I work with the University of the Arts London, mentoring final year students that are planning to set up their own creative businesses after graduation (a surprising number see this as the best route these days). The students I'm working with generally come from a fine art, graphic design or product design background and much of their exploration of 3d technologies has been extracurricular. They're different to MA graduates from somewhere like Bournmouth (the types of student looking for a career in CG animation).
I've been working with *ual:* for a number of years now and I've noticed a real shift in the adoption of Houdini over Maya. I think this bias is a the result of SideFX's historic strategy with Houdini Apprentice, which allows students to explore Houdini in their own time (this is important as 3d creativity isn't necessarily core to their course). The bigger recent impact has come from the availability of Houdini Indie. Students often see SideFX as the cool challenger to the Autodesk corporate behemoth. The fact that Houdini Indie allows them to render with Redshift of Octane is a huge benefit too. Creative exploration at home with GPU rendering is far more productive than a reliance on Mantra. Not dissing Mantra here, it can go toe to toe with Arnold but it's a studio grade production renderer optimised for farm use. The other major shift I've seen with young talent entering the creative industries is that this is a generation that started learning the likes Python, Unity and Arduino at high school. For them the term technical artist is often seen as an oxymoron. They simply see themselves as artists that are just as happy creating algorithmically generated art in Processing as they are utilising VEX in Houdini. They see a programmatic mindset as being an essential part of the mix. Im not saying all young art students match this profile, but the ones that explore 3d and digital interactive technologies most certainly do. You seldom hear the cry 'but I'm an artists, not a programmer' from this generation of young creatives. This is probably a different perspective to what you were directly asking, but I really do believe Houdini is on the cusp of breaking away from the solo mantle of being the goto VFX DCC of choice. Houdini is capable of so much more than VFX, SideFX know this and have been actively developing a set of tools to facilitate the UX journeys of a more generalist user and there's a new generation of creative talent unafraid of Houdini's more technical side. For me, Houdini's future is indeed bright. On 16 February 2017 at 10:30, Laurence Dodd <laure...@porkpie.tv> wrote: > Good, that's sorted then Houdini town here I come! Every time I open Maya > my heart sinks, its a mess. I'm amazed at how quickly I have felt at home > in Houdini, its beautifully logical. I'm still acclimatising, but I feel > rather excited about it, which is nice. > > On 16 February 2017 at 10:14, Andi Farhall <hack...@outlook.com> wrote: > >> From a personal perspective It's Houdini for me. Maya will only get worse >> the more they dick about with it and having to buy a shed load of plugins >> just to make it usable is too expensive for most freelancers. I've also >> much more faith in SideFX to keep providing me with evolving software. >> >> >> A> >> >> >> ............................................................ >> ............... >> http://www.hackneyeffects.com/ >> https://vimeo.com/user4174293 >> http://www.linkedin.com/pub/andi-farhall/b/496/b21 >> >> >> http://www.flickr.com/photos/lord_hackney/ >> http://spylon.tumblr.com/ >> >> This email and any attachments to it may be confidential and are intended >> solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed. Any views or >> opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily >> represent those of Hackney Effects Ltd. >> >> If you are not the intended recipient of this email, you must neither >> take any action based upon its contents, nor copy or show it to anyone. >> >> Please contact the sender if you believe you have received this email in >> error. >> ------------------------------------------------------------ >> ------------------------------ >> *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com < >> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com> on behalf of Laurence Dodd < >> laure...@porkpie.tv> >> *Sent:* 16 February 2017 09:29:04 >> *To:* Official Softimage Users Mailing List. >> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/xsi_list >> *Subject:* Opinion gathering >> >> I've been looking at houdini, liking it a lot, but what houses in London >> are switching to it? Or am I, once again choosing the underdog software >> (Combustion, anyone?) >> >> Also, if I recommend it as the main software where I usually work, will >> they be able to get Houdini people that are generalists, are enough of us >> switching? >> >> Just throwing these out there to gather the mood. >> >> Cheers all >> >> -- >> >> Laurence Dodd >> Porkpie Animation >> E: laure...@porkpie.tv >> W: www.porkpie.tv >> M: 07570 702 576 >> T: 01273 278 382 >> >> ------ >> Softimage Mailing List. >> To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com >> with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm. >> > > > > -- > > Laurence Dodd > Porkpie Animation > E: laure...@porkpie.tv > W: www.porkpie.tv > M: 07570 702 576 > T: 01273 278 382 > > ------ > Softimage Mailing List. > To unsubscribe, send a mail to softimage-requ...@listproc.autodesk.com > with "unsubscribe" in the subject, and reply to confirm. >
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