Yeah, the only reason I have not yet dived into Houdini yet is because
of lack of time. As soon as I can, I will be reading those pdfs.
But I do have to choose my next move not too late, for me and for the
company I work for. Over here, we are 18 cg artists working in
Softimage. No one is excited to learn Maya, but Im not sure we can skip
it entirely. Houdini seems a good first step for look dev since Arnold
is coming. We can keep rigging and Animation in Softimage for a while.
Modeling can be done in any package, it doesn't matter.
F
On 21-May-14 17:59, Andy Nicholas wrote:
BTW, it's worth saying that despite all the faults I've mentioned, I still
love
using Houdini. Especially now that it's my main route of escape from the
wonderful world of Maya ;) And for those who are looking for a tool to support
complex effects, I'd totally recommend getting into it.
If you haven't checked out Jordi's PDFs on SideFX's website yet BTW, that should
be your first port of call as they're a great transitionary guide.
A
On 21 May 2014 at 22:16 Jordi Bares <[email protected]> wrote:
It is the same with any package the only thing is that Houdini artists tend to
be more of a peculiar type… you just have to make sure they stick to the
conventions like all Softimage users do (for example on how we setup passes)
Jordi Bares
[email protected]
On 21 May 2014, at 22:12, Andy Nicholas <[email protected]> wrote:
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?
