I've been using Houdini for almost half a year now but I am still struggling to learn it since there is not enough sources on the internet.

If it's Blender for example, (which I also use) as soon as I type in what I want to do in google search, something pops up instantly that I can use for reference straight away, since there are tons of information that are very straight forward and easy to understand. There for I can learn in order of what I want to do first, and very effectively.

I wish Houdini was like that as well, so I could learn quickly.

But maybe that is not possible at the moment…

Are there any internet sites that anyone can recommend? I have tried learn squared but I didn't really like the way they taught it for the price. I have also tried pluralsight but again I could't find enough tutorials that actually help me to go forward.

Maybe the thing I need to know is how to learn so that I can guess what is what and how everything works so that I can work without hitting the wall of not knowing and no resources except asking on the forum.

I have a question to all the people that can use Houdini very well. Where did you learn???

Hi Almina,
i think it got a lot better. There is many resources.
One problem you might have is finding something specific that you search for that is not easy.
Sometimes the language is very different. And houdini thinking is special.
example: to split geometry into faces one might use the fuse sop and turn on the Unique option.
So to split you use fuse. Its a bit like the opposite….
In the beginning this is quite confusing.


The tutorials listed on https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/ [www.sidefx.com] are plenty.

And the documentation is getting better and better.
For example the new one about rendering is very good:
https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/mantra-user-guide/ [www.sidefx.com]

I realy like :http://www.rohandalvi.net/ [www.rohandalvi.net] tutorials. But they are mosly not for H16 and that is quite confusing for a beginner.

Also in the houdini documentation you find a lot of “examples” you should look at them they are mostly well documented.
There is a lot of them.

kind regards

Olaf

Hello.
First of all you need to be patient when working with Houdini you can't expect to learn Houdini in just one night.
I don't know which country are you living to participate in workshops or any good classes but you can create new thread and ask your questions whenever or wherever you stuck.
Of course nature of Houdini is more complicated than the other software so you should have practice and practice and practice.
Currently many youtube and vimeo channels contain very good and free tutorials so you can access them via simple search in Google.

Good training resources:

Rohan Dalvi's tutorials.
Peter Quint's tutorials.
www.entagma.com
http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/index.php?title=Main_Page [www.tokeru.com]
https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/ [www.sidefx.com]

Whatever you watch and practice more, you will get deeper and deeper understanding about various aspects of Houdini.

Thank you very much Olaf Finkbeiner and Nima!
I tried Rohan Dalvi's floating island series when I just started Houdini but I stopped in the middle! Maybe I'll try that from the beginning again!

Thank you ever so much!!! I will try watching more tutorials and practice to reach the point where I can understand things a bit more better!

ALMINA
Maybe the thing I need to know is how to learn so that I can guess what is what and how everything works so that I can work without hitting the wall of not knowing and no resources except asking on the forum.

There's probably heaps of how-to-learn blogs out there, one of them is Scott Young and he seems to have a learning method that feels very familiar to all those whom seem to get it.

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/ [www.scotthyoung.com]

Thank you very much aRtey!
I will definitely check it out!!!

Might I ask, why didn't you like LearnSquared? I find it quite good myself.

Hey glitchigami! I just didn't like the way he taught and didn't think the final death star kind of thing and techniques were much useful for me but overall, I think it's just preference.

Rohan Dalvi's Floating Island series was much more fun to learn for me. Even though it's quite old and I haven't finished it yet.


Maybe it's just a problem of whether I could enjoy the learning process or not. It's quite a big thing for me if I could not enjoy it I don't really feel motivated anymore.
Maybe it's not a professional way of thinking but it's quite important for myself to be honest.

Oh, I see.
Well, I am really interested in creating procedural cities assets among other things, it is really slow for me to grasp Houdini, but I suppose that was the right course for the type of work I am aiming at.

Between Adam Swag and Rohan Dalvi, there is not so much ‘heavyweight’ known people in the industry that are willing to create elaborate learning paths.

I came across a new one by Scott Pagano (he is a pretty badass of his own), https://www.lynda.com/Houdini-tutorials/Houdini-Essential-Training/571627-2.html?srchtrk=index%3a1%0alinktypeid%3a2%0aq%3ahoudini%0apage%3a1%0as%3arelevance%0asa%3atrue%0aproducttypeid%3a2 [www.lynda.com] and it looks promissing, but the ‘overview’ video does not tell much. Maybe I'll spin up a free trial and check it out.
The good part that he is teaching H16, so no quircs with tool names, UI or whatnot.

PS - helloluxx has interesting courses by Adam Swab (the guy from learnsquared, ye), might be worth taking a look as well. Also, as much as you might not be enjoying his teaching style, this guy knows his stuff. I just remember a person on Lynda who was ‘teaching’ C4D and he basically didn't know meaning of half of the toggles in the physical camera settings. Not sure if that was funny or sad. So, for me it's important to know that I am learning from an industry pro, so for me LearnSquared is the go-to for serious ‘busting my ass’ self-education.

That is nice
I'm into L-systems now since I like making Nature scenes and found some tutorials other than the floating island series.

by sideFX
https://vimeo.com/51771303 [vimeo.com]

Houdini L-systems essentials by David Gary
https://cmivfx.com/store/51-houdini-l-system-essentials-1 [cmivfx.com]
cmivfx.com/store/55-houdini-l-system-essentials-2

Although it's quite old L-systems principle doesn't change so I thought it was very useful.

I am thinking of locking myself down on this weekend and going through Scott's tutorial. 2 days should be good to go through 8h course.

I need to work hard to get to know Houdini as well
Let's both do our best

AGREED!

I really love Houdini, but it is completley unique when it comes to doing things. The Node based System is like it's own language.

There really should be better documentation and tutorials in to doing things for people learning.

I am alsways getting stuck in simple things and trying to find information of why or how to make things work and there isn't much out there.

The help window is ok for the functions, but is not intuative to putting nodes togethor the make things work.

Would like to see more support on this, however, I am guessing that might be up to the User base, and things like How To, Youtubes and such.

The more I figure out Houdini, the more I love it!

So, making my life easier with documentation is a plus!

AMEN

@Almina, two and something years later, how's it going?

Did you manage to get over the those first hurdles?

@Dazzer123
Hey, to be honest I've been out of it for a while…
I've been making music and I've been working on Blender as well..

Now I'm back to Houdini and I've got some Houdini books as well so I'll start again and hope this time I get more deep into the software,

I've been trying to avoid VEX but it's one of the core components of Houdini that you can't avoid and I've got a whole book about just Sop and Vex so I'll try to get through the tutorials on the book and properly understand Vex.
and I hope this time I get hold of the software. I think I had to take a step back for a while…

Now there's a lot more tutorials available, and I've learned to use the same version of Houdini that the tutorial uses so I don't get confused with the changes as well..
I mean it might take a few goes before you proper get into it
But I really hope I proper understand this software this time..

I've got a friend that does Unreal Engine now as well and I help him out with rigging characters, he does a bit of coding and he told me I can ask him if I have any questions about Vex. He told me it's not as complicated as it seems.. and that there are not that many things to remember in the language so you don't have to remember a whole lot of things.
That encouraged me to give it another try as well..