I have to admit to not having tried again in at least two and half years, but I haven't seen any related release notes related to rigging since then, so bear with me if this is not recent or still actual information, but in what way is rigging in Houdini phenomenal? It's a major pain in the arse, generally slow both performance wise and to actually produce the rigs, and it has absolutely zero adequate facilities for a lot of stuff such as shape manipulation, and while VOPs are great, when it comes to deformations they don't even scratch the surface of what ICE can do. And while it's true assets are phenomenal, the sheer scope of investment to wrap a character up to give it to an animator is staggering, it takes forever to truly and properly armor up a rig and expose only the right context in the right way.
As for modelling, I agree I'd rather model in ZB and retopo in topogun or 3DCoat, but shape modelling at a certain level and almost any shape modelling for character FX is still often best done inside the anim/rigging app in the whole low to middle end of quality, and frankly only Soft had anything right in those regards. Maya might or might not kind of almost be alright for the pointpushing side of things now with 2015, but the shape management itself tends to be so bad that if you use it more than an hour a day you get AIDS. So, can someone illuminate me on why Houdini gets recommended for rigging? (other than procedural or FX heavy animation, in which case I won't disagree) -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
