Hi! I'm an independent filmmaker, and I'm excited about the possibilities of 3d animation with regards to making animated films, especially in that (with appropriate technical skill) anything I imagine can be brought to life. Here's the thing:

I KNOW NOTHING.

I dabbled a bit in Blender several years ago, but never got anything more complex than generating basic shapes and putting textures on them, or painstakingly following an online tutorial but not understanding how it is that I'm doing what I'm doing. I'm looking at Houdini instead because Blender's UI is just incomprehensible to me and I have no idea what anything does. It seems, though, that there is a massive learning curve everywhere I go, with whatever software.

My question is: where can I go to find a step-by-step guide to learning 3d animation with Houdini from the absolute beginning, which will show me what I need to know in order to get on the path to making animated movies? 3d animation appears to be so technical to me, more like a science, and yet it seems there's a point at which, when you know how everything works, it can become an art; I just want to get to that point.

To recap: where can I go where all the information is in order to teach you, step by step, how to use Houdini?

well you just have to find whatever you can online to learn houdini, otherwise there are schools that offer houdini education, just google it.

There are a number of Tutorials and Master Classes linked here under the Learning drop down
Digital Tutors : http://www.digitaltutors.com/ [digitaltutors.com]
has some good introductory material on Houdini (as well as other applications)

I'd say a good way of learning Houdini would be to set yourself a VERY SIMPLE project*
one that touched on a number of basic aspects of making an animated film.
plan this project with a written description of what the result will be
draw some basic story boards that simply describe your project
list the assets needed (sets, props, characters etc)
break these assets down into their basic components
get to work

a big part of learning Houdini is contributions from the community, start a thread in the Work in Progress section and include all the above planning that you've done
then start asking for advice/suggestions and break out specific questions that you might have and post those in the other sections (Technical Discussions etc)

* basic project example:
Environment : cave entrance
Props : some large rocks, some small rocks, a bush, a tree
Characters: simpleMale, simpleFemale (you can find then on the Character Shelf)
scene: simpleMale in sitting on a large rock, simpleFemale enters frame and picks up a small rock, simpleMale looks at simpleFemale - puts hands in the air in a ‘please don’t throw rock at me' motion, simpleFemale throws small rock at simpleMale's head.
end scene

If this is your first entry into 3D modeling and animation I would not suggest Houdini as a starting point (as much as I like houdini). There are many reasons for this. First, Houdini documentation is relatively thin compared to Maya for example and Maya's documentation is detailed but not the best in terms of layout.

Independent of the Houdini procedural approach, the Houdini user interface takes getting used to compared to other 3D tools. There are basic inconsistencies in the Houdini user interface (as a simple example a polygon plane is called a grid but Houdini also refers to the grid in the user interface too). Lots of modal dialogs and actions in Houdini compared to Maya, which is basically thin of modal dialogs.

Houdini tutorials are generally thin on depth as are the online courses on Houdini. If you are going to do organic facial modeling in Houdini and you have little experience with other tools you will struggle and may fail. I am in the process of creating an intermediate tutorial on modeling character faces in Houdini from start to finish and its challenging even though I have done this for many years in Autodesk Maya. The challenges I am working through are not to do with the procedural approach but more basic interface and documentation issues. There are basic capabilities that are required for modeling in Houdini that are just starting to become available in its interface and the platform in general.

That being said I see a bright future for Houdini once these growing pains are addressed as it moves from being a special effects platform to a full 3D platform. Others may disagree with me but these are my humble thoughts.

What do you think when you say 3D animation? Do you want to animate things? Do you want to make photo realistic renders? Do you want to do special effects?

Know exactly what you want to do and then choose your software, and when you start using a software, and you like it, stick with it.

3D software is like finding an apartment, when you enter and you feel the glow, you feel it's yours…..it's yours.

My 2 cents.

Michael Holman
(with appropriate technical skill) anything I imagine can be brought to life.

You should rather think about forming a team.
It will take you years to be able to do something closely resembling a movie, in any 3D software.

BTW, Houdini is probably the *best* software for learning 3D. You'll get a better understanding of 3D as a medium by starting with Houdini, and this will help you no matter what you'll end up using.

You will need to learn multiple apps anyway. Despite what some might say, most likely you won't do your *organic* models in your main package but in 3D Coat or ZBrush.

digitallysane

Michael Holman
(with appropriate technical skill) anything I imagine can be brought to life.

You should rather think about forming a team.
It will take you years to be able to do something closely resembling a movie, in any 3D software.

BTW, Houdini is probably the *best* software for learning 3D. You'll get a better understanding of 3D as a medium by starting with Houdini, and this will help you no matter what you'll end up using.

You will need to learn multiple apps anyway. Despite what some might say, most likely you won't do your *organic* models in your main package but in 3D Coat or ZBrush.

@digitallysane I obsoleted my response here by writing this reply to DASD: https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&p=195692#195692 [sidefx.com]


VR

Lars

digitallysane

Michael Holman
(with appropriate technical skill) anything I imagine can be brought to life.

BTW, Houdini is probably the *best* software for learning 3D.

I do not agree for one reason. Houdini SideFx documentation needs a lot of work. Better to learn on a platform that there is better documentation. Even access to what Houdini documentation exists is unnecessarily difficult since you can't download it in a zip file as with Maya. Either you have to view it online or suffer with the unbearably slow and hang prone Houdini builtin documentation viewer. It is possible to set Houdini flags to use external documentation browsers but none of it works well.

VR

Lars

FVGDOTCOM

digitallysane

Michael Holman
(with appropriate technical skill) anything I imagine can be brought to life.

BTW, Houdini is probably the *best* software for learning 3D.

I do not agree for one reason.

That one reason is not enough.

The way Houdini exposes the inner workings of a 3D package and the fact that almost every operator has example files with documentation attached is just invaluable.

And I was talking about Houdini's architecture and way of dealing with 3D, not about it's documentation engine. You can just go and watch video tutorials and it'll still be more useful than any other package.

I also find the Houdini docs to be good in general (content wise). Yes, it's not perfect, but it's good.

Most of what you pointed are implementation details, which changed lots of times in previous years anyway.

BTW, I never felt access is difficult, nor did I felt the need for zip archives of the docs.

digitallysane

FVGDOTCOM

digitallysane

Michael Holman
(with appropriate technical skill) anything I imagine can be brought to life.

BTW, Houdini is probably the *best* software for learning 3D.

I do not agree for one reason.

That one reason is not enough.

I still disagree. An independent experiment is required to resolve this question. A “pygmalion experiment” where people are chosen naive to 3D albeit with similar qualifications to learn 3D and are randomly divided. One group sets about to learn Maya and the other Houdini in an agreed interval of time. This is the only way to definitively resolve such questions.

VR

Lars

It's not “who will learn faster”, but “Who will understand 3D better”.

I did actually made this experiment (out of necessity), and it's always people exposed to Houdini that understand better after the very first 2-3 days of confusion.
I'm talking either about people completely new to animation or experienced animators completely new to CG.

The Houdini Documentation is great but cumbersome.
There is loads of example files. Now with sticky nodes that have been added.

BUT: Houdini is missing a step by step guide. For that there is digital tutors.

I would not recommend Houdini to every one new to 3d.

My question would be:
Do you want to learn scripting? Do you like programming?
If yes Houdini is for you if not go for something else.
If you dont know, try Houdini there is a free learing edition and whatever you learn will also help in another package.

Also there is so much cool stuff you can do with the shelf tools: fire, water, smoke etc. For some that might be what gets them hooked.

my 2 cents

Olaf

digitallysane
It's not “who will learn faster”, but “Who will understand 3D better”.

A metaphor: Calculus mathematics is a subset of differential geometry. If taught differential geometry first then calculus makes more sense but instead they teach the calculus first in college. Learning differential geometry you have a deeper understanding of the math and can do much more than with its subset the calculus. Perhaps the same is true here in this discussion on 3D.

VR

Lars

Hey Lars,
yes it is. If you are a tech person Houdini is the best 3d software to start with.

But if you more like an artist person that hates math, i would recommend modo or even something like mudbox.

Olaf Finkbeiner
Hey Lars,
yes it is. If you are a tech person Houdini is the best 3d software to start with.

But if you more like an artist person that hates math, i would recommend modo or even something like mudbox.

Indeed, to your point I technically fully understand mudbox but in practice my sculpting results using it are not optimal. My optimal environment couples Houdini to Mathematica. The reason is that things like facial modeling I can't do well artistically I can program Mathematica to drive Houdini to do for me. Behavioral VFX synthesis is my objective. http://fvg.com/behavioral-synthesis.html [fvg.com]

VR

Lars

For houdini there are also the excellent tutorials by Peter Quint:
https://vimeo.com/user2030228 [vimeo.com]

For animation in general I highly recommend this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Animators-Survival-Kit-Principles-Classical/dp/0571238335 [amazon.com]
It's about 2d hand drawn animation, but all the principles apply to 3d as well 8)