to file and link those as maps instead.
>>
>> That´s an extra step that could be seen desireable anyway, depending on
>> where the hand-off line for assets is
>> drawn between people/pipeline but still, I would prefer to be able to
>> keep the adjustments live and quickly
>> accessible directly from a map input slot, understood at a glance. A
>> personal preference I guess and not yet
>> checked against caveats in dependencies for a packaged/exported asset.
>>
>> All that´s obviously inspired by one of Rohan Dahlvi´s Houdini tutorials
>> (he´s using that for editing an Hdr for lighting).
>>
>> --
>>
>> For general rendering, Mantra really feels like a brother from a
>> different mother compared to Arnold.
>>
>> Same quirks when it comes to finding out how Normalmaps are interpreted,
>> colorspace/tonemapping guesswork needed when
>> driving stuff like the roughness and even similar types of rendering
>> artifacts. Indirect bounce noise, gloss/reflect firelies, etc.
>>
>> One example is driving a roughness in a material with a texture that
>> hasn´t been clamped a little bit. It´s easy enough to create
>> fireflies with (ultra)blacks in that texture and end up trying to sample
>> that away in rendering. Couple that with DOF and you
>> find yourself using insane levels of pixel samples and noise threshold to
>> get rid of those fireflies. Won´t work, check your roughness
>> values, clamp to 0-1 (or 0.1-0.8) and find that you can save hours of
>> render time...
>>
>> Like I said, it feels just like Arnold, the same user, the same problems
>> :-)
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>>
>> tim
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Am 03.01.2016 um 20:07 schrieb Gerbrand Nel:
>>
>>> Yeah,, not to indie :(
>>> On 03/01/2016 20:27, Jordi Bares wrote:
>>>
 Ha ha ha….

 It is true, we are all getting spoiled by Redshift… but hey! that is
 coming to Houdini too!!!

 ;-)
 jb


 On 3 Jan 2016, at 19:22, Gerbrand Nel  wrote:
>
> Wow.. forgot about this rant :)
> It's been about 9 months since I wrote that, and I'm still pretty
> happy with houdini.
> Only thing I don't like much as a freelancer is Mantra.
> Like Jordi said, its probably comparable to Arnold. (I did a fur job a
> few months ago, and it was allot faster than Arnold for what we wanted to
> do)
> Also like Jordi said, you can do some amazing things with mantra, like
> distorting uvs with fractals at shader level (this has been blowing my 
> mind
> for the last few months)
>
> BUT... I get the feeling Mantra is designed for large productions,
> where there is a farm to take the hits.
> If you were spoiled by redshift, or octane, be prepared to pull some
> hair out.
> I render most of my simple jobs through blender (cycles is bloody
> awesome!!!), and heavy things with volumes I do in mantra.
>
> This just happened while I was replying to this mail..
>
> https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum=172=viewtopic=42678
> Might be worth looking into :)
> G
>
> On 02/01/2016 19:27, Tim Leydecker wrote:
>
>> Now, to keep that thread alive and because Autodesk is about to
>> gently push people more

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Jordi Bares]

Thanks Oscar,

I am about to start rewriting them all for Houdini 15 (many many things have 
changed for the better and would be silly to do a plain conversion, really the 
new features need to be put forward)

You will have to be patient, will take me a bit as you can imagine.
jb

> On 11 Jan 2016, at 14:28, Oscar Juarez  wrote:
> 
> Hey, I'm not Jordi, but the guides can be found on the sidefx site:
> 
> https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content=view=2711=418
>  
> 
> 
> Cheers
> Oscar
> 
> On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 3:26 PM, Eric Turman  > wrote:
> Hi Jordi, 
> 
> Did you ever assemble your Houdini migration notes into a PDF or an ebook?
> 
> Cheers,
> -=Eric
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jan 4, 2016 at 6:52 AM, Gerbrand Nel  > wrote:
> Yeah Mantra has this ability to make the same looking render, take 4 min or 2 
> hours, depending on your settings.
> But for transparent stuff.. stay away!!! its worse than Arnold with internal 
> reflections.
> Really can't stress enough how important blender has become for rendering in 
> my pipeline.
> I've tested cycles against redshift, and octane, and in my tests, cycles came 
> out top.. plus its free!!
> It's a real pain to learn yet another piece of software, especially blender, 
> but I don't think we can afford to ignore it any more.
> If someone put a gun against my head and asked me to choose between blender 
> and maya as the only tool for the rest of my life, I would probably go with 
> blender.
> At least its not #mylife's future looks bright bullshit.
> If mantra can get gpu rendering for those smaller but annoying jobs, that end 
> up paying most of my bills, life would be sweet, Until then its a mix between 
> houdini and blender for me :)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 04/01/2016 12:23, Tim Leydecker wrote:
> Regarding rendering in Houdini.
> 
> Currently, in H15 (15.0303) I´m finding UDIM support a bit limited, f.e. for 
> all those cases where one
> would want to do adjustment stuff to a texture put inside a Cop2net and then 
> pointing to that in a map slot.
> 
> op:obj/cop2net/OUT
> 
> The limitiation is that the file import available inside a cop2net dosn´t 
> provide UDIM extension resolving,
> the workaround would be to do the adjustments to the UDIMS as if it was a 
> sequence (e.g. 1001, 1002, etc)
> and then write the results out to file and link those as maps instead.
> 
> That´s an extra step that could be seen desireable anyway, depending on where 
> the hand-off line for assets is
> drawn between people/pipeline but still, I would prefer to be able to keep 
> the adjustments live and quickly
> accessible directly from a map input slot, understood at a glance. A personal 
> preference I guess and not yet
> checked against caveats in dependencies for a packaged/exported asset.
> 
> All that´s obviously inspired by one of Rohan Dahlvi´s Houdini tutorials 
> (he´s using that for editing an Hdr for lighting).
> 
> -- 
> 
> For general rendering, Mantra really feels like a brother from a different 
> mother compared to Arnold.
> 
> Same quirks when it comes to finding out how Normalmaps are interpreted, 
> colorspace/tonemapping guesswork needed when
> driving stuff like the roughness and even similar types of rendering 
> artifacts. Indirect bounce noise, gloss/reflect firelies, etc.
> 
> One example is driving a roughness in a material with a texture that hasn´t 
> been clamped a little bit. It´s easy enough to create
> fireflies with (ultra)blacks in that texture and end up trying to sample that 
> away in rendering. Couple that with DOF and you
> find yourself using insane levels of pixel samples and noise threshold to get 
> rid of those fireflies. Won´t work, check your roughness
> values, clamp to 0-1 (or 0.1-0.8) and find that you can save hours of render 
> time...
> 
> Like I said, it feels just like Arnold, the same user, the same problems :-)
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> 
> tim
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Am 03.01.2016 um 20:07 schrieb Gerbrand Nel:
> Yeah,, not to indie :(
> On 03/01/2016 20:27, Jordi Bares wrote:
> Ha ha ha….
> 
> It is true, we are all getting spoiled by Redshift… but hey! that is coming 
> to Houdini too!!!
> 
> ;-)
> jb
> 
> 
> On 3 Jan 2016, at 19:22, Gerbrand Nel  > wrote:
> 
> Wow.. forgot about this rant :)
> It's been about 9 months since I wrote that, and I'm still pretty happy with 
> houdini.
> Only thing I don't like much as a freelancer is Mantra.
> Like Jordi said, its probably comparable to Arnold. (I did a fur job a few 
> months ago, and it was allot faster than Arnold for what we wanted to do)
> Also like Jordi said, you can do some amazing things with mantra, like 
> distorting uvs with fractals at shader level (this has been blowing my mind 
> for the last few months)
> 
> BUT... I get the 

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Oscar Juarez]

Hey, I'm not Jordi, but the guides can be found on the sidefx site:

https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content=view=2711=418

Cheers
Oscar

On Mon, Jan 11, 2016 at 3:26 PM, Eric Turman  wrote:

> Hi Jordi,
>
> Did you ever assemble your Houdini migration notes into a PDF or an ebook?
>
> Cheers,
> -=Eric
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 4, 2016 at 6:52 AM, Gerbrand Nel  wrote:
>
>> Yeah Mantra has this ability to make the same looking render, take 4 min
>> or 2 hours, depending on your settings.
>> But for transparent stuff.. stay away!!! its worse than Arnold with
>> internal reflections.
>> Really can't stress enough how important blender has become for rendering
>> in my pipeline.
>> I've tested cycles against redshift, and octane, and in my tests, cycles
>> came out top.. plus its free!!
>> It's a real pain to learn yet another piece of software, especially
>> blender, but I don't think we can afford to ignore it any more.
>> If someone put a gun against my head and asked me to choose between
>> blender and maya as the only tool for the rest of my life, I would probably
>> go with blender.
>> At least its not #mylife's future looks bright bullshit.
>> If mantra can get gpu rendering for those smaller but annoying jobs, that
>> end up paying most of my bills, life would be sweet, Until then its a mix
>> between houdini and blender for me :)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 04/01/2016 12:23, Tim Leydecker wrote:
>>
>>> Regarding rendering in Houdini.
>>>
>>> Currently, in H15 (15.0303) I´m finding UDIM support a bit limited, f.e.
>>> for all those cases where one
>>> would want to do adjustment stuff to a texture put inside a Cop2net and
>>> then pointing to that in a map slot.
>>>
>>> op:obj/cop2net/OUT
>>>
>>> The limitiation is that the file import available inside a cop2net
>>> dosn´t provide UDIM extension resolving,
>>> the workaround would be to do the adjustments to the UDIMS as if it was
>>> a sequence (e.g. 1001, 1002, etc)
>>> and then write the results out to file and link those as maps instead.
>>>
>>> That´s an extra step that could be seen desireable anyway, depending on
>>> where the hand-off line for assets is
>>> drawn between people/pipeline but still, I would prefer to be able to
>>> keep the adjustments live and quickly
>>> accessible directly from a map input slot, understood at a glance. A
>>> personal preference I guess and not yet
>>> checked against caveats in dependencies for a packaged/exported asset.
>>>
>>> All that´s obviously inspired by one of Rohan Dahlvi´s Houdini tutorials
>>> (he´s using that for editing an Hdr for lighting).
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> For general rendering, Mantra really feels like a brother from a
>>> different mother compared to Arnold.
>>>
>>> Same quirks when it comes to finding out how Normalmaps are interpreted,
>>> colorspace/tonemapping guesswork needed when
>>> driving stuff like the roughness and even similar types of rendering
>>> artifacts. Indirect bounce noise, gloss/reflect firelies, etc.
>>>
>>> One example is driving a roughness in a material with a texture that
>>> hasn´t been clamped a little bit. It´s easy enough to create
>>> fireflies with (ultra)blacks in that texture and end up trying to sample
>>> that away in rendering. Couple that with DOF and you
>>> find yourself using insane levels of pixel samples and noise threshold
>>> to get rid of those fireflies. Won´t work, check your roughness
>>> values, clamp to 0-1 (or 0.1-0.8) and find that you can save hours of
>>> render time...
>>>
>>> Like I said, it feels just like Arnold, the same user, the same problems
>>> :-)
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>>
>>> tim
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Am 03.01.2016 um 20:07 schrieb Gerbrand Nel:
>>>
 Yeah,, not to indie :(
 On 03/01/2016 20:27, Jordi Bares wrote:

> Ha ha ha….
>
> It is true, we are all getting spoiled by Redshift… but hey! that is
> coming to Houdini too!!!
>
> ;-)
> jb
>
>
> On 3 Jan 2016, at 19:22, Gerbrand Nel  wrote:
>>
>> Wow.. forgot about this rant :)
>> It's been about 9 months since I wrote that, and I'm still pretty
>> happy with houdini.
>> Only thing I don't like much as a freelancer is Mantra.
>> Like Jordi said, its probably comparable to Arnold. (I did a fur job
>> a few months ago, and it was allot faster than Arnold for what we wanted 
>> to
>> do)
>> Also like Jordi said, you can do some amazing things with mantra,
>> like distorting uvs with fractals at shader level (this has been blowing 
>> my
>> mind for the last few months)
>>
>> BUT... I get the feeling Mantra is designed for large productions,
>> where there is a farm to take the hits.
>> If you were spoiled by redshift, or octane, be prepared to pull some
>> hair out.
>> I render most of my simple jobs through blender (cycles is bloody
>> awesome!!!), and heavy things with volumes I do in 

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Tim Leydecker]

Regarding rendering in Houdini.

Currently, in H15 (15.0303) I´m finding UDIM support a bit limited, f.e. 
for all those cases where one
would want to do adjustment stuff to a texture put inside a Cop2net and 
then pointing to that in a map slot.


op:obj/cop2net/OUT

The limitiation is that the file import available inside a cop2net 
dosn´t provide UDIM extension resolving,
the workaround would be to do the adjustments to the UDIMS as if it was 
a sequence (e.g. 1001, 1002, etc)

and then write the results out to file and link those as maps instead.

That´s an extra step that could be seen desireable anyway, depending on 
where the hand-off line for assets is
drawn between people/pipeline but still, I would prefer to be able to 
keep the adjustments live and quickly
accessible directly from a map input slot, understood at a glance. A 
personal preference I guess and not yet

checked against caveats in dependencies for a packaged/exported asset.

All that´s obviously inspired by one of Rohan Dahlvi´s Houdini tutorials 
(he´s using that for editing an Hdr for lighting).


--

For general rendering, Mantra really feels like a brother from a 
different mother compared to Arnold.


Same quirks when it comes to finding out how Normalmaps are interpreted, 
colorspace/tonemapping guesswork needed when
driving stuff like the roughness and even similar types of rendering 
artifacts. Indirect bounce noise, gloss/reflect firelies, etc.


One example is driving a roughness in a material with a texture that 
hasn´t been clamped a little bit. It´s easy enough to create
fireflies with (ultra)blacks in that texture and end up trying to sample 
that away in rendering. Couple that with DOF and you
find yourself using insane levels of pixel samples and noise threshold 
to get rid of those fireflies. Won´t work, check your roughness
values, clamp to 0-1 (or 0.1-0.8) and find that you can save hours of 
render time...


Like I said, it feels just like Arnold, the same user, the same problems :-)

Cheers,


tim







Am 03.01.2016 um 20:07 schrieb Gerbrand Nel:

Yeah,, not to indie :(
On 03/01/2016 20:27, Jordi Bares wrote:

Ha ha ha….

It is true, we are all getting spoiled by Redshift… but hey! that is 
coming to Houdini too!!!


;-)
jb



On 3 Jan 2016, at 19:22, Gerbrand Nel  wrote:

Wow.. forgot about this rant :)
It's been about 9 months since I wrote that, and I'm still pretty 
happy with houdini.

Only thing I don't like much as a freelancer is Mantra.
Like Jordi said, its probably comparable to Arnold. (I did a fur job 
a few months ago, and it was allot faster than Arnold for what we 
wanted to do)
Also like Jordi said, you can do some amazing things with mantra, 
like distorting uvs with fractals at shader level (this has been 
blowing my mind for the last few months)


BUT... I get the feeling Mantra is designed for large productions, 
where there is a farm to take the hits.
If you were spoiled by redshift, or octane, be prepared to pull some 
hair out.
I render most of my simple jobs through blender (cycles is bloody 
awesome!!!), and heavy things with volumes I do in mantra.


This just happened while I was replying to this mail..
https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum=172=viewtopic=42678 


Might be worth looking into :)
G

On 02/01/2016 19:27, Tim Leydecker wrote:
Now, to keep that thread alive and because Autodesk is about to 
gently push people more

and more into the rental this but don´t own that corner.

I´m currently dabbling with the "Apprentice" Houdini 15 version.

Mostly at the single click level of things. Doubleclicking on a 
node still often drives sweat into my hands...


It´s nice that using Physically based rendering and shaders as well 
as pretty much anything related
to a first testrendering seems well enough balanced to give a 
pleasing result to start with. No gamma issues.


Hit render, it´ll probably look not too shabby with the defaults 
already. That helps a lot in the first steps.


But then really getting rid of indirect illumination noise is uhmm, 
something different thought.
That´s where Houdini eats CPU power more than I would have expected 
actually, indirect bounce cleaning is expensive.
Same for getting volumetric stuff noise free. That stuff sure is 
heavy to calculate and indirect bounce noise seems
not too easy to get rid off even with the added controls available 
in Houdini 15.


Or maybe my threshold for noise is too low. My personal noise 
threshold I mean.


Coming from Arnold, playing with Houdini´s render settings feels 
familiar enough, thought.


I like Mantra, even if I find it slow to what I am spoiled with 
from Redshift3D.


--

In terms of modeling and doing things inside Houdini, I wouldn´t 
want to miss an external asset creation package
to go along with Houdini. Doesn´t matter what, Blender, Modo, Maya, 
Softimage, Max, etc.


Just something more focused on asset creation or *.abc cache 
generation to be then pulled into 

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Gerbrand Nel]

Yeah Mantra has this ability to make the same looking render, take 4 min 
or 2 hours, depending on your settings.
But for transparent stuff.. stay away!!! its worse than Arnold with 
internal reflections.
Really can't stress enough how important blender has become for 
rendering in my pipeline.
I've tested cycles against redshift, and octane, and in my tests, cycles 
came out top.. plus its free!!
It's a real pain to learn yet another piece of software, especially 
blender, but I don't think we can afford to ignore it any more.
If someone put a gun against my head and asked me to choose between 
blender and maya as the only tool for the rest of my life, I would 
probably go with blender.

At least its not #mylife's future looks bright bullshit.
If mantra can get gpu rendering for those smaller but annoying jobs, 
that end up paying most of my bills, life would be sweet, Until then its 
a mix between houdini and blender for me :)




On 04/01/2016 12:23, Tim Leydecker wrote:

Regarding rendering in Houdini.

Currently, in H15 (15.0303) I´m finding UDIM support a bit limited, 
f.e. for all those cases where one
would want to do adjustment stuff to a texture put inside a Cop2net 
and then pointing to that in a map slot.


op:obj/cop2net/OUT

The limitiation is that the file import available inside a cop2net 
dosn´t provide UDIM extension resolving,
the workaround would be to do the adjustments to the UDIMS as if it 
was a sequence (e.g. 1001, 1002, etc)

and then write the results out to file and link those as maps instead.

That´s an extra step that could be seen desireable anyway, depending 
on where the hand-off line for assets is
drawn between people/pipeline but still, I would prefer to be able to 
keep the adjustments live and quickly
accessible directly from a map input slot, understood at a glance. A 
personal preference I guess and not yet

checked against caveats in dependencies for a packaged/exported asset.

All that´s obviously inspired by one of Rohan Dahlvi´s Houdini 
tutorials (he´s using that for editing an Hdr for lighting).


--

For general rendering, Mantra really feels like a brother from a 
different mother compared to Arnold.


Same quirks when it comes to finding out how Normalmaps are 
interpreted, colorspace/tonemapping guesswork needed when
driving stuff like the roughness and even similar types of rendering 
artifacts. Indirect bounce noise, gloss/reflect firelies, etc.


One example is driving a roughness in a material with a texture that 
hasn´t been clamped a little bit. It´s easy enough to create
fireflies with (ultra)blacks in that texture and end up trying to 
sample that away in rendering. Couple that with DOF and you
find yourself using insane levels of pixel samples and noise threshold 
to get rid of those fireflies. Won´t work, check your roughness
values, clamp to 0-1 (or 0.1-0.8) and find that you can save hours of 
render time...


Like I said, it feels just like Arnold, the same user, the same 
problems :-)


Cheers,


tim







Am 03.01.2016 um 20:07 schrieb Gerbrand Nel:

Yeah,, not to indie :(
On 03/01/2016 20:27, Jordi Bares wrote:

Ha ha ha….

It is true, we are all getting spoiled by Redshift… but hey! that is 
coming to Houdini too!!!


;-)
jb



On 3 Jan 2016, at 19:22, Gerbrand Nel  wrote:

Wow.. forgot about this rant :)
It's been about 9 months since I wrote that, and I'm still pretty 
happy with houdini.

Only thing I don't like much as a freelancer is Mantra.
Like Jordi said, its probably comparable to Arnold. (I did a fur 
job a few months ago, and it was allot faster than Arnold for what 
we wanted to do)
Also like Jordi said, you can do some amazing things with mantra, 
like distorting uvs with fractals at shader level (this has been 
blowing my mind for the last few months)


BUT... I get the feeling Mantra is designed for large productions, 
where there is a farm to take the hits.
If you were spoiled by redshift, or octane, be prepared to pull 
some hair out.
I render most of my simple jobs through blender (cycles is bloody 
awesome!!!), and heavy things with volumes I do in mantra.


This just happened while I was replying to this mail..
https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum=172=viewtopic=42678 


Might be worth looking into :)
G

On 02/01/2016 19:27, Tim Leydecker wrote:
Now, to keep that thread alive and because Autodesk is about to 
gently push people more

and more into the rental this but don´t own that corner.

I´m currently dabbling with the "Apprentice" Houdini 15 version.

Mostly at the single click level of things. Doubleclicking on a 
node still often drives sweat into my hands...


It´s nice that using Physically based rendering and shaders as 
well as pretty much anything related
to a first testrendering seems well enough balanced to give a 
pleasing result to start with. No gamma issues.


Hit render, it´ll probably look not too shabby with the defaults 
already. That helps a lot in the first steps.

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Gerbrand Nel]

Wow.. forgot about this rant :)
It's been about 9 months since I wrote that, and I'm still pretty happy 
with houdini.

Only thing I don't like much as a freelancer is Mantra.
Like Jordi said, its probably comparable to Arnold. (I did a fur job a 
few months ago, and it was allot faster than Arnold for what we wanted 
to do)
Also like Jordi said, you can do some amazing things with mantra, like 
distorting uvs with fractals at shader level (this has been blowing my 
mind for the last few months)


BUT... I get the feeling Mantra is designed for large productions, where 
there is a farm to take the hits.
If you were spoiled by redshift, or octane, be prepared to pull some 
hair out.
I render most of my simple jobs through blender (cycles is bloody 
awesome!!!), and heavy things with volumes I do in mantra.


This just happened while I was replying to this mail..
https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum=172=viewtopic=42678
Might be worth looking into :)
G

On 02/01/2016 19:27, Tim Leydecker wrote:
Now, to keep that thread alive and because Autodesk is about to gently 
push people more

and more into the rental this but don´t own that corner.

I´m currently dabbling with the "Apprentice" Houdini 15 version.

Mostly at the single click level of things. Doubleclicking on a node 
still often drives sweat into my hands...


It´s nice that using Physically based rendering and shaders as well as 
pretty much anything related
to a first testrendering seems well enough balanced to give a pleasing 
result to start with. No gamma issues.


Hit render, it´ll probably look not too shabby with the defaults 
already. That helps a lot in the first steps.


But then really getting rid of indirect illumination noise is uhmm, 
something different thought.
That´s where Houdini eats CPU power more than I would have expected 
actually, indirect bounce cleaning is expensive.
Same for getting volumetric stuff noise free. That stuff sure is heavy 
to calculate and indirect bounce noise seems
not too easy to get rid off even with the added controls available in 
Houdini 15.


Or maybe my threshold for noise is too low. My personal noise 
threshold I mean.


Coming from Arnold, playing with Houdini´s render settings feels 
familiar enough, thought.


I like Mantra, even if I find it slow to what I am spoiled with from 
Redshift3D.


--

In terms of modeling and doing things inside Houdini, I wouldn´t want 
to miss an external asset creation package
to go along with Houdini. Doesn´t matter what, Blender, Modo, Maya, 
Softimage, Max, etc.


Just something more focused on asset creation or *.abc cache 
generation to be then pulled into Houdini.


I can see myself using Houdini more and more for both first steps in 
FX and actual rendering shots.


I like Houdini and the free entry ticket is great, I´ll be upgrading 
to the Indie soon. Just for playing.


Cheers,

tim








Am 17.03.2015 um 11:11 schrieb Gerbrand Nel:
I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might 
save the life of a fellow artist.


So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I 
can compete against people straight out of collage.
This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage 
artists here in South Africa.
At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has 
to happen in maya for me.

My brain doesn't work the way maya works.
I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do 
now, just in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from 
now, lead to allot of back tracking.


At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price 
tag of Houdini FX.
It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I 
was one, of only a few houdini artists around.

Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these concerns.

The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a concern 
to me.


I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with it, 
than I can with Maya after a year.
The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package 
works as one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing 
something new is fun and pretty easy.


This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non 
destructive open work flow.
So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the 
whole "there is a script for that" mentality... there is a sop for that


G



.

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Gerbrand Nel]

Yeah,, not to indie :(
On 03/01/2016 20:27, Jordi Bares wrote:

Ha ha ha….

It is true, we are all getting spoiled by Redshift… but hey! that is coming to 
Houdini too!!!

;-)
jb



On 3 Jan 2016, at 19:22, Gerbrand Nel  wrote:

Wow.. forgot about this rant :)
It's been about 9 months since I wrote that, and I'm still pretty happy with 
houdini.
Only thing I don't like much as a freelancer is Mantra.
Like Jordi said, its probably comparable to Arnold. (I did a fur job a few 
months ago, and it was allot faster than Arnold for what we wanted to do)
Also like Jordi said, you can do some amazing things with mantra, like 
distorting uvs with fractals at shader level (this has been blowing my mind for 
the last few months)

BUT... I get the feeling Mantra is designed for large productions, where there 
is a farm to take the hits.
If you were spoiled by redshift, or octane, be prepared to pull some hair out.
I render most of my simple jobs through blender (cycles is bloody awesome!!!), 
and heavy things with volumes I do in mantra.

This just happened while I was replying to this mail..
https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum=172=viewtopic=42678
Might be worth looking into :)
G

On 02/01/2016 19:27, Tim Leydecker wrote:

Now, to keep that thread alive and because Autodesk is about to gently push 
people more
and more into the rental this but don´t own that corner.

I´m currently dabbling with the "Apprentice" Houdini 15 version.

Mostly at the single click level of things. Doubleclicking on a node still 
often drives sweat into my hands...

It´s nice that using Physically based rendering and shaders as well as pretty 
much anything related
to a first testrendering seems well enough balanced to give a pleasing result 
to start with. No gamma issues.

Hit render, it´ll probably look not too shabby with the defaults already. That 
helps a lot in the first steps.

But then really getting rid of indirect illumination noise is uhmm, something 
different thought.
That´s where Houdini eats CPU power more than I would have expected actually, 
indirect bounce cleaning is expensive.
Same for getting volumetric stuff noise free. That stuff sure is heavy to 
calculate and indirect bounce noise seems
not too easy to get rid off even with the added controls available in Houdini 
15.

Or maybe my threshold for noise is too low. My personal noise threshold I mean.

Coming from Arnold, playing with Houdini´s render settings feels familiar 
enough, thought.

I like Mantra, even if I find it slow to what I am spoiled with from Redshift3D.

--

In terms of modeling and doing things inside Houdini, I wouldn´t want to miss 
an external asset creation package
to go along with Houdini. Doesn´t matter what, Blender, Modo, Maya, Softimage, 
Max, etc.

Just something more focused on asset creation or *.abc cache generation to be 
then pulled into Houdini.

I can see myself using Houdini more and more for both first steps in FX and 
actual rendering shots.

I like Houdini and the free entry ticket is great, I´ll be upgrading to the 
Indie soon. Just for playing.

Cheers,

tim








Am 17.03.2015 um 11:11 schrieb Gerbrand Nel:

I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might save the 
life of a fellow artist.

So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can compete 
against people straight out of collage.
This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage artists 
here in South Africa.
At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has to happen 
in maya for me.
My brain doesn't work the way maya works.
I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do now, just 
in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, lead to allot of 
back tracking.

At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price tag of 
Houdini FX.
It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I was one, 
of only a few houdini artists around.
Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these concerns.

The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a concern to me.

I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with it, than I can 
with Maya after a year.
The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package works as 
one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing something new is fun 
and pretty easy.

This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non 
destructive open work flow.
So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the whole "there is 
a script for that" mentality... there is a sop for that

G


.

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Tim Leydecker]

Now, to keep that thread alive and because Autodesk is about to gently 
push people more

and more into the rental this but don´t own that corner.

I´m currently dabbling with the "Apprentice" Houdini 15 version.

Mostly at the single click level of things. Doubleclicking on a node 
still often drives sweat into my hands...


It´s nice that using Physically based rendering and shaders as well as 
pretty much anything related
to a first testrendering seems well enough balanced to give a pleasing 
result to start with. No gamma issues.


Hit render, it´ll probably look not too shabby with the defaults 
already. That helps a lot in the first steps.


But then really getting rid of indirect illumination noise is uhmm, 
something different thought.
That´s where Houdini eats CPU power more than I would have expected 
actually, indirect bounce cleaning is expensive.
Same for getting volumetric stuff noise free. That stuff sure is heavy 
to calculate and indirect bounce noise seems
not too easy to get rid off even with the added controls available in 
Houdini 15.


Or maybe my threshold for noise is too low. My personal noise threshold 
I mean.


Coming from Arnold, playing with Houdini´s render settings feels 
familiar enough, thought.


I like Mantra, even if I find it slow to what I am spoiled with from 
Redshift3D.


--

In terms of modeling and doing things inside Houdini, I wouldn´t want to 
miss an external asset creation package
to go along with Houdini. Doesn´t matter what, Blender, Modo, Maya, 
Softimage, Max, etc.


Just something more focused on asset creation or *.abc cache generation 
to be then pulled into Houdini.


I can see myself using Houdini more and more for both first steps in FX 
and actual rendering shots.


I like Houdini and the free entry ticket is great, I´ll be upgrading to 
the Indie soon. Just for playing.


Cheers,

tim








Am 17.03.2015 um 11:11 schrieb Gerbrand Nel:
I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might 
save the life of a fellow artist.


So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can 
compete against people straight out of collage.
This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage 
artists here in South Africa.
At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has 
to happen in maya for me.

My brain doesn't work the way maya works.
I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do 
now, just in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, 
lead to allot of back tracking.


At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price tag 
of Houdini FX.
It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I 
was one, of only a few houdini artists around.

Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these concerns.

The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a concern to 
me.


I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with it, 
than I can with Maya after a year.
The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package 
works as one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing 
something new is fun and pretty easy.


This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non 
destructive open work flow.
So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the 
whole "there is a script for that" mentality... there is a sop for that


G

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Sebastien Sterling]

Does fabric currently have a stand alone UI for rigging and weight painting
? or do you need to import weight maps from what ever app you are intending
to finish in ?

On 2 January 2016 at 17:27, Tim Leydecker  wrote:

> Now, to keep that thread alive and because Autodesk is about to gently
> push people more
> and more into the rental this but don´t own that corner.
>
> I´m currently dabbling with the "Apprentice" Houdini 15 version.
>
> Mostly at the single click level of things. Doubleclicking on a node still
> often drives sweat into my hands...
>
> It´s nice that using Physically based rendering and shaders as well as
> pretty much anything related
> to a first testrendering seems well enough balanced to give a pleasing
> result to start with. No gamma issues.
>
> Hit render, it´ll probably look not too shabby with the defaults already.
> That helps a lot in the first steps.
>
> But then really getting rid of indirect illumination noise is uhmm,
> something different thought.
> That´s where Houdini eats CPU power more than I would have expected
> actually, indirect bounce cleaning is expensive.
> Same for getting volumetric stuff noise free. That stuff sure is heavy to
> calculate and indirect bounce noise seems
> not too easy to get rid off even with the added controls available in
> Houdini 15.
>
> Or maybe my threshold for noise is too low. My personal noise threshold I
> mean.
>
> Coming from Arnold, playing with Houdini´s render settings feels familiar
> enough, thought.
>
> I like Mantra, even if I find it slow to what I am spoiled with from
> Redshift3D.
>
> --
>
> In terms of modeling and doing things inside Houdini, I wouldn´t want to
> miss an external asset creation package
> to go along with Houdini. Doesn´t matter what, Blender, Modo, Maya,
> Softimage, Max, etc.
>
> Just something more focused on asset creation or *.abc cache generation to
> be then pulled into Houdini.
>
> I can see myself using Houdini more and more for both first steps in FX
> and actual rendering shots.
>
> I like Houdini and the free entry ticket is great, I´ll be upgrading to
> the Indie soon. Just for playing.
>
> Cheers,
>
> tim
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Am 17.03.2015 um 11:11 schrieb Gerbrand Nel:
>
>> I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might save
>> the life of a fellow artist.
>>
>> So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can
>> compete against people straight out of collage.
>> This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage
>> artists here in South Africa.
>> At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has to
>> happen in maya for me.
>> My brain doesn't work the way maya works.
>> I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do now,
>> just in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, lead to
>> allot of back tracking.
>>
>> At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price tag of
>> Houdini FX.
>> It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I was
>> one, of only a few houdini artists around.
>> Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these concerns.
>>
>> The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a concern to me.
>>
>> I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with it, than
>> I can with Maya after a year.
>> The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package works
>> as one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing something new
>> is fun and pretty easy.
>>
>> This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non
>> destructive open work flow.
>> So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the whole
>> "there is a script for that" mentality... there is a sop for that
>>
>> G
>>
>>
>

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Jordi Bares]

In my experience render times between Arnold and Mantra are very similar, only 
thing is that Arnold uses memory in a more efficient way (again in my 
experience) but you can do some really crazy stuff simply using Mantra, plus it 
is free and so far I have never found Mantra limits in production, even sending 
some insane amount of geo.

my 2 cents.
jb



> On 2 Jan 2016, at 18:27, Tim Leydecker  wrote:
> 
> Now, to keep that thread alive and because Autodesk is about to gently push 
> people more
> and more into the rental this but don´t own that corner.
> 
> I´m currently dabbling with the "Apprentice" Houdini 15 version.
> 
> Mostly at the single click level of things. Doubleclicking on a node still 
> often drives sweat into my hands...
> 
> It´s nice that using Physically based rendering and shaders as well as pretty 
> much anything related
> to a first testrendering seems well enough balanced to give a pleasing result 
> to start with. No gamma issues.
> 
> Hit render, it´ll probably look not too shabby with the defaults already. 
> That helps a lot in the first steps.
> 
> But then really getting rid of indirect illumination noise is uhmm, something 
> different thought.
> That´s where Houdini eats CPU power more than I would have expected actually, 
> indirect bounce cleaning is expensive.
> Same for getting volumetric stuff noise free. That stuff sure is heavy to 
> calculate and indirect bounce noise seems
> not too easy to get rid off even with the added controls available in Houdini 
> 15.
> 
> Or maybe my threshold for noise is too low. My personal noise threshold I 
> mean.
> 
> Coming from Arnold, playing with Houdini´s render settings feels familiar 
> enough, thought.
> 
> I like Mantra, even if I find it slow to what I am spoiled with from 
> Redshift3D.
> 
> --
> 
> In terms of modeling and doing things inside Houdini, I wouldn´t want to miss 
> an external asset creation package
> to go along with Houdini. Doesn´t matter what, Blender, Modo, Maya, 
> Softimage, Max, etc.
> 
> Just something more focused on asset creation or *.abc cache generation to be 
> then pulled into Houdini.
> 
> I can see myself using Houdini more and more for both first steps in FX and 
> actual rendering shots.
> 
> I like Houdini and the free entry ticket is great, I´ll be upgrading to the 
> Indie soon. Just for playing.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> tim
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Am 17.03.2015 um 11:11 schrieb Gerbrand Nel:
>> I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might save 
>> the life of a fellow artist.
>> 
>> So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can 
>> compete against people straight out of collage.
>> This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage artists 
>> here in South Africa.
>> At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has to 
>> happen in maya for me.
>> My brain doesn't work the way maya works.
>> I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do now, 
>> just in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, lead to 
>> allot of back tracking.
>> 
>> At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price tag of 
>> Houdini FX.
>> It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I was 
>> one, of only a few houdini artists around.
>> Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these concerns.
>> 
>> The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a concern to me.
>> 
>> I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with it, than I 
>> can with Maya after a year.
>> The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package works as 
>> one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing something new is 
>> fun and pretty easy.
>> 
>> This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non 
>> destructive open work flow.
>> So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the whole 
>> "there is a script for that" mentality... there is a sop for that
>> 
>> G
>> 
> 

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Simon Reeves]

I've used it a decent amount as the guys at the foundation of our studio
all use it, but I really dislike it (I used it years ago too before xsi) it
is so dis-organised and slow, I think it breeds sloppy workflow with messy
scenes in terms of scene organisation naming etc. XSI has explorer
(amazing), maya has outliner (just about good enough) max has... a
selection window? Rubbish.

 But speaking of vray implementation, I have found it great in Maya
compared with xsi where there were always wee irratations (mostly limited
by porting it across from Max/Maya I think - not their fault)



Simon Reeves
London, UK
*si...@simonreeves.com si...@simonreeves.com*
*www.simonreeves.com http://www.simonreeves.com*
*www.analogstudio.co.uk http://www.analogstudio.co.uk*

On 23 March 2015 at 12:28, Chris Johnson chr...@topixfx.com wrote:

 Did anyone else, other then me, go the direction of max/vray? I was pseudo
 forced as it seemed to be the software of choice in smaller commercial
 shops here in Toronto. There's no ICE like architecture in there but for
 look Dev I've found it really good! I found the material slate editor nicer
 then the render tree! Vray integration is awesome and redshift is in
 beta...tried it and works great! Bone system isn't horrific. However the
 weighting system is painful...but works. I haven't gotten too far into the
 particle system yet...that'll be next. That script spot.com has a script/
 plugin for just about anything you can think off. A lot of 3rd party
 plugins as well...Ornatrix is pretty cool and has some really nice things
 in it for hair fur that would be an ICE hack in Softimage.

 Just saying...don't mean to hijack the string.
 On Mar 23, 2015 3:04 AM, Demian Kurejwowski demianpe...@yahoo.com
 wrote:

 you can use old tutorials,  the nodes are the same,   the interface might
 look a Little bit different,   but the nodes have the same functionality.
 we still look at some old tutorials from version 8 =).  Sesi  just keep
 adding new nodes. but you will find that every one use mostly the same
 basic ones,  and every now and then a new one to finish the combo =).



   El Lunes, 23 de marzo, 2015 1:02:20, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com
 escribió:


  Personally I'm not changing stuff (partly because you can't change the
 things I would want tot change in Houdini)
 For me this is a pretty big commitment. I plan to go full-Houdini, so I
 will probably change my Maya and Soft, to work like Houdini, if I change
 anything.
 It is hard enough to learn Houdini with tutorials from older versions.. I
 don't need keyboard discrepancies to make this harder than it needs to be :)
 G
 On 22/03/2015 05:33, Manuel Huertas Marchena wrote:

 I am wondering if any of you guys using houdini would advice against
 changing some houdini hotkeys to speed up workflow ?
  when I use either xsi or maya, I have a set of keyboard shortcuts that
 help me go faster when modeling (without clicking every time on a menu,
 hotbox, icon... etc)
  I like using hotkeys because for me its faster and I have optimized my
 workflow in that manner, so I rarely rely on any button on the modeling
 side of things. I know this is counter productive for other stuff... (like
 when a td comes to help you and does not understand your setup... yes admit
 that is somehow annoying sometimes!). But for me the pros overcome by far
 the cons,
 at least in my experience. So as I am new to houdini and learning its
 polymodeling tools, I can t help but notice that going to click buttons on
 the polygon tab is slowing me down.
 I do like the tab menu, but even that is slower than simply using
 hotkeys (ex: insert edge loop, bridge, extrude, bevel...etc etc) . I dont
 mind clicking for anything else, but I do for modeling.
  so if any of you has an opinion on this, I ll like to know what you
 think ... (as I ll eventually like to learn other parts of houdini...for..
 fx, sims..  I ll like to know if this will have some
 considerable impact on productivity, or is it something I can probably
 live with, like I do with maya  xsi...

  thanks!


 -Manu




 IMDB | Portfolio | Vimeo | Linkedin


  --
 From: moloney.cia...@gmail.com
 Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2015 13:44:49 +
 Subject: Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com

  Network and hardware are fastest I've used. It's just the nature of the
 work.
 Volume data in my case is not very large, only a few Mb per frame. But,
 e.g. to make useful collision fields from complex geometry often requires a
 good bit of SOPs pre-processing. I get the impression that much of SOPs is
 still not especially multithreaded.
  DOPs is also very slow vs solvers of comparable classes (FumeFX,
 Exocortex's Bullet, nCloth). But, that's generally OK since you can do so
 much, much more with DOPs with a very low chance of things failing apart as
 you scale up.

 On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 1:09 PM, Jordi Bares Dominguez 
 jordiba

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Chris Johnson]

Did anyone else, other then me, go the direction of max/vray? I was pseudo
forced as it seemed to be the software of choice in smaller commercial
shops here in Toronto. There's no ICE like architecture in there but for
look Dev I've found it really good! I found the material slate editor nicer
then the render tree! Vray integration is awesome and redshift is in
beta...tried it and works great! Bone system isn't horrific. However the
weighting system is painful...but works. I haven't gotten too far into the
particle system yet...that'll be next. That script spot.com has a script/
plugin for just about anything you can think off. A lot of 3rd party
plugins as well...Ornatrix is pretty cool and has some really nice things
in it for hair fur that would be an ICE hack in Softimage.

Just saying...don't mean to hijack the string.
On Mar 23, 2015 3:04 AM, Demian Kurejwowski demianpe...@yahoo.com wrote:

 you can use old tutorials,  the nodes are the same,   the interface might
 look a Little bit different,   but the nodes have the same functionality.
 we still look at some old tutorials from version 8 =).  Sesi  just keep
 adding new nodes. but you will find that every one use mostly the same
 basic ones,  and every now and then a new one to finish the combo =).



   El Lunes, 23 de marzo, 2015 1:02:20, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com
 escribió:


  Personally I'm not changing stuff (partly because you can't change the
 things I would want tot change in Houdini)
 For me this is a pretty big commitment. I plan to go full-Houdini, so I
 will probably change my Maya and Soft, to work like Houdini, if I change
 anything.
 It is hard enough to learn Houdini with tutorials from older versions.. I
 don't need keyboard discrepancies to make this harder than it needs to be :)
 G
 On 22/03/2015 05:33, Manuel Huertas Marchena wrote:

 I am wondering if any of you guys using houdini would advice against
 changing some houdini hotkeys to speed up workflow ?
  when I use either xsi or maya, I have a set of keyboard shortcuts that
 help me go faster when modeling (without clicking every time on a menu,
 hotbox, icon... etc)
  I like using hotkeys because for me its faster and I have optimized my
 workflow in that manner, so I rarely rely on any button on the modeling
 side of things. I know this is counter productive for other stuff... (like
 when a td comes to help you and does not understand your setup... yes admit
 that is somehow annoying sometimes!). But for me the pros overcome by far
 the cons,
 at least in my experience. So as I am new to houdini and learning its
 polymodeling tools, I can t help but notice that going to click buttons on
 the polygon tab is slowing me down.
 I do like the tab menu, but even that is slower than simply using
 hotkeys (ex: insert edge loop, bridge, extrude, bevel...etc etc) . I dont
 mind clicking for anything else, but I do for modeling.
  so if any of you has an opinion on this, I ll like to know what you think
 ... (as I ll eventually like to learn other parts of houdini...for..  fx,
 sims..  I ll like to know if this will have some
 considerable impact on productivity, or is it something I can probably
 live with, like I do with maya  xsi...

  thanks!


 -Manu




 IMDB | Portfolio | Vimeo | Linkedin


  --
 From: moloney.cia...@gmail.com
 Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2015 13:44:49 +
 Subject: Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com

  Network and hardware are fastest I've used. It's just the nature of the
 work.
 Volume data in my case is not very large, only a few Mb per frame. But,
 e.g. to make useful collision fields from complex geometry often requires a
 good bit of SOPs pre-processing. I get the impression that much of SOPs is
 still not especially multithreaded.
  DOPs is also very slow vs solvers of comparable classes (FumeFX,
 Exocortex's Bullet, nCloth). But, that's generally OK since you can do so
 much, much more with DOPs with a very low chance of things failing apart as
 you scale up.

 On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 1:09 PM, Jordi Bares Dominguez 
 jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:

 Is this processing time or hardware time? (disks, network, etc..)

  Of course saving gigabytes per frame is slow but may be a clever local
 SSD sync to the main server could do the job to make the process faster?

  jb


  On 19 Mar 2015, at 12:56, Ciaran Moloney moloney.cia...@gmail.com
 wrote:

  I'm loving working with Houdini, but sometimes it's just frustratingly
 slow. Even with the new VDB tools, converting and caching everything out as
 volume fields is a real drag.
  But then again the caching workflow is super-slick. I shudder at the
 thought of all the time lost to the mysteries of ICE caching.

 On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 10:11 AM, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com wrote:

 I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might save
 the life of a fellow artist.

 So I spent the last year learning Maya

RE: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Andi Farhall]

to select an object in your scene, right click your item (in the explorer) and 
and choose select in scene
was all I needed to hear. 
...
http://www.hackneyeffects.com/https://vimeo.com/user4174293http://www.linkedin.com/pub/andi-farhall/b/496/b21

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lord_hackney/
http://spylon.tumblr.com/
This email and any attachments to it may be confidential and are intended 
solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed. Any views or 
opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily 
represent those of Hackney Effects Ltd.If you are not the intended recipient of 
this email, you must neither take any action based upon its contents, nor copy 
or show it to anyone.Please contact the sender if you believe you have received 
this email in error.

 Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2015 10:03:12 -0400
 Subject: Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini
 From: luceri...@gmail.com
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 
 On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 9:09 AM, Simon Reeves si...@simonreeves.com wrote:
  I've used it a decent amount as the guys at the foundation of our studio all
  use it, but I really dislike it (I used it years ago too before xsi) it is
  so dis-organised and slow, I think it breeds sloppy workflow with messy
  scenes in terms of scene organisation naming etc. XSI has explorer
  (amazing), maya has outliner (just about good enough) max has... a selection
  window? Rubbish.
 
 Max has Scene Explorer now, actually,
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9wtsmfmBLY
 
   But speaking of vray implementation, I have found it great in Maya compared
  with xsi where there were always wee irratations (mostly limited by porting
  it across from Max/Maya I think - not their fault)
 
  

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Mirko Jankovic]

ahhahaahhahaha

On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 3:51 PM, Andi Farhall hack...@outlook.com wrote:

 to select an object in your scene, right click your item (in the
 explorer) and and choose select in scene

 was all I needed to hear.

 ...
 http://www.hackneyeffects.com/
 https://vimeo.com/user4174293
 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/andi-farhall/b/496/b21


 http://www.flickr.com/photos/lord_hackney/
 http://spylon.tumblr.com/

 This email and any attachments to it may be confidential and are intended
 solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed. Any views or
 opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily
 represent those of Hackney Effects Ltd.

 If you are not the intended recipient of this email, you must neither take
 any action based upon its contents, nor copy or show it to anyone.

 Please contact the sender if you believe you have received this email in
 error.
 


  Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2015 10:03:12 -0400
  Subject: Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini
  From: luceri...@gmail.com
  To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com

 
  On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 9:09 AM, Simon Reeves si...@simonreeves.com
 wrote:
   I've used it a decent amount as the guys at the foundation of our
 studio all
   use it, but I really dislike it (I used it years ago too before xsi)
 it is
   so dis-organised and slow, I think it breeds sloppy workflow with messy
   scenes in terms of scene organisation naming etc. XSI has explorer
   (amazing), maya has outliner (just about good enough) max has... a
 selection
   window? Rubbish.
 
  Max has Scene Explorer now, actually,
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9wtsmfmBLY
 
   But speaking of vray implementation, I have found it great in Maya
 compared
   with xsi where there were always wee irratations (mostly limited by
 porting
   it across from Max/Maya I think - not their fault)
  

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Luc-Eric Rousseau]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 9:09 AM, Simon Reeves si...@simonreeves.com wrote:
 I've used it a decent amount as the guys at the foundation of our studio all
 use it, but I really dislike it (I used it years ago too before xsi) it is
 so dis-organised and slow, I think it breeds sloppy workflow with messy
 scenes in terms of scene organisation naming etc. XSI has explorer
 (amazing), maya has outliner (just about good enough) max has... a selection
 window? Rubbish.

Max has Scene Explorer now, actually,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9wtsmfmBLY

  But speaking of vray implementation, I have found it great in Maya compared
 with xsi where there were always wee irratations (mostly limited by porting
 it across from Max/Maya I think - not their fault)

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Gerbrand Nel]

Personally I'm not changing stuff (partly because you can't change the 
things I would want tot change in Houdini)
For me this is a pretty big commitment. I plan to go full-Houdini, so I 
will probably change my Maya and Soft, to work like Houdini, if I change 
anything.
It is hard enough to learn Houdini with tutorials from older versions.. 
I don't need keyboard discrepancies to make this harder than it needs to 
be :)

G
On 22/03/2015 05:33, Manuel Huertas Marchena wrote:
I am wondering if any of you guys using houdini would advice against 
changing some houdini hotkeys to speed up workflow ?
 when I use either xsi or maya, I have a set of keyboard shortcuts 
that help me go faster when modeling (without clicking every time on a 
menu, hotbox, icon... etc)
 I like using hotkeys because for me its faster and I have optimized 
my workflow in that manner, so I rarely rely on any button on the 
modeling side of things. I know this is counter productive for other 
stuff... (like when a td comes to help you and does not understand 
your setup... yes admit that is somehow annoying sometimes!). But for 
me the pros overcome by far the cons,
at least in my experience. So as I am new to houdini and learning its 
polymodeling tools, I can t help but notice that going to click 
buttons on the polygon tab is slowing me down.
I do like the tab menu, but even that is slower than simply using 
hotkeys (ex: insert edge loop, bridge, extrude, bevel...etc etc) . I 
dont mind clicking for anything else, but I do for modeling.
 so if any of you has an opinion on this, I ll like to know what you 
think ... (as I ll eventually like to learn other parts of 
houdini...for..  fx, sims..  I ll like to know if this will have some
considerable impact on productivity, or is it something I can probably 
live with, like I do with maya  xsi...


 thanks!


-Manu




IMDB http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4755969/| Portfolio 
http://envmanu.comhttp://envmanu.carbonmade.com/| Vimeo 
http://vimeo.com/manuelhuertasmarchena| Linkedin 
http://www.linkedin.com/in/manuelhuertas




From: moloney.cia...@gmail.com
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2015 13:44:49 +
Subject: Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com

Network and hardware are fastest I've used. It's just the nature of 
the work.
Volume data in my case is not very large, only a few Mb per frame. 
But, e.g. to make useful collision fields from complex geometry often 
requires a good bit of SOPs pre-processing. I get the impression that 
much of SOPs is still not especially multithreaded.
DOPs is also very slow vs solvers of comparable classes (FumeFX, 
Exocortex's Bullet, nCloth). But, that's generally OK since you can do 
so much, much more with DOPs with a very low chance of things failing 
apart as you scale up.


On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 1:09 PM, Jordi Bares Dominguez 
jordiba...@gmail.com mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:


Is this processing time or hardware time? (disks, network, etc..)

Of course saving gigabytes per frame is slow but may be a clever
local SSD sync to the main server could do the job to make the
process faster?

jb


On 19 Mar 2015, at 12:56, Ciaran Moloney
moloney.cia...@gmail.com mailto:moloney.cia...@gmail.com
wrote:

I'm loving working with Houdini, but sometimes it's just
frustratingly slow. Even with the new VDB tools, converting
and caching everything out as volume fields is a real drag.
But then again the caching workflow is super-slick. I shudder
at the thought of all the time lost to the mysteries of ICE
caching.

On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 10:11 AM, Gerbrand Nel
nagv...@gmail.com mailto:nagv...@gmail.com wrote:

I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except
knowing I might save the life of a fellow artist.

So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point
where I can compete against people straight out of collage.
This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced
softimage artists here in South Africa.
At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if
it all has to happen in maya for me.
My brain doesn't work the way maya works.
I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I
have to do now, just in case the director asks for
something in 2 weeks from now, lead to allot of back tracking.

At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of
the price tag of Houdini FX.
It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger
projects if I was one, of only a few houdini artists around.
Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified
these concerns.

The perceived

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Demian Kurejwowski]

you can use old tutorials,  the nodes are the same,   the interface might look 
a Little bit different,   but the nodes have the same functionality.   we still 
look at some old tutorials from version 8 =).  Sesi  just keep adding new 
nodes. but you will find that every one use mostly the same basic ones,  and 
every now and then a new one to finish the combo =).    


 El Lunes, 23 de marzo, 2015 1:02:20, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com 
escribió:
   

  Personally I'm not changing stuff (partly because you can't change the things 
I would want tot change in Houdini)
 For me this is a pretty big commitment. I plan to go full-Houdini, so I will 
probably change my Maya and Soft, to work like Houdini, if I change anything.
 It is hard enough to learn Houdini with tutorials from older versions.. I 
don't need keyboard discrepancies to make this harder than it needs to be :)
 G
 On 22/03/2015 05:33, Manuel Huertas Marchena wrote:
  
 #yiv8793138488 #yiv8793138488 --.yiv8793138488hmmessage 
P{margin:0px;padding:0px;}#yiv8793138488 
body.yiv8793138488hmmessage{font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri;}#yiv8793138488  
I am wondering if any of you guys using houdini would advice against changing 
some houdini hotkeys to speed up workflow ?
  when I use either xsi or maya, I have a set of keyboard shortcuts that help 
me go faster when modeling (without clicking every time on a menu, hotbox, 
icon... etc)
  I like using hotkeys because for me its faster and I have optimized my 
workflow in that manner, so I rarely rely on any button on the modeling side of 
things. I know this is counter productive for other stuff... (like when a td 
comes to help you and does not understand your setup... yes admit that is 
somehow annoying sometimes!). But for me the pros overcome by far the cons,
 at least in my experience. So as I am new to houdini and learning its 
polymodeling tools, I can t help but notice that going to click buttons on the 
polygon tab is slowing me down. 
 I do like the tab menu, but even that is slower than simply using hotkeys 
(ex: insert edge loop, bridge, extrude, bevel...etc etc) . I dont mind clicking 
for anything else, but I do for modeling.
  so if any of you has an opinion on this, I ll like to know what you think ... 
(as I ll eventually like to learn other parts of houdini...for..  fx, sims..  I 
ll like to know if this will have some 
 considerable impact on productivity, or is it something I can probably live 
with, like I do with maya  xsi...
 
  thanks!
 
 
 -Manu
 
 
 
 
 IMDB | Portfolio | Vimeo | Linkedin
 
 
  From: moloney.cia...@gmail.com
 Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2015 13:44:49 +
 Subject: Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 
  Network and hardware are fastest I've used. It's just the nature of the work.
 Volume data in my case is not very large, only a few Mb per frame. But, e.g. 
to make useful collision fields from complex geometry often requires a good bit 
of SOPs pre-processing. I get the impression that much of SOPs is still not 
especially multithreaded.
  DOPs is also very slow vs solvers of comparable classes (FumeFX, Exocortex's 
Bullet, nCloth). But, that's generally OK since you can do so much, much more 
with DOPs with a very low chance of things failing apart as you scale up.
  
 On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 1:09 PM, Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com 
wrote:
 
 Is this processing time or hardware time? (disks, network, etc..) 
  Of course saving gigabytes per frame is slow but may be a clever local SSD 
sync to the main server could do the job to make the process faster?  
  jb   
  
  
 On 19 Mar 2015, at 12:56, Ciaran Moloney moloney.cia...@gmail.com wrote: 
   I'm loving working with Houdini, but sometimes it's just frustratingly slow. 
Even with the new VDB tools,  converting and caching everything out as volume 
fields is a real drag.
  But then again the caching workflow is super-slick. I shudder at the thought 
of all the time lost to the mysteries of ICE caching.
  
 On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 10:11 AM, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com wrote:
 
I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might save  the 
life of a fellow artist.
 
 So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can compete 
against people straight out of collage.
 This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage artists 
here in South Africa.
 At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has to  
happen in maya for me.
 My brain doesn't work the way maya works.
 I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do now,  just 
in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, lead to allot of 
back tracking.
 
 At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price tag of 
Houdini FX.
 It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I was  one, 
of only a few houdini artists around.
 Houdini indie

RE: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Manuel Huertas Marchena]

I am wondering if any of you guys using houdini would advice against changing 
some houdini hotkeys to speed up workflow ?
 when I use either xsi or maya, I have a set of keyboard shortcuts that help me 
go faster when modeling (without clicking every time on a menu, hotbox, icon... 
etc)
 I like using hotkeys because for me its faster and I have optimized my 
workflow in that manner, so I rarely rely on any button on the modeling side of 
things. I know this is counter productive for other stuff... (like when a td 
comes to help you and does not understand your setup... yes admit that is 
somehow annoying sometimes!). But for me the pros overcome by far the cons,
at least in my experience. So as I am new to houdini and learning its 
polymodeling tools, I can t help but notice that going to click buttons on the 
polygon tab is slowing me down. 
I do like the tab menu, but even that is slower than simply using hotkeys 
(ex: insert edge loop, bridge, extrude, bevel...etc etc) . I dont mind clicking 
for anything else, but I do for modeling.
 so if any of you has an opinion on this, I ll like to know what you think ... 
(as I ll eventually like to learn other parts of houdini...for..  fx, sims..  I 
ll like to know if this will have some 
considerable impact on productivity, or is it something I can probably live 
with, like I do with maya  xsi...

 thanks!


-Manu




IMDB | Portfolio | Vimeo
| Linkedin


From: moloney.cia...@gmail.com
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2015 13:44:49 +
Subject: Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com

Network and hardware are fastest I've used. It's just the nature of the work.
Volume data in my case is not very large, only a few Mb per frame. But, e.g. to 
make useful collision fields from complex geometry often requires a good bit of 
SOPs pre-processing. I get the impression that much of SOPs is still not 
especially multithreaded.
DOPs is also very slow vs solvers of comparable classes (FumeFX, Exocortex's 
Bullet, nCloth). But, that's generally OK since you can do so much, much more 
with DOPs with a very low chance of things failing apart as you scale up.

On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 1:09 PM, Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com 
wrote:
Is this processing time or hardware time? (disks, network, etc..)
Of course saving gigabytes per frame is slow but may be a clever local SSD sync 
to the main server could do the job to make the process faster?
jb

On 19 Mar 2015, at 12:56, Ciaran Moloney moloney.cia...@gmail.com wrote:
I'm loving working with Houdini, but sometimes it's just frustratingly slow. 
Even with the new VDB tools, converting and caching everything out as volume 
fields is a real drag.
But then again the caching workflow is super-slick. I shudder at the thought of 
all the time lost to the mysteries of ICE caching.

On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 10:11 AM, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might save the 
life of a fellow artist.



So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can compete 
against people straight out of collage.

This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage artists 
here in South Africa.

At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has to happen 
in maya for me.

My brain doesn't work the way maya works.

I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do now, just 
in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, lead to allot of 
back tracking.



At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price tag of 
Houdini FX.

It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I was one, 
of only a few houdini artists around.

Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these concerns.



The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a concern to me.



I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with it, than I can 
with Maya after a year.

The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package works as 
one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing something new is fun 
and pretty easy.



This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non 
destructive open work flow.

So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the whole 
there is a script for that mentality... there is a sop for that



G





  

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Ciaran Moloney]

I'm loving working with Houdini, but sometimes it's just frustratingly
slow. Even with the new VDB tools, converting and caching everything out as
volume fields is a real drag.
But then again the caching workflow is super-slick. I shudder at the
thought of all the time lost to the mysteries of ICE caching.

On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 10:11 AM, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com wrote:

 I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might save
 the life of a fellow artist.

 So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can
 compete against people straight out of collage.
 This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage
 artists here in South Africa.
 At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has to
 happen in maya for me.
 My brain doesn't work the way maya works.
 I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do now,
 just in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, lead to
 allot of back tracking.

 At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price tag of
 Houdini FX.
 It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I was
 one, of only a few houdini artists around.
 Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these concerns.

 The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a concern to me.

 I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with it, than I
 can with Maya after a year.
 The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package works
 as one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing something new
 is fun and pretty easy.

 This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non
 destructive open work flow.
 So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the whole
 there is a script for that mentality... there is a sop for that

 G

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Demian Kurejwowski]

before saying slow or fast regarding volumes or vdb we have to talk about the 
resolution of the volumen, and the amount of fields involve. 
same with DOPs , after mentioning ALL the plugings, dops can interact with all 
the solver at once,  that means will take in consideration, RBD, with liquids 
with gases, with wire etc... all togheter at the same time,  instead having to 
do one, cache it, run sim with other plugin, and repeat.lj (also is cheaper  to 
get houdini than get all the addons/plugs etc... apart)  in advantage you get 
great support instead of getting the general  we dont support that because you 
are using it with another pluging that its not ours. 


 El Jueves, 19 de marzo, 2015 8:45:56, Ciaran Moloney 
moloney.cia...@gmail.com escribió:
   

 Network and hardware are fastest I've used. It's just the nature of the work.
Volume data in my case is not very large, only a few Mb per frame. But, e.g. to 
make useful collision fields from complex geometry often requires a good bit of 
SOPs pre-processing. I get the impression that much of SOPs is still not 
especially multithreaded.
DOPs is also very slow vs solvers of comparable classes (FumeFX, Exocortex's 
Bullet, nCloth). But, that's generally OK since you can do so much, much more 
with DOPs with a very low chance of things failing apart as you scale up.

On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 1:09 PM, Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com 
wrote:

Is this processing time or hardware time? (disks, network, etc..)
Of course saving gigabytes per frame is slow but may be a clever local SSD sync 
to the main server could do the job to make the process faster?
jb


On 19 Mar 2015, at 12:56, Ciaran Moloney moloney.cia...@gmail.com wrote:
I'm loving working with Houdini, but sometimes it's just frustratingly slow. 
Even with the new VDB tools, converting and caching everything out as volume 
fields is a real drag.
But then again the caching workflow is super-slick. I shudder at the thought of 
all the time lost to the mysteries of ICE caching.

On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 10:11 AM, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com wrote:

I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might save the 
life of a fellow artist.

So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can compete 
against people straight out of collage.
This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage artists 
here in South Africa.
At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has to happen 
in maya for me.
My brain doesn't work the way maya works.
I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do now, just 
in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, lead to allot of 
back tracking.

At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price tag of 
Houdini FX.
It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I was one, 
of only a few houdini artists around.
Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these concerns.

The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a concern to me.

I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with it, than I can 
with Maya after a year.
The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package works as 
one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing something new is fun 
and pretty easy.

This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non 
destructive open work flow.
So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the whole 
there is a script for that mentality... there is a sop for that

G








  

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

Is this processing time or hardware time? (disks, network, etc..)

Of course saving gigabytes per frame is slow but may be a clever local SSD sync 
to the main server could do the job to make the process faster?

jb


 On 19 Mar 2015, at 12:56, Ciaran Moloney moloney.cia...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 I'm loving working with Houdini, but sometimes it's just frustratingly slow. 
 Even with the new VDB tools, converting and caching everything out as volume 
 fields is a real drag.
 But then again the caching workflow is super-slick. I shudder at the thought 
 of all the time lost to the mysteries of ICE caching.
 
 On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 10:11 AM, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com 
 mailto:nagv...@gmail.com wrote:
 I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might save the 
 life of a fellow artist.
 
 So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can 
 compete against people straight out of collage.
 This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage artists 
 here in South Africa.
 At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has to 
 happen in maya for me.
 My brain doesn't work the way maya works.
 I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do now, just 
 in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, lead to allot of 
 back tracking.
 
 At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price tag of 
 Houdini FX.
 It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I was one, 
 of only a few houdini artists around.
 Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these concerns.
 
 The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a concern to me.
 
 I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with it, than I 
 can with Maya after a year.
 The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package works as 
 one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing something new is 
 fun and pretty easy.
 
 This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non 
 destructive open work flow.
 So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the whole 
 there is a script for that mentality... there is a sop for that
 
 G
 

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Ciaran Moloney]

Network and hardware are fastest I've used. It's just the nature of the
work.
Volume data in my case is not very large, only a few Mb per frame. But,
e.g. to make useful collision fields from complex geometry often requires a
good bit of SOPs pre-processing. I get the impression that much of SOPs is
still not especially multithreaded.
DOPs is also very slow vs solvers of comparable classes (FumeFX,
Exocortex's Bullet, nCloth). But, that's generally OK since you can do so
much, much more with DOPs with a very low chance of things failing apart as
you scale up.

On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 1:09 PM, Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 Is this processing time or hardware time? (disks, network, etc..)

 Of course saving gigabytes per frame is slow but may be a clever local SSD
 sync to the main server could do the job to make the process faster?

 jb


 On 19 Mar 2015, at 12:56, Ciaran Moloney moloney.cia...@gmail.com wrote:

 I'm loving working with Houdini, but sometimes it's just frustratingly
 slow. Even with the new VDB tools, converting and caching everything out as
 volume fields is a real drag.
 But then again the caching workflow is super-slick. I shudder at the
 thought of all the time lost to the mysteries of ICE caching.

 On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 10:11 AM, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com wrote:

 I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might save
 the life of a fellow artist.

 So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can
 compete against people straight out of collage.
 This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage
 artists here in South Africa.
 At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has to
 happen in maya for me.
 My brain doesn't work the way maya works.
 I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do now,
 just in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, lead to
 allot of back tracking.

 At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price tag of
 Houdini FX.
 It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I was
 one, of only a few houdini artists around.
 Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these concerns.

 The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a concern to me.

 I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with it, than
 I can with Maya after a year.
 The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package works
 as one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing something new
 is fun and pretty easy.

 This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non
 destructive open work flow.
 So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the whole
 there is a script for that mentality... there is a sop for that

 G

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Leendert A. Hartog]

Gerbrand Nel schreef op 17-3-2015 om 11:11:
I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might 
save the life of a fellow artist.


So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can 
compete against people straight out of collage.
This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage 
artists here in South Africa.


Not wanting to sound cynical here, as this is a serious question, but 
does the setback after years of expertise in Softimage to a more 
beginner level in other software get even more profound when dealing 
with Houdini? Learning Houdini seems, especially from a Softimage POV, 
way more palatable, but mastering it would seem to be a different story 
altogether.


Greetz
Leendert

--

Leendert A. Hartog AKA Hirazi Blue
Administrator NOT the owner of si-community.com

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Ognjen Vukovic]

I think Houdini is the next logical step for most Si users, going back to
Maya just made me go numb and lethargic for the entirety of the last
project i worked on. But i did have a chance to do a couple of days work in
Houdini and i have to say, until they get the viewport working perfectly
its going to have to wait it out a bit. Things were disappearing left and
right, wire-frame shading appearing randomly on objects, flickering,
glitching. It was chaos.  I did get the scene passed on to me. So it could
have been the guy that created the scene, but when i approached him on the
topic he just told me to  ignore it

I dont know if Houdini has fixed this in 14, they claim the view port is
much better, but i still haven't seen it in action so im a bit ignorant on
that.

On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 6:02 AM, Demian Kurejwowski demianpe...@yahoo.com
wrote:

 houdini never change hands like other software that several companies own
 them, / change developers etc.. etc..



   El Martes, 17 de marzo, 2015 18:51:44, Adam Sale adamfs...@gmail.com
 escribió:


 Thanks for that Gerbrand. I had started dabbling with Houdini over the
 spring and summer before the start of our new school year in September. My
 experiences with it were very positive, and I was having fun learning it.
 It made sense after a couple weeks mucking around with it. In the end I
 went with maya for our Fx and rigging courses based on the fact I had
 marginal experience with Maya over a number of years prior. So far I am ok
 with Maya for rigging, and skeletal work, but deformation is really
 frustrating as everyone else here has contended.
 FX in general has not been a lot of fun in Maya either. The scale issue
 alone in Maya has taken at least a year or more off of my life.

 I am going to give Houdini another shot this coming spring when I have
 more downtime, as May just chokes on a lot of things I would like to do,
 most specifically with Fluids and Particles. I am still hopeful and waiting
 for Bifrost to be more than a great tool for simming water bodies.

 Irie,

 Adam



 On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 3:55 PM, Raffaele Fragapane 
 raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:

 For anybody following this who's still on the fence let me put it simply:
 If you're used to XSI, and you have to do deformation work with Maya's OOTB
 toolset you either are insane, or about to go insane very quickly.

 Rig authoring and animation are mostly fine, but when it comes to
 deformation there is very, very little in Maya out of the box, and what is
 there is supported by tools and workflow that will age you a year in a
 month of use; when they don't break they are still painful, and it's not
 very often that they don't break.

 If you have to do it, and are proficient enough to clobber deformers and
 some helper tools together but not enough to write C++ close enough to the
 metal for it to perform, start learning Fabric. In fact, start learning
 Fabric anyway if you do rigging.
 If you have to do it, and are more of the artistic persuasion, see if you
 can change your role to something else, anything between animation and
 potato farming will do, and have the company hire someone who only worked
 in Maya before for that kind of work and is therefore unaware of how much
 pain he's in.


 On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 8:07 AM, Manuel Huertas Marchena 
 lito...@hotmail.com wrote:

 Curiously I ve been reading the transition guides you kindly wrote lately,
 thanks Jordi!
  I am sure that Houdini provides the scalability and resources to be an
 end to end solution.  But for the time being that
 decision is not up to me. At AF we have a katana(vray)  maya pipe.
 Houdini is used for hero fx stuff. Its on my plans to
 try and create a production ready asset to show production (once I figure
 out how to create something actually useful!)
  and only then see the plausibility of using Houdini for environment work
 (as an additional tool... who knows then..). As this concept is still a
 bit new (although I know its not the case...)  I have not seen much cg
 environment pipelines based on this software if at all. The only case I am
 aware is rising sun pictures... but I dont know someone there atm. I ve
 seen houdini used in videogames environments... but dont have much examples
 of that for film (not talking about fx of course), I am guessing that the
 main idea is somehow similar... *?*!

 cheers


 -Manu



 IMDB http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4755969/ | Portfolio
 http://envmanu.com/ http://envmanu.carbonmade.com/| Vimeo
 http://vimeo.com/manuelhuertasmarchena | Linkedin
 http://www.linkedin.com/in/manuelhuertas


 --
 From: byronn...@gmail.com
 Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2015 16:14:34 -0400
 Subject: Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com


 How are you finding your new found Houdini knowledge to be fitting into
 the needs of the marketplace? Are there many shops adopting it? Or are you
 a lone wolf or able

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Francois Lord]

If you are a Softimage power user, it will take a lot of time to get 
back to that level in Houdini. However, you don't need to be a Houdini 
power user to use Houdini. Learn the basics (basic modeling, basic UVs, 
basinc animation, etc) and then choose an area where you want to dive 
first. Most people choose simulation because it's where Houdini really 
excels, but you don't have to do like everyone. If you choose lookdev, 
you will quickly realize that Mantra is very much like Arnold. You end 
up being up and running very quickly, and can work on production shots.


Houdini is a lot more fun to learn and work with than all the rumors I 
heard about it over the years. And no, it's not just for technical people.


On 18-Mar-15 08:51, Leendert A. Hartog wrote:
I might have quoted too much in my previous post. The idea that you're 
thrown back to (almost) entry-level skill set, competing against 
people straight out of collage is a plight,
one would imagine, every Softimage user will have to suffer as it 
takes time to get back on track (on a serious level with new 
software regardless of which software he or she choses.
I just expressed my concerns that in the end this wouldn't take any 
less long with Houdini (although the ride would undoubtedly be more 
enjoyable, one would think).

And the sentiments towards Autodesk go without saying, I guess... ;)

Greetz
Leendert

Gerbrand Nel schreef op 18-3-2015 om 13:23:
and got to a point where I can compete against people straight out of 
collage.

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Byron Nash]

Does Redshift have any plans for Houdini? Have you all found there are many
opportunities for remote Houdini work? I wonder since it's a smaller market
share that the competent artists may be able to negotiate better
circumstances like remote or better pay?

On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 9:54 AM, Francois Lord flordli...@gmail.com wrote:

 If you are a Softimage power user, it will take a lot of time to get back
 to that level in Houdini. However, you don't need to be a Houdini power
 user to use Houdini. Learn the basics (basic modeling, basic UVs, basinc
 animation, etc) and then choose an area where you want to dive first. Most
 people choose simulation because it's where Houdini really excels, but you
 don't have to do like everyone. If you choose lookdev, you will quickly
 realize that Mantra is very much like Arnold. You end up being up and
 running very quickly, and can work on production shots.

 Houdini is a lot more fun to learn and work with than all the rumors I
 heard about it over the years. And no, it's not just for technical people.


 On 18-Mar-15 08:51, Leendert A. Hartog wrote:

 I might have quoted too much in my previous post. The idea that you're
 thrown back to (almost) entry-level skill set, competing against people
 straight out of collage is a plight,
 one would imagine, every Softimage user will have to suffer as it takes
 time to get back on track (on a serious level with new software
 regardless of which software he or she choses.
 I just expressed my concerns that in the end this wouldn't take any
 less long with Houdini (although the ride would undoubtedly be more
 enjoyable, one would think).
 And the sentiments towards Autodesk go without saying, I guess... ;)

 Greetz
 Leendert

 Gerbrand Nel schreef op 18-3-2015 om 13:23:

 and got to a point where I can compete against people straight out of
 collage.

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

I agree with Francois, little steps, start with the simple stuff, from 
modelling and animation, rigging (SOPs specially) and lighting, then move into 
VEX and VFX also in chunks, fluids, pyro, then particles and last DOPs 
(dynamics) which is where the meat is.

With regards with Redshift, I really hope so.

Regarding freelance work... you will have less competition for a high end 
market that is desperate for talent. How does it sound?

;)

jb


 On 18 Mar 2015, at 14:37, Byron Nash byronn...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 Does Redshift have any plans for Houdini? Have you all found there are many 
 opportunities for remote Houdini work? I wonder since it's a smaller market 
 share that the competent artists may be able to negotiate better 
 circumstances like remote or better pay? 
 
 On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 9:54 AM, Francois Lord flordli...@gmail.com 
 mailto:flordli...@gmail.com wrote:
 If you are a Softimage power user, it will take a lot of time to get back to 
 that level in Houdini. However, you don't need to be a Houdini power user to 
 use Houdini. Learn the basics (basic modeling, basic UVs, basinc animation, 
 etc) and then choose an area where you want to dive first. Most people choose 
 simulation because it's where Houdini really excels, but you don't have to do 
 like everyone. If you choose lookdev, you will quickly realize that Mantra is 
 very much like Arnold. You end up being up and running very quickly, and can 
 work on production shots.
 
 Houdini is a lot more fun to learn and work with than all the rumors I heard 
 about it over the years. And no, it's not just for technical people.
 
 
 On 18-Mar-15 08:51, Leendert A. Hartog wrote:
 I might have quoted too much in my previous post. The idea that you're thrown 
 back to (almost) entry-level skill set, competing against people straight 
 out of collage is a plight,
 one would imagine, every Softimage user will have to suffer as it takes time 
 to get back on track (on a serious level with new software regardless of 
 which software he or she choses.
 I just expressed my concerns that in the end this wouldn't take any less 
 long with Houdini (although the ride would undoubtedly be more enjoyable, 
 one would think).
 And the sentiments towards Autodesk go without saying, I guess... ;)
 
 Greetz
 Leendert
 
 Gerbrand Nel schreef op 18-3-2015 om 13:23:
 and got to a point where I can compete against people straight out of collage.
 
 
 

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Byron Nash]

Like a dream Jordi. :-)

On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 12:13 PM, Jordi Bares Dominguez 
jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:

 I agree with Francois, little steps, start with the simple stuff, from
 modelling and animation, rigging (SOPs specially) and lighting, then move
 into VEX and VFX also in chunks, fluids, pyro, then particles and last DOPs
 (dynamics) which is where the meat is.

 With regards with Redshift, I really hope so.

 Regarding freelance work... you will have less competition for a high end
 market that is desperate for talent. How does it sound?

 ;)

 jb


 On 18 Mar 2015, at 14:37, Byron Nash byronn...@gmail.com wrote:

 Does Redshift have any plans for Houdini? Have you all found there are
 many opportunities for remote Houdini work? I wonder since it's a smaller
 market share that the competent artists may be able to negotiate better
 circumstances like remote or better pay?

 On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 9:54 AM, Francois Lord flordli...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 If you are a Softimage power user, it will take a lot of time to get back
 to that level in Houdini. However, you don't need to be a Houdini power
 user to use Houdini. Learn the basics (basic modeling, basic UVs, basinc
 animation, etc) and then choose an area where you want to dive first. Most
 people choose simulation because it's where Houdini really excels, but you
 don't have to do like everyone. If you choose lookdev, you will quickly
 realize that Mantra is very much like Arnold. You end up being up and
 running very quickly, and can work on production shots.

 Houdini is a lot more fun to learn and work with than all the rumors I
 heard about it over the years. And no, it's not just for technical people.


 On 18-Mar-15 08:51, Leendert A. Hartog wrote:

 I might have quoted too much in my previous post. The idea that you're
 thrown back to (almost) entry-level skill set, competing against people
 straight out of collage is a plight,
 one would imagine, every Softimage user will have to suffer as it takes
 time to get back on track (on a serious level with new software
 regardless of which software he or she choses.
 I just expressed my concerns that in the end this wouldn't take any
 less long with Houdini (although the ride would undoubtedly be more
 enjoyable, one would think).
 And the sentiments towards Autodesk go without saying, I guess... ;)

 Greetz
 Leendert

 Gerbrand Nel schreef op 18-3-2015 om 13:23:

 and got to a point where I can compete against people straight out of
 collage.

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Demian Kurejwowski]

houdini never change hands like other software that several companies own them, 
/ change developers etc.. etc..   


 El Martes, 17 de marzo, 2015 18:51:44, Adam Sale adamfs...@gmail.com 
escribió:
   

 Thanks for that Gerbrand. I had started dabbling with Houdini over the spring 
and summer before the start of our new school year in September. My experiences 
with it were very positive, and I was having fun learning it. It made sense 
after a couple weeks mucking around with it. In the end I went with maya for 
our Fx and rigging courses based on the fact I had marginal experience with 
Maya over a number of years prior. So far I am ok with Maya for rigging, and 
skeletal work, but deformation is really frustrating as everyone else here has 
contended. FX in general has not been a lot of fun in Maya either. The scale 
issue alone in Maya has taken at least a year or more off of my life. 

I am going to give Houdini another shot this coming spring when I have more 
downtime, as May just chokes on a lot of things I would like to do, most 
specifically with Fluids and Particles. I am still hopeful and waiting for 
Bifrost to be more than a great tool for simming water bodies. 
Irie, 
Adam


On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 3:55 PM, Raffaele Fragapane 
raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:

For anybody following this who's still on the fence let me put it simply: If 
you're used to XSI, and you have to do deformation work with Maya's OOTB 
toolset you either are insane, or about to go insane very quickly.
Rig authoring and animation are mostly fine, but when it comes to deformation 
there is very, very little in Maya out of the box, and what is there is 
supported by tools and workflow that will age you a year in a month of use; 
when they don't break they are still painful, and it's not very often that they 
don't break.
If you have to do it, and are proficient enough to clobber deformers and some 
helper tools together but not enough to write C++ close enough to the metal for 
it to perform, start learning Fabric. In fact, start learning Fabric anyway if 
you do rigging.If you have to do it, and are more of the artistic persuasion, 
see if you can change your role to something else, anything between animation 
and potato farming will do, and have the company hire someone who only worked 
in Maya before for that kind of work and is therefore unaware of how much pain 
he's in.

On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 8:07 AM, Manuel Huertas Marchena lito...@hotmail.com 
wrote:

Curiously I ve been reading the transition guides you kindly wrote lately, 
thanks Jordi!  I am sure that Houdini provides the scalability and resources to 
be an end to end solution.  But for the time being thatdecision is not up to 
me. At AF we have a katana(vray)  maya pipe. Houdini is used for hero fx 
stuff. Its on my plans totry and create a production ready asset to show 
production (once I figure out how to create something actually useful!)  and 
only then see the plausibility of using Houdini for environment work (as an 
additional tool... who knows then..). As this concept is still a bit new 
(although I know its not the case...)  I have not seen much cg environment 
pipelines based on this software if at all. The only case I am aware is rising 
sun pictures... but I dont know someone there atm. I ve seen houdini used in 
videogames environments... but dont have much examples of that for film (not 
talking about fx of course), I am guessing that the main idea is somehow 
similar... ?!
cheers

-Manu


IMDB | Portfolio | Vimeo| Linkedin


From: byronn...@gmail.com
Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2015 16:14:34 -0400
Subject: Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com

How are you finding your new found Houdini knowledge to be fitting into the 
needs of the marketplace? Are there many shops adopting it? Or are you a lone 
wolf or able to turnkey shots for people? I too have found Maya unintuitive and 
uninspiring. Houdini looks interesting but I'm wary of jumping on something 
that I'll never get to use. Unlike many of you here, I am in a small market so 
there aren't many 3D jobs to go around.
On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 3:49 PM, Simon Reeves si...@simonreeves.com wrote:

I always worry that Houdini is not such a friendly app to be used as a 
'backbone' as you (Jordi) phrase it.But I'm basing that on the logic that most 
of our 3d artists will HAVE to use it, but that's not really the case... 
I've started to settle into the idea that maya is OK for being the base, (after 
some love) so perhaps this is the moment I need to give Houdini a proper look 
before I fall down into the abyss of Maya. 

On Tuesday, 17 March 2015, Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:

That certainly is a great approach but even better is if you go in the other 
direction, use Houdini as the backbone and render from 
Mantra/Arnold/Octane/PRMan/3Dlight/whatever as the FX live inside Houdini and 
therefore it is the natural backbone

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Byron Nash]

How are you finding your new found Houdini knowledge to be fitting into the
needs of the marketplace? Are there many shops adopting it? Or are you a
lone wolf or able to turnkey shots for people? I too have found Maya
unintuitive and uninspiring. Houdini looks interesting but I'm wary of
jumping on something that I'll never get to use. Unlike many of you here, I
am in a small market so there aren't many 3D jobs to go around.

On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 3:49 PM, Simon Reeves si...@simonreeves.com wrote:

 I always worry that Houdini is not such a friendly app to be used as
 a 'backbone' as you (Jordi) phrase it.
 But I'm basing that on the logic that most of our 3d artists will HAVE to
 use it, but that's not really the case...

 I've started to settle into the idea that maya is OK for being the
 base, (after some love) so perhaps this is the moment I need to give
 Houdini a proper look before I fall down into the abyss of Maya.


 On Tuesday, 17 March 2015, Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 That certainly is a great approach but even better is if you go in the
 other direction, use Houdini as the backbone and render from
 Mantra/Arnold/Octane/PRMan/3Dlight/whatever as the FX live inside Houdini
 and therefore it is the natural backbone.

 Ultimately you will be using a myriad of tools that will funnel “dumb”
 cached data (just baked geometry, particles with attributes and little
 more) to Houdini and from there you are free to assemble your scenes as you
 need to.

 Furthermore, if you need to scale you will find Houdini excels at that so
 imho it is a no brainer.

 hope it helps

 jb


 On 17 Mar 2015, at 18:15, Manuel Huertas Marchena lito...@hotmail.com
 wrote:

 I am wondering if any of you guys working in film use houdini for digital
 asset production, or is it still more of a fx tool for most part? (having
 said that I do realize that houdini is not and end to end solution or
 all kinds of assets, but still I feel that there is a lot of stuff that
 could/can be created using  a procedural approach,
 ex: buildings, concept modeling, snow, rocks, trees, props...etc..)




 --


 Simon Reeves
 London, UK
 *si...@simonreeves.com si...@simonreeves.com*
 *www.simonreeves.com http://www.simonreeves.com*
 *www.analogstudio.co.uk http://www.analogstudio.co.uk*

RE: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Manuel Huertas Marchena]

Curiously I ve been reading the transition guides you kindly wrote lately, 
thanks Jordi!  I am sure that Houdini provides the scalability and resources to 
be an end to end solution.  But for the time being thatdecision is not up to 
me. At AF we have a katana(vray)  maya pipe. Houdini is used for hero fx 
stuff. Its on my plans totry and create a production ready asset to show 
production (once I figure out how to create something actually useful!)  and 
only then see the plausibility of using Houdini for environment work (as an 
additional tool... who knows then..). As this concept is still a bit new 
(although I know its not the case...)  I have not seen much cg environment 
pipelines based on this software if at all. The only case I am aware is rising 
sun pictures... but I dont know someone there atm. I ve seen houdini used in 
videogames environments... but dont have much examples of that for film (not 
talking about fx of course), I am guessing that the main idea is somehow 
similar... ?!
cheers

-Manu


IMDB | Portfolio | Vimeo
| Linkedin


From: byronn...@gmail.com
Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2015 16:14:34 -0400
Subject: Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com

How are you finding your new found Houdini knowledge to be fitting into the 
needs of the marketplace? Are there many shops adopting it? Or are you a lone 
wolf or able to turnkey shots for people? I too have found Maya unintuitive and 
uninspiring. Houdini looks interesting but I'm wary of jumping on something 
that I'll never get to use. Unlike many of you here, I am in a small market so 
there aren't many 3D jobs to go around.
On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 3:49 PM, Simon Reeves si...@simonreeves.com wrote:
I always worry that Houdini is not such a friendly app to be used as a 
'backbone' as you (Jordi) phrase it.But I'm basing that on the logic that most 
of our 3d artists will HAVE to use it, but that's not really the case... 
I've started to settle into the idea that maya is OK for being the base, (after 
some love) so perhaps this is the moment I need to give Houdini a proper look 
before I fall down into the abyss of Maya. 

On Tuesday, 17 March 2015, Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com wrote:
That certainly is a great approach but even better is if you go in the other 
direction, use Houdini as the backbone and render from 
Mantra/Arnold/Octane/PRMan/3Dlight/whatever as the FX live inside Houdini and 
therefore it is the natural backbone.
Ultimately you will be using a myriad of tools that will funnel “dumb” cached 
data (just baked geometry, particles with attributes and little more) to 
Houdini and from there you are free to assemble your scenes as you need to.
Furthermore, if you need to scale you will find Houdini excels at that so imho 
it is a no brainer.
hope it helps
jb

On 17 Mar 2015, at 18:15, Manuel Huertas Marchena lito...@hotmail.com wrote:
I am wondering if any of you guys working in film use houdini for digital asset 
production, or is it still more of a fx tool for most part? (having said that I 
do realize that houdini is not and end to end solution or all kinds of assets, 
but still I feel that there is a lot of stuff that could/can be created using  
a procedural approach,ex: buildings, concept modeling, snow, rocks, trees, 
props...etc..)


-- 


Simon ReevesLondon, UK
si...@simonreeves.com
www.simonreeves.comwww.analogstudio.co.uk



  

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Simon Reeves]

Can I ask, what areas having you been using Maya/Houdini that spurred you
to make the post?

I've been using Maya for a couple of months for scene assembly/rendering,
(bringing in models/caches/assigning shaders/passes) so that's my only
experience.






Simon Reeves
London, UK
*si...@simonreeves.com si...@simonreeves.com*
*www.simonreeves.com http://www.simonreeves.com*
*www.analogstudio.co.uk http://www.analogstudio.co.uk*

On 17 March 2015 at 10:08, adrian wyer adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com
wrote:

 excellent closing quote, Side Effects should use that in their commercials!

 ...there's a SOP for that!

 a

 -Original Message-
 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Gerbrand Nel
 Sent: 17 March 2015 10:12
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 Subject: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

 I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might
 save the life of a fellow artist.

 So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can
 compete against people straight out of collage.
 This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage
 artists here in South Africa.
 At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has to
 happen in maya for me.
 My brain doesn't work the way maya works.
 I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do now,
 just in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, lead
 to allot of back tracking.

 At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price tag
 of Houdini FX.
 It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I was
 one, of only a few houdini artists around.
 Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these concerns.

 The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a concern to me.

 I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with it, than
 I can with Maya after a year.
 The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package
 works as one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing
 something new is fun and pretty easy.

 This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non
 destructive open work flow.
 So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the
 whole there is a script for that mentality... there is a sop for that

 G

RE: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[adrian wyer]

excellent closing quote, Side Effects should use that in their commercials!

...there's a SOP for that!

a

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Gerbrand Nel
Sent: 17 March 2015 10:12
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might 
save the life of a fellow artist.

So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can 
compete against people straight out of collage.
This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage 
artists here in South Africa.
At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has to 
happen in maya for me.
My brain doesn't work the way maya works.
I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do now, 
just in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, lead 
to allot of back tracking.

At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price tag 
of Houdini FX.
It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I was 
one, of only a few houdini artists around.
Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these concerns.

The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a concern to me.

I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with it, than 
I can with Maya after a year.
The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package 
works as one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing 
something new is fun and pretty easy.

This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non 
destructive open work flow.
So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the 
whole there is a script for that mentality... there is a sop for that

G

Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Gerbrand Nel]

I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might 
save the life of a fellow artist.


So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can 
compete against people straight out of collage.
This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage 
artists here in South Africa.
At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has to 
happen in maya for me.

My brain doesn't work the way maya works.
I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do now, 
just in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, lead 
to allot of back tracking.


At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price tag 
of Houdini FX.
It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I was 
one, of only a few houdini artists around.

Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these concerns.

The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a concern to me.

I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with it, than 
I can with Maya after a year.
The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package 
works as one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing 
something new is fun and pretty easy.


This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non 
destructive open work flow.
So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the 
whole there is a script for that mentality... there is a sop for that


G

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Meng-Yang Lu]

What a beautiful post and watching out for your fellow artists.

On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 3:11 AM, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com wrote:

 I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might save
 the life of a fellow artist.

 So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can
 compete against people straight out of collage.
 This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage
 artists here in South Africa.
 At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has to
 happen in maya for me.
 My brain doesn't work the way maya works.
 I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do now,
 just in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, lead to
 allot of back tracking.

 At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price tag of
 Houdini FX.
 It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I was
 one, of only a few houdini artists around.
 Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these concerns.

 The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a concern to me.

 I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with it, than I
 can with Maya after a year.
 The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package works
 as one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing something new
 is fun and pretty easy.

 This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non
 destructive open work flow.
 So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the whole
 there is a script for that mentality... there is a sop for that

 G

RE: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Andi Farhall]

no need to get all soppy

...
http://www.hackneyeffects.com/https://vimeo.com/user4174293http://www.linkedin.com/pub/andi-farhall/b/496/b21

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lord_hackney/
http://spylon.tumblr.com/
This email and any attachments to it may be confidential and are intended 
solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed. Any views or 
opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily 
represent those of Hackney Effects Ltd.If you are not the intended recipient of 
this email, you must neither take any action based upon its contents, nor copy 
or show it to anyone.Please contact the sender if you believe you have received 
this email in error.

Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2015 10:51:21 -0700
Subject: Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini
From: ntmon...@gmail.com
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com

What a beautiful post and watching out for your fellow artists.  
On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 3:11 AM, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might save the 
life of a fellow artist.



So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can compete 
against people straight out of collage.

This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage artists 
here in South Africa.

At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has to happen 
in maya for me.

My brain doesn't work the way maya works.

I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do now, just 
in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, lead to allot of 
back tracking.



At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price tag of 
Houdini FX.

It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I was one, 
of only a few houdini artists around.

Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these concerns.



The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a concern to me.



I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with it, than I can 
with Maya after a year.

The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package works as 
one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing something new is fun 
and pretty easy.



This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non 
destructive open work flow.

So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the whole 
there is a script for that mentality... there is a sop for that



G


  

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Dan Yargici]

I'm about to throw myself at Houdini so this is great to hear.  Thanks
Gerbrand!

DAN


On 17 Mar 2015 12:12, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com wrote:

 I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might save
 the life of a fellow artist.

 So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can
 compete against people straight out of collage.
 This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage
 artists here in South Africa.
 At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has to
 happen in maya for me.
 My brain doesn't work the way maya works.
 I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do now,
 just in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, lead to
 allot of back tracking.

 At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price tag of
 Houdini FX.
 It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I was
 one, of only a few houdini artists around.
 Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these concerns.

 The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a concern to me.

 I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with it, than I
 can with Maya after a year.
 The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package works
 as one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing something new
 is fun and pretty easy.

 This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non
 destructive open work flow.
 So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the whole
 there is a script for that mentality... there is a sop for that

 G

RE: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Manuel Huertas Marchena]

Hi Gerbrand, 
I understand you well! I recently started learning houdini myself. After quite 
a bit of meditation and evaluating other options,and although everyone around 
told me that the learning curve was steep, I d decided to give it a try 
anyway..Its been only 2 months for me using houdini, mostly doing personal RD 
stuff, and no production work with this software yet.I am more focused on 
lookdev/lighting and cg environments, so for me the particular interest I have 
in houdini (at the moment)is to build procedural assets that I can bring into 
production (..maya) and that other artists or myself can tweak/modify on the 
fly. I am of course talking about houdini digital assets. I am also interested 
in smart scatting methods or any thing that can be usefulwhen creating cg 
environments and can be kept in procedural way, as long as the end result 
allows such method to be part of.
  Talking about houdini itself, I find quite surprising how quickly many things 
make sense. The sop workflow is simply awesome!  ...also just digging insidethe 
mantra surface and seeing how things are working behind curtains is great! The 
more I dig on houdini, I also realize that expressions play a big role on many 
things, so I am trying to familiarize myself with them! I am wondering if any 
of you guys working in film use houdini for digital asset production, or is it 
still more of a fx tool for most part? (having said that I do realize that 
houdini is not and end to end solution or all kinds of assets, but still I feel 
that there is a lot of stuff that could/can be created using  a procedural 
approach,ex: buildings, concept modeling, snow, rocks, trees, props...etc..)  
cheers


-Manu


IMDB | Portfolio | Vimeo
| Linkedin


Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2015 10:51:21 -0700
Subject: Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini
From: ntmon...@gmail.com
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com

What a beautiful post and watching out for your fellow artists.  
On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 3:11 AM, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might save the 
life of a fellow artist.



So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can compete 
against people straight out of collage.

This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage artists 
here in South Africa.

At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has to happen 
in maya for me.

My brain doesn't work the way maya works.

I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do now, just 
in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, lead to allot of 
back tracking.



At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price tag of 
Houdini FX.

It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I was one, 
of only a few houdini artists around.

Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these concerns.



The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a concern to me.



I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with it, than I can 
with Maya after a year.

The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package works as 
one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing something new is fun 
and pretty easy.



This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non 
destructive open work flow.

So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the whole 
there is a script for that mentality... there is a sop for that



G


  

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Jordi Bares Dominguez]

That certainly is a great approach but even better is if you go in the other 
direction, use Houdini as the backbone and render from 
Mantra/Arnold/Octane/PRMan/3Dlight/whatever as the FX live inside Houdini and 
therefore it is the natural backbone.

Ultimately you will be using a myriad of tools that will funnel “dumb” cached 
data (just baked geometry, particles with attributes and little more) to 
Houdini and from there you are free to assemble your scenes as you need to.

Furthermore, if you need to scale you will find Houdini excels at that so imho 
it is a no brainer.

hope it helps

jb


 On 17 Mar 2015, at 18:15, Manuel Huertas Marchena lito...@hotmail.com wrote:
 
 I am wondering if any of you guys working in film use houdini for digital 
 asset production, or is it still more of a fx tool for most part? (having 
 said that I do realize that houdini is not and end to end solution or all 
 kinds of assets, but still I feel that there is a lot of stuff that could/can 
 be created using  a procedural approach,
 ex: buildings, concept modeling, snow, rocks, trees, props...etc..)

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Adam Sale]

Thanks for that Gerbrand. I had started dabbling with Houdini over the
spring and summer before the start of our new school year in September. My
experiences with it were very positive, and I was having fun learning it.
It made sense after a couple weeks mucking around with it. In the end I
went with maya for our Fx and rigging courses based on the fact I had
marginal experience with Maya over a number of years prior. So far I am ok
with Maya for rigging, and skeletal work, but deformation is really
frustrating as everyone else here has contended.
FX in general has not been a lot of fun in Maya either. The scale issue
alone in Maya has taken at least a year or more off of my life.

I am going to give Houdini another shot this coming spring when I have more
downtime, as May just chokes on a lot of things I would like to do, most
specifically with Fluids and Particles. I am still hopeful and waiting for
Bifrost to be more than a great tool for simming water bodies.

Irie,

Adam



On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 3:55 PM, Raffaele Fragapane 
raffsxsil...@googlemail.com wrote:

 For anybody following this who's still on the fence let me put it simply:
 If you're used to XSI, and you have to do deformation work with Maya's OOTB
 toolset you either are insane, or about to go insane very quickly.

 Rig authoring and animation are mostly fine, but when it comes to
 deformation there is very, very little in Maya out of the box, and what is
 there is supported by tools and workflow that will age you a year in a
 month of use; when they don't break they are still painful, and it's not
 very often that they don't break.

 If you have to do it, and are proficient enough to clobber deformers and
 some helper tools together but not enough to write C++ close enough to the
 metal for it to perform, start learning Fabric. In fact, start learning
 Fabric anyway if you do rigging.
 If you have to do it, and are more of the artistic persuasion, see if you
 can change your role to something else, anything between animation and
 potato farming will do, and have the company hire someone who only worked
 in Maya before for that kind of work and is therefore unaware of how much
 pain he's in.


 On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 8:07 AM, Manuel Huertas Marchena 
 lito...@hotmail.com wrote:

 Curiously I ve been reading the transition guides you kindly wrote
 lately, thanks Jordi!
  I am sure that Houdini provides the scalability and resources to be an
 end to end solution.  But for the time being that
 decision is not up to me. At AF we have a katana(vray)  maya pipe.
 Houdini is used for hero fx stuff. Its on my plans to
 try and create a production ready asset to show production (once I figure
 out how to create something actually useful!)
  and only then see the plausibility of using Houdini for environment work
 (as an additional tool... who knows then..). As this concept is still a
 bit new (although I know its not the case...)  I have not seen much cg
 environment pipelines based on this software if at all. The only case I am
 aware is rising sun pictures... but I dont know someone there atm. I ve
 seen houdini used in videogames environments... but dont have much examples
 of that for film (not talking about fx of course), I am guessing that the
 main idea is somehow similar... *?*!

 cheers


 -Manu



 IMDB http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4755969/ | Portfolio
 http://envmanu.com http://envmanu.carbonmade.com/| Vimeo
 http://vimeo.com/manuelhuertasmarchena | Linkedin
 http://www.linkedin.com/in/manuelhuertas


 --
 From: byronn...@gmail.com
 Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2015 16:14:34 -0400
 Subject: Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com


 How are you finding your new found Houdini knowledge to be fitting into
 the needs of the marketplace? Are there many shops adopting it? Or are you
 a lone wolf or able to turnkey shots for people? I too have found Maya
 unintuitive and uninspiring. Houdini looks interesting but I'm wary of
 jumping on something that I'll never get to use. Unlike many of you here, I
 am in a small market so there aren't many 3D jobs to go around.

 On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 3:49 PM, Simon Reeves si...@simonreeves.com
 wrote:

 I always worry that Houdini is not such a friendly app to be used as
 a 'backbone' as you (Jordi) phrase it.
 But I'm basing that on the logic that most of our 3d artists will HAVE to
 use it, but that's not really the case...

 I've started to settle into the idea that maya is OK for being the
 base, (after some love) so perhaps this is the moment I need to give
 Houdini a proper look before I fall down into the abyss of Maya.


 On Tuesday, 17 March 2015, Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 That certainly is a great approach but even better is if you go in the
 other direction, use Houdini as the backbone and render from
 Mantra/Arnold/Octane/PRMan/3Dlight/whatever as the FX live inside Houdini
 and therefore

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Raffaele Fragapane]

For anybody following this who's still on the fence let me put it simply:
If you're used to XSI, and you have to do deformation work with Maya's OOTB
toolset you either are insane, or about to go insane very quickly.

Rig authoring and animation are mostly fine, but when it comes to
deformation there is very, very little in Maya out of the box, and what is
there is supported by tools and workflow that will age you a year in a
month of use; when they don't break they are still painful, and it's not
very often that they don't break.

If you have to do it, and are proficient enough to clobber deformers and
some helper tools together but not enough to write C++ close enough to the
metal for it to perform, start learning Fabric. In fact, start learning
Fabric anyway if you do rigging.
If you have to do it, and are more of the artistic persuasion, see if you
can change your role to something else, anything between animation and
potato farming will do, and have the company hire someone who only worked
in Maya before for that kind of work and is therefore unaware of how much
pain he's in.


On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 8:07 AM, Manuel Huertas Marchena 
lito...@hotmail.com wrote:

 Curiously I ve been reading the transition guides you kindly wrote lately,
 thanks Jordi!
  I am sure that Houdini provides the scalability and resources to be an
 end to end solution.  But for the time being that
 decision is not up to me. At AF we have a katana(vray)  maya pipe.
 Houdini is used for hero fx stuff. Its on my plans to
 try and create a production ready asset to show production (once I figure
 out how to create something actually useful!)
  and only then see the plausibility of using Houdini for environment work
 (as an additional tool... who knows then..). As this concept is still a
 bit new (although I know its not the case...)  I have not seen much cg
 environment pipelines based on this software if at all. The only case I am
 aware is rising sun pictures... but I dont know someone there atm. I ve
 seen houdini used in videogames environments... but dont have much examples
 of that for film (not talking about fx of course), I am guessing that the
 main idea is somehow similar... *?*!

 cheers


 -Manu



 IMDB http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4755969/ | Portfolio
 http://envmanu.com http://envmanu.carbonmade.com/| Vimeo
 http://vimeo.com/manuelhuertasmarchena | Linkedin
 http://www.linkedin.com/in/manuelhuertas


 --
 From: byronn...@gmail.com
 Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2015 16:14:34 -0400
 Subject: Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com


 How are you finding your new found Houdini knowledge to be fitting into
 the needs of the marketplace? Are there many shops adopting it? Or are you
 a lone wolf or able to turnkey shots for people? I too have found Maya
 unintuitive and uninspiring. Houdini looks interesting but I'm wary of
 jumping on something that I'll never get to use. Unlike many of you here, I
 am in a small market so there aren't many 3D jobs to go around.

 On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 3:49 PM, Simon Reeves si...@simonreeves.com
 wrote:

 I always worry that Houdini is not such a friendly app to be used as
 a 'backbone' as you (Jordi) phrase it.
 But I'm basing that on the logic that most of our 3d artists will HAVE to
 use it, but that's not really the case...

 I've started to settle into the idea that maya is OK for being the
 base, (after some love) so perhaps this is the moment I need to give
 Houdini a proper look before I fall down into the abyss of Maya.


 On Tuesday, 17 March 2015, Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 That certainly is a great approach but even better is if you go in the
 other direction, use Houdini as the backbone and render from
 Mantra/Arnold/Octane/PRMan/3Dlight/whatever as the FX live inside Houdini
 and therefore it is the natural backbone.

 Ultimately you will be using a myriad of tools that will funnel “dumb”
 cached data (just baked geometry, particles with attributes and little
 more) to Houdini and from there you are free to assemble your scenes as you
 need to.

 Furthermore, if you need to scale you will find Houdini excels at that so
 imho it is a no brainer.

 hope it helps

 jb


 On 17 Mar 2015, at 18:15, Manuel Huertas Marchena lito...@hotmail.com
 wrote:

 I am wondering if any of you guys working in film use houdini for digital
 asset production, or is it still more of a fx tool for most part? (having
 said that I do realize that houdini is not and end to end solution or all
 kinds of assets, but still I feel that there is a lot of stuff that
 could/can be created using  a procedural approach,
 ex: buildings, concept modeling, snow, rocks, trees, props...etc..)




 --


 Simon Reeves
 London, UK
 *si...@simonreeves.com si...@simonreeves.com*
 *www.simonreeves.com http://www.simonreeves.com*
 *www.analogstudio.co.uk http://www.analogstudio.co.uk*





-- 
Our users will know fear

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Simon Reeves]

I always worry that Houdini is not such a friendly app to be used as
a 'backbone' as you (Jordi) phrase it.
But I'm basing that on the logic that most of our 3d artists will HAVE to
use it, but that's not really the case...

I've started to settle into the idea that maya is OK for being the
base, (after some love) so perhaps this is the moment I need to give
Houdini a proper look before I fall down into the abyss of Maya.


On Tuesday, 17 March 2015, Jordi Bares Dominguez jordiba...@gmail.com
wrote:

 That certainly is a great approach but even better is if you go in the
 other direction, use Houdini as the backbone and render from
 Mantra/Arnold/Octane/PRMan/3Dlight/whatever as the FX live inside Houdini
 and therefore it is the natural backbone.

 Ultimately you will be using a myriad of tools that will funnel “dumb”
 cached data (just baked geometry, particles with attributes and little
 more) to Houdini and from there you are free to assemble your scenes as you
 need to.

 Furthermore, if you need to scale you will find Houdini excels at that so
 imho it is a no brainer.

 hope it helps

 jb


 On 17 Mar 2015, at 18:15, Manuel Huertas Marchena lito...@hotmail.com
 javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','lito...@hotmail.com'); wrote:

 I am wondering if any of you guys working in film use houdini for digital
 asset production, or is it still more of a fx tool for most part? (having
 said that I do realize that houdini is not and end to end solution or all
 kinds of assets, but still I feel that there is a lot of stuff that
 could/can be created using  a procedural approach,
 ex: buildings, concept modeling, snow, rocks, trees, props...etc..)




-- 


Simon Reeves
London, UK
*si...@simonreeves.com si...@simonreeves.com*
*www.simonreeves.com http://www.simonreeves.com*
*www.analogstudio.co.uk http://www.analogstudio.co.uk*

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Simon Reeves]

Thanks! Good to hear some opinions :)





Simon Reeves
London, UK
*si...@simonreeves.com si...@simonreeves.com*
*www.simonreeves.com http://www.simonreeves.com*
*www.analogstudio.co.uk http://www.analogstudio.co.uk*

On 17 March 2015 at 16:05, Gerbrand Nel nagv...@gmail.com wrote:

  Hey Simon
 I've done a few Maya jobs as part of a team the past few months.
 The people on the team were very experienced, helpful and patient with me.
 Doing this on your own is madness!!

 I did some rigging, and I actually think Maya is pretty good at creating
 rigs. Its the deformation of the rigged objects that drove me up the wall.

 I did allot of lighting and rendering, and at first glance, liked the node
 editor. Then you get to the details and realize that many things that
 should work, don't.

 Animating is ok, but the graph editor hurt my brain. I couldn't figure out
 how to set the key handles length and angle by typing values for example.

 I did a huge bifrost job, and I'm sure bifrost will be great one day.. but
 I might not live that long.

 Nparticles . how the hell is this the industry leader

 Everything in maya feels like you need to learn new software to do
 something... It feels like after you've learned to rotate a cube, it
 doesn't necessarily mean you can now rotate a torus!

 Too much scripting that makes you feel like you're finishing the
 developers job.
 Sure houdini is full of scripting, but at least you feel like you're
 scripting to make cool things, not to just , I don't know, select a
 hierarchy, or kill a particle.

 I've done a few houdini tutorials, and my first real job finished today.
 The job I just did in houdini is sooo far out of my reach in maya, and
 would even be a bit of a mission with ICE.
 Fair enough it is a frost effect on a pack shot, but still.. fun was had!

 The best part is: I don't feel like I need a strong drink at the end of
 the day.
 G

 On 17/03/2015 12:54, Simon Reeves wrote:

 Can I ask, what areas having you been using Maya/Houdini that spurred you
 to make the post?

  I've been using Maya for a couple of months for scene
 assembly/rendering, (bringing in models/caches/assigning shaders/passes) so
 that's my only experience.






 Simon Reeves
 London, UK
  *si...@simonreeves.com si...@simonreeves.com*
 *www.simonreeves.com http://www.simonreeves.com*
 *www.analogstudio.co.uk http://www.analogstudio.co.uk*

 On 17 March 2015 at 10:08, adrian wyer adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com
 wrote:

 excellent closing quote, Side Effects should use that in their
 commercials!

 ...there's a SOP for that!

 a

 -Original Message-
 From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
 [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Gerbrand
 Nel
 Sent: 17 March 2015 10:12
 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
 Subject: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

 I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might
 save the life of a fellow artist.

 So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can
 compete against people straight out of collage.
 This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage
 artists here in South Africa.
 At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has to
 happen in maya for me.
 My brain doesn't work the way maya works.
 I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do now,
 just in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, lead
 to allot of back tracking.

 At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price tag
 of Houdini FX.
 It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I was
 one, of only a few houdini artists around.
 Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these concerns.

 The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a concern to me.

 I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with it, than
 I can with Maya after a year.
 The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package
 works as one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing
 something new is fun and pretty easy.

 This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non
 destructive open work flow.
 So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the
 whole there is a script for that mentality... there is a sop for that

 G

Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

[Gerbrand Nel]

Hey Simon
I've done a few Maya jobs as part of a team the past few months.
The people on the team were very experienced, helpful and patient with me.
Doing this on your own is madness!!

I did some rigging, and I actually think Maya is pretty good at creating 
rigs. Its the deformation of the rigged objects that drove me up the wall.


I did allot of lighting and rendering, and at first glance, liked the 
node editor. Then you get to the details and realize that many things 
that should work, don't.


Animating is ok, but the graph editor hurt my brain. I couldn't figure 
out how to set the key handles length and angle by typing values for 
example.


I did a huge bifrost job, and I'm sure bifrost will be great one day.. 
but I might not live that long.


Nparticles . how the hell is this the industry leader

Everything in maya feels like you need to learn new software to do 
something... It feels like after you've learned to rotate a cube, it 
doesn't necessarily mean you can now rotate a torus!


Too much scripting that makes you feel like you're finishing the 
developers job.
Sure houdini is full of scripting, but at least you feel like you're 
scripting to make cool things, not to just , I don't know, select a 
hierarchy, or kill a particle.


I've done a few houdini tutorials, and my first real job finished today.
The job I just did in houdini is sooo far out of my reach in maya, and 
would even be a bit of a mission with ICE.

Fair enough it is a frost effect on a pack shot, but still.. fun was had!

The best part is: I don't feel like I need a strong drink at the end of 
the day.

G
On 17/03/2015 12:54, Simon Reeves wrote:
Can I ask, what areas having you been using Maya/Houdini that spurred 
you to make the post?


I've been using Maya for a couple of months for scene 
assembly/rendering, (bringing in models/caches/assigning 
shaders/passes) so that's my only experience.







Simon Reeves
London, UK
/si...@simonreeves.com mailto:si...@simonreeves.com/
/www.simonreeves.com http://www.simonreeves.com/
/www.analogstudio.co.uk http://www.analogstudio.co.uk//
/

On 17 March 2015 at 10:08, adrian wyer adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com 
mailto:adrian.w...@fluid-pictures.com wrote:


excellent closing quote, Side Effects should use that in their
commercials!

...there's a SOP for that!

a

-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com
mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of
Gerbrand Nel
Sent: 17 March 2015 10:12
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini

I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might
save the life of a fellow artist.

So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I can
compete against people straight out of collage.
This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage
artists here in South Africa.
At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all
has to
happen in maya for me.
My brain doesn't work the way maya works.
I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to
do now,
just in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, lead
to allot of back tracking.

At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price tag
of Houdini FX.
It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if
I was
one, of only a few houdini artists around.
Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these
concerns.

The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a
concern to me.

I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with
it, than
I can with Maya after a year.
The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package
works as one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing
something new is fun and pretty easy.

This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non
destructive open work flow.
So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the
whole there is a script for that mentality... there is a sop for
that

G