And I must add that using takes to control passes in Houdini is not that
bad. You can do pretty much anything you want, but the workflow is
painful. Houdini has a Main take, and all other takes are modifications
on the Main one. Everytime you are inside a take, and you want to change
something in the scene that you want to affect all takes (like moving en
object), you have to go in the Main take, make the edit, and go back to
the take you were editing to see the effect.
But takes allow you to override about anything, which is good.
On 19-Aug-15 10:09, Francois Lord wrote:
Well, it shouldn't discourage you.
Houdini is still better than Maya (yet) in that respect. I want to try
a small project in Houdini to see how I can bend it to my needs. I
know I will lose some things in there, but I will gain others. The
digital assets (ref-models) in Houdini are amazing.
To me, it's still the best bet.
On 19-Aug-15 09:41, Stefan Kubicek wrote:
Hi Francis,
thanks for your insights into Renderpass-alike mechanisms in Houdini.
I was about to investigate those in hope to find a viable alternative
to Softimage for scene assembly _and_ rendering, but what you wrote
about Material Style Sheets and Takes has discouraged me enough to
hold it off for now.
S
I know some companies in Montreal are still using Softimage, while
preparing their exit. In our case (Oblique), we are moving more slowly
than I was expecting. There are several reasons for this. Change
resistance from the artists is one. But also the lack of a good pass
system in the other softwares makes it difficult to use them as a
hub to
gather the assets and finish the shots. The Maya guys said they were
working on it 2 years ago and we're still waiting. The Houdini guys
released the material style sheets which doesn't do half the job, and
wasn't even designed as a pass system. Don't get me started on Takes in
Houdini, it's almost there but it's not what we need. It wasn't
designed
as a pass system either.
We've taken the awesome Sort Controller plugin from Andy Jones and
Jonah
Friedman and modified it extensively. This has catapulted Softimage far
ahead of any competitors (except Katana) in terms of pass management
when using ref models. So I guess we will continue to use Softimage as
our main hub until someone comes with a nice solution. I'm eyeing
Katana
even though it's overpriced.
By the way, I do plan to release our version of the Sort Controller,
but
I need to fix a few things in it before.
F
On 19-Aug-15 06:08, Sandy Sutherland wrote:
Hi all,
After a stint out of the Softimage fold - mainly in setting up a
Houdini rendering and VFX pipeline somewhere, and now I am at Axis
animation, doing pipeline tools and setup - I wanted to get a feel for
this -
Who in the world is continuing to use Softimage? Who might still be
on the lookout for high end Soft Riggers, pipeline, tools etc...?
Just wondering, as I consider the future for myself and family.
Thanks
Sandy
