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 < [email protected]> 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 < > [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! >
