I'm struggling to make sense of the Houdini pricing.

If you buy Select you get Modeling | Lighting | Animation for $1299 / £745. If you go for Escape you also get Character | Lighting extra for $1999 / £1146 and if you want compositing you can buy Halo which adds up to $2999 / £1999. Fine.

But what I can't understand is the sense in having to buy Master at $17000 £9744 to use the Particle and Dynamics system of Houdini. Even the lowest application out there have some form of particles and Dynamics. If you add up the price of Escape and Halo it comes to $4998 / £2865. So does this mean that Sidefx believe that their Particle Dynamic system is worth approx. $12000 / £6870? Is their Dynamics system worth this amount of money?

Can anyone explain the idea behind the pricing? Even if I was a billionaire I wouldn't spend $12000 / £6870 on Dynamic and particle simulation. I could use Maya for $1999 / £1700 or Real flow for $1200 /£688.

Surly I've misunderstood something here.

Slave1

I'd say download the apprentice edition and try out the POPs (particles) and DOPs (dynamics ops).

slave1
Surly I've misunderstood something here.

Master is geared more toward a studio environment, whereas Escape, Halo and Select are aimed at solo artists or at studios who also have Master licenses.

Besides getting “POPs and DOPs” you also get a non-graphical token of Houdini so you can working on one computer while another computer is running hscripts or generating IFD. Plus you also get RenderMan/Mental Ray output with Houdini Master.

slave1
Can anyone explain the idea behind the pricing? Even if I was a billionaire I wouldn't spend $12000 / £6870 on Dynamic and particle simulation. I could use Maya for $1999 / £1700 or Real flow for $1200 /£688.

If Maya and Houdini were identical packages with just different names, then yes, the pricing would quite silly.

I wonder if they ever concidered having another package that was just POPs, DOPs and CHOPs?

Simon
I wonder if they ever concidered having another package that was just POPs, DOPs and CHOPs?

What they should do is charge $1000 for the UI/hscript…then the rest is ala carte. The Network OPs, (Chop Network, Rop Network), would cost $1000. Then each additional OP you want would cost $100.


1 x $1000 : for the UI
+ 9 x $1000 : for the Network OPs.
+ ~1000 x $100 : for the OPs.
___________________________
$20,000

:wink:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=5234 [sidefx.com]

nothing more to say..,

And you can do Particles with Houdini Escape. It is called the “Particle SOP” and it was what gave Houdini a great reputation for Particles before Houdini 2.5 when POPs was released.

It is a little cumbersome and limiting compared to POPs but you can still do cool stuff with it and if you know Houdini there is still a lot of control that you have over the particles compared to things like Maya. (You can do a lot of crazy things in SOP-land!)

Also, don't forget the Spring SOP and CHOPs that are in Houdini Escape. Using a combination of the Spring SOP, Blend SOPs, and CHOPs you can do some decent simulations that look like complicated dynamics but are far faster and more controllable. Houdini Escape doesn't have the full complement of CHOPs, but it still has quite a bit of useful stuff in there.

Houdini Escape is a great bargain, and you should learn what it can do in the right hands before you count it out.

Remember that Houdini Master is much cheaper than paying for a TD to write you Maya Mel scripts and Plug-ins so you can use Maya in a real production environment that really compares to the efficiency and power of Houdini Master and it's workflow. Also, with Maya you have to also buy compositing software and render tokens for your render farm to really compare it to what Houdini Master gives you. Once you do that Houdini ends up being cheaper!

But I do wish I could get Master for my personal license without all the extras (like render tokens, etc., HDK, etc.) that I don't use at home for a cheaper price. Right now I own Houdini Escape and Fusion (for compositing) and may contemplate purchasing the Syflex PlugIn for cloth dynamics if the price ever comes down. If I could cheaply add just POPs and DOPs to my Escape license, that would be great. But if I ever get the chance to do a larger project at home that would finance it, I would go Houdini Master all the way.

Also, remember you can lease Houdini Master for short periods. Learn on Apprentice, buy Escape for most work and then when you need it- lease Master. It can work out quite nicely without breaking your budget.

-Craig

…that's interesting. Do you know the price for leasing Houdini Master?

No- you would have to check with Side Effects on this.

-Craig

This is my idea.

Add POPs and DOPs to Escape in a node locked version and call it PILOT.

Then pitch the price at $3999

• Houdini Select $1299 USD
• Houdini Escape $1999 USD
• Houdini Pilot $3999 USD
• Houdini Halo $2999 USD
• Houdini Master $17000 USD

Having just looked at this, I can see what a bargin Master is at $17000. If you where to add up my idea of Houdini Pilot' to Halo and then times that by ten seats in your studio enviroment $17K is a lot cheaper than $70K.

Hope this is a constructive idea to anyone of you guys at Sidefx, if you just so happen to be browsiing this forum.

Any other ideas anyone? Please to hear more feed back. Hope I'm not being silly.

Slave1

Its funny, everyone is always asking for software prices to drop.

No one ever asks, “Hey SESI can you raise the price of Master $5000 in order to fund new research? Try to implement new technologies which haven't been requested by customers but may be become the ‘next best thing’. Or hire some new programmers & documentation staff.”

Maya as a package seem to stop coming out with new innovate technologies ever since they did their big price drop. Instead of trying out new technologies they are just purchasing/bundling other vendor's software instead of rolling their own. XSI is doing the same thing.

Both use Mental Ray as the main renderer, Syflex is bundled. The packages are slowly becoming the same core with different interfaces.

I don't know. Lower prices can be a good thing in the short term…but in the long term they can cause more damage.

In part i am with wolfwood, drop prices is a very agressive marketing strategy to gain market.
I think that one needs to be in his place no where other wants to pull you.
Maya can drop the prices because they have a great market, nevertheless see tha last maya releases, how many improvements?
I believe that the only modification in Houdini prices i would do would be to put the Render Plus appart, so we can have a master version without mental ray or renderman support, because many people want to use POPs, DOPs or CHOPs but with Mantra, they don't need renderman or mental ray, but if you want to use them you have to buy the render plus too.

I didn't say anything in my last POST about lowering Prices. Infact I pointed out that if you where to buy the hypothetical PILOT, a Studio would pay MORE because PILOT would be node locked meaning they would need to buy more seats per person. If they bought MASTER they would save themselfs a lot of money. All the prices are the same.

Compard with the past, Sidefx have already lowed their prices along with the curent market. In fact I would suspect that Sidefx would be out of business if they hadn't come up with lower prices. Which incidentally is a major point; that you get the best value for money over the competition in terms of features per Dollar.

I believe a version without HALO intergrated but with POPs and DOPs for $3999 would complete the line up nicely and give all users a fair and balanced opportunity to purchase as well as make Sidefx more money for R&D.

You've not read my post properly!

Goodness; I'm begining to sound like Tony Blair!

Slave 1 :roll:

Pilot + Halo is pretty much equal to Houdini Master but for $10,000 less.

Plus, node locked licensing is almost never a “good” thing. Its a huge pain if you are a single person and you need to upgrade your workstation from time to time. In a studio environment its even worse because it adds an additional layer of support/management for the system administrators.

I like the idea of a “Pilot” sort of option that was proposed above.

I own Escape (and another package for compositing) at home for personal projects and freelance (if I ever get the time), but would like Pops and Dops and can't afford the extra $15K to get them unless I get a big freelance project or inheritance or something. I don't want RenderMan or Mental Ray support or unlimited render nodes or the HDK or any of the extras.

To me, the more people that use POPs and DOPs that are freelancers or smaller studios, the more work that will be done and seen with Houdini and the more sales of Houdini Master will occur as people see the capabilities and expand and want unlimited Render Nodes, etc.

A nodelocked Houdini “Pilot” at $5K (or even $7K) would look really attractive to people who want an option to Maya/Realflow/Syflex, etc. I can replace Halo with things like Combustion, Shake, After Effects, or Fusion and have additional compositing capabilities like tracking and compatibility with all standard movie formats (unlike Halo- although I still prefer COPs for many things), but nothing else compares to Pops and Dops. I think a lot of small studios and freelancers would jump at a more limited version of Houdini that was below $10K but still did 99% of what they want Houdini for.

-Craig

you can do a fair bit of particle type stuff without pops anyway, plenty of scope for manipulating points..dont know about particle streams, not tried.. but i`d be inerested to see if it was possible, but certainly using scatter and point sops you can conour up explosions and clouds and the like.
what about feedback loops?
and are vop sop definitions available in the non master editions?

Actually, with a scatter sop and vex sop (vop), you can practically do massive amount of “particles” in Houdini. Typically anything that doesn't require collision, you can get away with not needing to use POPs.

True, I made a point about the Particle SOP being quite powerful in another posting, but really this is about DOPs. Without cloth dynamics as part of an affordable package, you just aren't going to get many people using Houdini for character work. And the ability to do decent character work is what sells most 3D animation packages.

I know the Syflex plug-in is an option, which is the route I would have to go if I started doing more character stuff at home, but I can always dream that there will be an affordable Houdini alternative…

Cheers,
Craig