grayOlorin
(…) to educate people about what it is really about and the mindset behind procedural content creation.

“Mindset” is a very important key word. Also, I don't think the “technical vs artisic” analogue fully applies here (btw, completely off topic: most of the popular “left/right hemisphere thinking” is a myth )

Houdini is more like a big puzzle, where the more you “get” the rules, the more interesting it becomes. It's a great experience (with a few revelations that can turn your world upside down.) And actually I'm not sure if you need that much more “technical” knowledge than for other packages.

Also, it's not just the proceduralism – another example is digital assets, and they way they work: it's pretty unique, and a great concept, too (simple but powerful). And the same as with procedural thinking: once you realize what it's about, you won't want to go back to your old ways. )

“Mindset” is a very important key word.

There is a statistically significant correlation between people who use Houdini and people who like LEGO™ bricks.

This image pretty much sums up my opinion on statistical correlations

Shiver me timbers! I'd like to see a similar graph, but with ninjas.

The old saying, “It's not size that counts, but quality” comes to mind.

I wouldn't say NewTek or Luxology could be classed as leaders; there's only one market leader and that's Autodesk. And they may have more users, but they serve a far more diverse range of industries than Houdini, and it can be argued that their success has become a burden rather than a blessing, as anyone looking over their user forums can attest: theirs isn't a happy community. They're far too detached from their actual products to service the needs of a community that is, quite frankly, a monster. And the fact that they have to service so many different applications (which ironically have cross over features yet different code bases and even data formats) just makes things progressively worse. If you're an AD buyer you may be familiar with the sales calls trying to convince you to buy Autodesk Suites. Because when you can't make any one product do everything the users want, try to sell them a whole bunch in the vein hope they'll stop complaining.

I'd say Houdini's community is compact, rather than small, and even better it's professional rather than loud-mouthed. Because of this, Side Effects don't have to pander to a mob, and as long as that continues then the software benefits - they know their customers and what they need. If you take that away, by say dropping the price so ‘anyone’ can afford to get on board, they may well sell more copies and make the same amount of money (if not more), but the burden of answering to tens of times more users, all with completely different needs, would ruin the product over time.

As an example of a happy, progressive community, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a single “houdini sucks” post anywhere on the interweb, unless it's in relation to a visual effect.

Well said. One last off-topic thought: previously I wasn't talking about “autodesk products”, but Maya specifically, which claims to be a “professional, high-end” 3d app – and yet it keeps degrading for a long time now, and it started long before its Autodesk days. I think they didn't listen to professional input for almost about a decade. (Many times I wished they should at least kept Chris Landreth around to keep test-driving the product.)

Houdini's support is at the opposite of this spectrum: they're always helpful and responsive, and never had to wait more than a few days for bug fixes. On that note, having daily builds is also a great idea – I wish more companies adopted this.

Anyway, I didn't mean to be Maya-bashing, I'm just stating facts. I use both Houdini and Maya on a daily basis, and the gap in reliability (stability) is striking.

AdamT
As an example of a happy, progressive community, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a single “houdini sucks” post anywhere on the interweb, unless it's in relation to a visual effect.

Well, I doubt you'll see too many “houdini sucks” posts when it comes to visual effects…

Here is what I can say to this topic.
At school I learned Cinema 4D but later I changed to Maya. Beside 3D I also do compositing so about 2 years ago I made an internship at a company working with Nuke. I right away fell in love with Nuke and the entire nodebased idea. Since that time I was dreaming of a 3D software offering all the benifits of procedually nodebased technology.
Some time went by and then I heard the first time of Houdini. I was exited like a child at christmas, I immediately downloaded and installed the apprentice version but when I first opened it….the sad story began here.
I was so disapointed.

The list, what disapointed me, would be to long so I'm not posting it here but my conclusion is:
I love the idea of Houdini but the way Houdini is designed I find unnesserely complicated.
I think you could simplify Houdini by a factor of 10 and still get the same power out of it and i think that this is also a reason why Houdini is not leading the market. I'm still following Houdini, hoping that some day the structure will be redesigned but the way it is now, no way. Which is sad because I actually want to love Houdini.

the “unnecessarily” complicated is what gives You the kind of freedom, getting rid of it, means loosing options, most of the time
And once You get into it, it isn't that “unnecessarily” complicated. That does not mean that everything is perfect, but maybe You are trying to hammer in some screws

Yes, I was thinking of that too, that I'm trying to hammer in screws and at the end of the day everyone has his/her preferences on how he/she wants to work. But beside the big “problems” there is plenty of little ones.
I was desperatly searching for a delete node and after minutes I found out that this is called blast, whyever. The TAB menu in the nodegraph gives me different options, then the one in the viewport and how awesome would it be to be able to just drag and drop primitive selections into the group slot of any node. Instead I have to select my edges, for instance, call the TAB menu in the viewport select any command, so the selection automaticly will be added to the command. Calling the TAB menu in the nodegraph will NOT automaticly add the selection, so I have to type it in manually. This all may sound trivial but to me its the summery of lots and lots of little issues, that makes me feel not working with Houdini but against it.

But anyway, everyone uses what suits best to him/her.
I just say it's sad. I want to love Houdini and I am by no means a staunched maya user but I just don't find the right access to Houdini.

It all comes down to understanding how the software works.
You find Nuke simple? well, I´ve moved to it from Fusion and I thought it was x100 times more complex to use, but in the end I realized it was all about getting the hand of it and now I enjoy its channel-driven workflow.

Just to show my point about you not yet “having a true go” at the software, you mentioned why there was a Blast node and no delete…while in fact there is a delete node ,which has Blast functionality and then some more. Blast is there for people who wants a quick Delete with no extra features.
So, the fact that you never pressed <TAB> and write “d,e,l” to find a Delete node that has been there forever tells me you still have to work a bit more with the software before judging its workflows which are many and elegant.

Actually I already did. In fact that was one of the first things I did as a Nuke user. I pressed TAB, typed del and yes, I found a delete node but it always deleted my entire object and not just the selected primitives. I gave it another try now and it worked this time. Probably because I called the TAB menu from viewport this time. This is confusing. It's not that I havn't gave it a real try yet, but the plenty of times I did gave it a try, I was highly confused after 15 minutes and closed it. So I looked up the internet for tutorials, just to see Houdini in the hands of an expirienced artist and to see more of Houdini but what I saw there left me with yet more confusion. So if some could explain me how all these dops, pops, shops, chops and vops work together, that might clear my view.
I don't know why people always tend to feel offended when someone like me says, that I see a huge potential to improve Houdini.
But these discussions lead to nowhere. You like Houdini, I don't.

Korny Klown
In fact that was one of the first things I did as a Nuke user. Probably because I called the TAB menu from viewport this time. This is confusing.

This is similar to Nuke. The tab key is sensitive to the window region you are. i.e. tab in the viewer toggles 2d/3d and in the node graph brings up the nodes list.

I don't know why people always tend to feel offended when someone like me says, that I see a huge potential to improve Houdini.

Make a clear list of improvements and submit them as a Request Feature Enhancement, RFE, to SideFX. It's the best way to get changes to the software. You can find the form in the web page under Support/Submit Bugs and RFEs.

uh…nobody is getting offended, actually. I was just stating a point. That you find it difficult just because you´re used to something else which you expect in Houdini as well, and are instead greeted by a different workflow.
This doesn´t mean the software is complex or non-intuitive. It means you haven´t study it properly. It takes time and a good comprenhension of CGI and 3D.
In my experience as instructor, this is common and most of the time it has a lot to do with lack of proper 3D foundations, software aside. Not implying it´s your case, though.

@MartybNz:
Yes, I know that in Nuke the TAB key is also context sensitive but as opposed to Houdini, in Nuke that means that the TAB key does, relative to the context, something completly different.
Example:
TAB over nodegraph = nodesearch
TAB over viewport = toggle 2D/3D

In Houdini the TAB key always calls up the TAB menu but with different nodes and funcionallity.
Example:
3 curve objects on scene level, all are selected…
TAB over sceneview graph = no Loft available
TAB over viewport = Loft available

What sense does that make? Why can't I just call my nodes from whereever I want?

Sending these requests to SideFX might be an option, I'll consider that.

@Netvudu:
So you'd say Houdini is intuitive?
Don't get me wrong, I do understand most of the workflows and I'd say I have a decent 3D foundation. It's not that I don't understand the software, I just say some things are too time consuming which I don't need in daily production. I want to work straight forward.
A nice example is the typing of all these expressions to link parameters. I think Nukes drag and drop expression linking is a prime example for improvement without the loss of flexability and power. And this is just one example.

Korny Klown
What sense does that make? Why can't I just call my nodes from whereever I want?

Maybe this helps, from the Basics part of the manual:

When you press Tab in the network editor, a list of all available node types for the network type appears. When you press Tab in the viewer, the menu lists the shelf tools.

http://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini12.5/basics/tabmenu [sidefx.com]

EDIT:

Nuke's consistency also breaks for the right-click in the viewer when you have a ModelBuilder node parameter open. The available options via right-click in the viewer is different to ‘normal’. It appears that with all software, as you add functionality one will lose some uniformity.

EDIT2:

Korny Klown
So if some could explain me how all these dops, pops, shops, chops and vops work together, that might clear my view.

To clear the confusion we first need to know what you understand. These accronym's are an essential part of Houdini and without understanding this jargon the whole program wont make sense.

Korny Klown
Actually I already did. In fact that was one of the first things I did as a Nuke user. I pressed TAB, typed del and yes, I found a delete node but it always deleted my entire object and not just the selected primitives. I gave it another try now and it worked this time. Probably because I called the TAB menu from viewport this time. This is confusing.

The underlying interface allows you to have *many* Scene View panes, which can be all independent with different selections. So putting a node down in the Network View pane just puts down a node with default parameter values, whereas creating a node from a specific Scene View pane will use that view's selection. The result of the selection is just a string usually placed into the parameter named “Group”. It's a string of numbers of which points/prims were selected.

hi Korny Klown ,

I don't know why people always tend to feel offended when someone like me says, that I see a huge potential to improve Houdini.

ill start by quoting this sentence , since i agree with both parts of it .

havent read every post here , but this is a dejavu i experience time after time in houdini forums :

1- users who use other softwares asking for houdini to be ' more conventional ' . absolutely legitimate , imho ..

2- and sometimes some houdini users trying to de-legitimate the issue ( consciently / not )

from my personal pov , Korny Klown i too think houdini has a huge potential comparing to its competitors ( which is converted into time and money investment in users context ) .

if there is an ‘ ideal 3d application ’ form to be reached from 3d-app-makers , houdini has a great advantage : its 25+ year proven-nodal-philosophy which other app-makers are adding as pockets into their apps .

based on my personale xperience and perception , houdini-makers need to ‘ rethink ’ its user-to-viewport interaction .

sidefx needs to hire / consult a team of professional users of other packages to study and adapt best user-to-viewport workflow possible without compromising too much its nodal nature .

i think this should be a priority in houdini 's near future .

there are other areas too , but this is more important imho .

also i find useless sending RFEs in this context without seeing the big-first-political-move in this direction from SESI itself .

that needs a good plan .

–

hey Korny Klown just to share a small detail of my relationship with houdini :

iirc i installed my first houdini demo ( somewhere around the year i joined this community , 2007 ) and failed so hard in understanding it in basic things so i though that the best revenge there was , wd be to uninstall it ( not like other demos i had spared till next full-os-format ) .

and so i did .

but after 3 or 4 years ( when i was seriously reconsidering my main 3d-app ) i reinstalled it and after few months i got an Escape Commercial License ( H11 ) .

today i like it a lot and going back ( reopening old scenes on my old 3d-app ) makes me feel so much limited .

i wnt to end my post by saying also that houdini community is fantastic .

dont give up .




.cheers

sidefx needs to hire / consult a team of professional users of other packages to study and adapt best user-to-viewport workflow possible without compromising too much its nodal nature .

Word! Thanks so much.
Just yesterday I was playing around a little bit in Houdini and once again realized how bad the component selection tools in Houdini are compared to Cinema 4D, which has the best ones from the softwares I worked with so far. I even miss these selection tools in Maya.
I truely believe, looking around and get inspirations from other softwares would realy help to awesomize Houdini.
One thing I often encounter is that Houdini users extremly cling to the huge flexebility of Houdini workflows and they are affraid that as soon as something changes, it automaticly becomes worse. Which I don't think. There are changes possible, with no compromises to its nodal nature at all. Changes, that would not limit Houdini or make a totaly different software out of it but just give you the same software simpler, faster, less confusing a more straight forward. Houdini really has the potential to be the best 3D software out there. 25 years ago, when Houdini started it was way ahead ot its but the competitors caught up. Now, with some redesign you can get Houdini racing away once again and Max, Maya and so on will fall away by the wayside.

Korny Klown
One thing I often encounter is that Houdini users extremly cling to the huge flexebility of Houdini workflows and they are affraid that as soon as something changes

You can see it another way. In above posts you're ‘clinging’ to the TAB workflow that you know from Nuke and asking for Houdini to change to it's ‘standard’ workflow. If you read the Basic part of the manual it is explained there. If one learns Houdini first you would be asking why does Nuke have a limited Tab functionality.

So the question is which software sets the ‘standards’ and if the other 3d software is so rotten why does Houdini have to conform to it to become better?

I don't like when the discussion and I get reduced to single statements. The delete node, the TAB menu, whatever. At the beginning I said that it is plenty of things and a redesign only make sense when you see it as a whole. Just changing the functionallity of the TAB menu is no improvement but just a change.
But to stay with example:
Well the TAB menu is context sensitive, so it has different funcionallity for each subnetwork. The question that I see is: Do we really need all these subnetworks? Apart from the fact, that most Houdini users would say yes now. Simplifying that, automaticly simplifies the TAB menu. This would also help in a notable amount to attract users from other softwares, like Max, Maya and so on. Let's not forget, the initial discussion was about, why Houdini isn't leading the market. It's not about conforming to rotten softwares, it's the fact that every software has good sides and bad sides and to get inspiration from other softwares, hopefully from their good sides, doesn't mean to conform or to lose face. Why is everything so carved in stone?

Who sets the standart? All I see is, Nuke is market leader for its sector and Houdini is not, so who probably sets the standart? A software that is famous around the globe and has a steep growth of its community or a software that has a long tradition but still is rarely represented out there, beside the big majorcompanies that use pretty much every sorftware partially.

Why has Nuke a limited TAB functionality?