Sure. There's certainly a lot of potential there. It's just that the openness means that the workflow is very open to interpretation. Houdini's a bit like coding, everyone has their own style so you can get in a mess. It's very easy to add in quick little "fixes" which other people might look on as hacks instead.
A On 21 May 2014 at 21:25 Francois Lord <[email protected]> wrote: > And how would it fare as a lighting/shading/rendering hub? > I'm very hesitant to move to Maya just for it's lack of a true a pass > system. But then, there's only Houdini and Katana. We could add to the > list Modo and Clarisse (which I'm surprised nobody talked about here > yet) but we need Arnold. > > On 21-May-14 15:55, Andy Nicholas wrote: > > From my experience, it's still relatively slow. A lot of stuff is still > > single > > threaded although they've done a lot of work to improve that recently. Be > > ready > > to eat up a lot of disk space too, as you'll be caching stuff out all the > > time > > to make up for the lack of speed. > > > > > > Despite what many say about Houdini being great for particles, compared to > > ICE, > > the particles workflow is bloody awful. The nodes are super basic which > > means > > you have to roll your own out of VOPs, which are then super slow. ICE and > > Arnold > > are a dream for instancing, but Houdini drives me insane with slow and flaky > > workflows (although I probably need to update my knowledge since some of the > > new > > features have come out - e.g. packed primitives). > > > > > > Generally in production, expect not to see any significant results out of > > Houdini artists for the first 70-80% of the job. That can be a real pain for > > working with needy clients. Once you get past that point though, they'll be > > able > > to turn new versions out very quickly. Unfortunately, if it doesn't look > > good at > > that point you've got a crap load of work to redo, and it can really bite > > you in > > the ass if you don't have a good backup plan. > > > > > > When it comes to commercials, not a lot beats ICE and it's rigid body > > implementation for speed and ease of use, and I really miss not having that > > in > > Houdini. Doing simple stuff in Houdini's DOPs can require an hour of > > research > > trying to find out what data you need to modify, and how to actually > > implement > > it. > > > > I could go on a lot longer, but all I'll say is that you have to be super > > careful when you decide to throw a job at Houdini. Make sure you have R&D > > time > > built in if you haven't done a particular effect before. > > > > A > > > > > > > > > > On 21 May 2014 at 19:42 Francois Lord <[email protected]> wrote: > > > >> So... > >> What are houdini weaknesses? What is missing in Houdini compared to > >> Softimage? Would you run a company only using Houdini as 3D app? Why not? >
