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 < [email protected]> 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: [email protected] > Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2015 16:14:34 -0400 > Subject: Re: Very OT: for the love of your career.. try houdini > To: [email protected] > > > 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 <[email protected]> > 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 <[email protected]> > 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 <[email protected]> > 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 > *[email protected] <[email protected]>* > *www.simonreeves.com <http://www.simonreeves.com>* > *www.analogstudio.co.uk <http://www.analogstudio.co.uk>* > > > -- Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
