I work on one of the high-end studios in Canada as a lighter. I have been wanting to learn Houdini in a production setting and my company just started training me because they're in a crunch for a film we're working, lucky me! I get to really dig into Houdini in a production setting. We're using the carbon cloth plug-in and I'm really liking it. One of the reasons I wanted to learn Houdini is because I'm working on a personal short and it has great need for cloth simulation. Now I'm confident that eventually I'll be able to tackle those shots. My question comes in regards to Carbon. When I look at their website they don't cite the price of the plug-in. We all know what that means, if you have to ask… So, is it possible to work in the same methodology, with reference,goal pose,animation meshes and build something similar in Houdini cloth? maybe not as fast but similar. I really like how using that methodology you can tackle almost any problem. Any info would be appreciated.

Sorry for offtop, but what studio are you talking exactly? I was planning to start sending my CV places in a few months )))

And I read about Carbon, but it seems like almost nobody uses it. Instead, MD is used by everybody.

Steven Quinones-Colon2
I work on one of the high-end studios in Canada as a lighter. I have been wanting to learn Houdini in a production setting and my company just started training me because they're in a crunch for a film we're working, lucky me! I get to really dig into Houdini in a production setting. We're using the carbon cloth plug-in and I'm really liking it. One of the reasons I wanted to learn Houdini is because I'm working on a personal short and it has great need for cloth simulation. Now I'm confident that eventually I'll be able to tackle those shots. My question comes in regards to Carbon. When I look at their website they don't cite the price of the plug-in. We all know what that means, if you have to ask… So, is it possible to work in the same methodology, with reference,goal pose,animation meshes and build something similar in Houdini cloth? maybe not as fast but similar. I really like how using that methodology you can tackle almost any problem. Any info would be appreciated.

don't just assume that everyone has access to Carbon, maybe if you describe more what kind of control exactly you are looking for it would be easier to relate
but one thing is for sure, with Houdini cloth you have a lot of control, from the basics like rest and target meshes, custom forces and constraints, even works with changing topology which you are in control with, however some things may require deeper Houdini knowledge than others
the speed however, is another thing, if you are spoiled by Carbon, you may not be so happy waiting for Houdini cloth

I'd add to the mix that in Houdini you have a choice of what cloth simulation you prefer - surface-style with energy in points (PBD using grains) with its performance and “vivity” or “volume” based (“volume” as in “3d space”, where mass and thus energy is distributed more realistically) using tets based FEM. And that is just today's situation.

Performance: I don't know Carbon except for some videos I saw (which did not impress me enough to dig deeper - since I am quite familiar with cloth simulations I need more cookies to wetten my appetite) - but there are cloth simulations that are specifically tailored (excuse the pun) for performance (e.g. SyFlex), even at the cost of “realistic outcome”. Because “realistic outcome” often is not what the director wants. Houdini is *not* a specialized high-performance cloth simulator.
BUT.
It is quite easy, even with a superficial understanding of how Houdini works, to iterate on simulations: Start with a rough, low poly, fast, maybe even hand-directed silhouette layer. Then paint in the areas that you want finer detail in and sim only those. Then hand-direct behavior, rig, animate, add more simulated detail.
The back-and-for, the ability to switch between cached data, animated data, simulated data and being able to transfer each one into each other is an advantage that should not be underestimated. (YES, I do agree that in production performance often tops flexibility. I am speaking here from the perspective of a 110% R&D guy!)

Marc

Thanks guys, great info all around. The way Carbon is being used is in the realistic, invisible fx kind of way, so it can be very realistic for sure. I'm sure that it can do other stuff since it's quite easy to direct. But I'm obviously not knowledgeable enough to be able to say. From the way Marc describes it Houdini cloth should be able to do the same thing, my guess is either the performance is not enough or someone really likes carbon. Sometimes it all boils down to what someone bought at any one time.

Njordy, I've work at all the major studios, and I have never heard of any of them using MD while working for them, probably because it doesn't run on Linux and I've never worked for any major studio that doesn't use Linux for their pipeline. It's always Maya, Houdini or most likely some proprietary tech they don't talk about, maybe you're thinking of games, but of course I could be wrong.

As soon as we finish this, I'm going to try and do a couple of the same shots with HoudiniFx and see how it goes. Since I want to use it for a personal project I can take a performance hit if all else is close to equal. Thanks for all the feedback guys and keep the info coming if you have an opinion.
Cheers,
Steven

P.S.
About the studio, just to be cautious since a lot of this stuff is under NDA I better not say, if we were just talking generally I would have said the name, but it's easy to figure out with just a couple of searches. ;-)

Hi Steven,

We are very supportive of personal work here at Carbon.
Get in touch and we can sort you out with a personal license to use at home.

Cheers,
Mike

Hi Njordy,

MD is often used for the garment design, but for production simulation the larger studios (using Houdini) use Carbon for the production sims of garments designed in MD. Just check out our blog - DNeg, Digital Domain, Animal Logic, Rodeo ImageEngine and others all using Carbon for simulation of cloth, fur, feathers and softbody….

Cheers,
Mike