I have heard many great things about Houdini and its power. But I was wondering if it was possible to create something like the Jungle Book movie using just Houdini? Things like the photorealistic animals, animation, rain, forest etc. Could Houdini produce these all these to a high standard on its own?

If you start with the budget of Jungle Book, $175 million, do you still think that Houdini did it all.

Moin,

> Things like the photorealistic animals, animation, rain, forest etc. Could Houdini produce these all these to a high standard on its own?

No. Houdini needs an Aprentice to do the work for him, Houdini himself will then only do what Aprentice tells it to do.

Or, in other words: No, Houdini is not good enough to do it all on its own. It needs human artists to do most of the work, but it can get quite good at creating procedural things. And non-procedural things. And non-things, for that matter. Left to its own devices, Houdini does nothing, it will just sit there and wait for input.

If you should mean: “Could someone create a movie with just Houdini as a tool”, then I'd say: Hell, no way!
(But it's getting closer and closer, hihi)

Marc

Theoretically yes, but you would usually set up a pipeline of several specific programs. I also doubt you would find enough artists that know how to do character animation and modeling/sculpting inside Houdini.

given the budget and the number of artists capable of the work?
yes, you could use just Houdini (setting aside things like organic sculpting and texturing).

I am growing to become a fully fledged Houdini fan - but, honestly, right now I don't see how Houdini could *really* (not just theoretically) do the comping, grading, audio effects and mixing, the mastering (I mean, the TO was talking about “the whole movie”, not just the visual effects).
In theory, sure, you could just pixel each frame manually and write the audio tracks in Word. But, honestly, doing the *whole* movie just in Houdini I do not see as possible.

Smaller projects with kind of the same visual quality and leaving out audio, comp, grade, editing etc: Yes, I'd vote for that.

Marc

I think the OP was referring to just the CG aspects, not everything else…though I'll bet you could write a screenplay in a wrangle node

Oh, no doubts about *theoretically* being able to do actually *everything* in Houdini! I mean that. I have done even more crazy things. The first 3d model I created (and kind of the last, because I had to accept that I am not and will never be an artist) was something like 64 lines of numbers and punctuations plus a program to start a script that would fire of DKB Trace.

There is, however, that other side of “being able to do”, which involves things like “mental sanity” or “surviving the next discussion with your spouse about how to spend night time”, not to mention the desperate need of producing kids to ensure the safety of your pension.

Marc

I should of been more specific with my question. I was talking about just the visuals and animations.

I'm still exploring my own expectations about Houdini. We get it. I'm guessing everyone smart enough to “get” Houdini also understood your question. Good luck on your creating.