I'm under impression that Houdini is the pinnacle of achievement when it comes to performance. Is there any other software that comes to your mind that performs as well as Houdini or at least comes close to it? I imagine that even scientific simulations in Fortran wouldn't be as fast.

trueSpace from Caligari Corporation

Librarian
trueSpace from Caligari Corporation

oh wow, haven't heard that one before. Was it 'softimaged' by Microsoft? Shame...

The question though was about anything that still IS there

Unreal Engine

s88ng
Unreal Engine

lol no

dankray
I'm under impression that Houdini is the pinnacle of achievement when it comes to performance.

Hmmm no. Some things are faster than in other apps, some aren't. What are you referring to in particular? Mantra as a render engine is pretty slow compared to its peers. Even Karma is not quite as spiffy as other render engines. When it comes to terrain, Gaia is faster at achieving complex terrains than the current Houdini heightmaps. When it comes to pyro simulation Embergen sims are pretty damn fast. Viewport performance? Even that isn't close to what you can achieve in Clarisse.

So no, your impression is incorrect.

Where Houdini's strength lies is in combining all of these capabilities under one platform, and delivering a node-based procedural workflow that no one else in the industry has been able to achieve.

Midphase
>>Kays

All valid points. I was mostly referring to SOPs as this is what I am using most often in Houdini. Geometry modeling in Houdini is that pinnacle I was referring to. My impression was that the way it represents model data is unprecedently tuned for performance.

Librarian
trueSpace from Caligari Corporation

Actually, POV ray blowup Mantra

"Where Houdini's strength lies is in combining all of these capabilities under one platform, and delivering a node-based procedural workflow that no one else in the industry has been able to achieve."

This is totally correct. Also today keyword is speed speed... Ok, I like that too!
But what about non-compromise quality? All these techs used algorithms to fake your eye's perception as much as possible, at some point

Im sorry but as far as I love GPU FX simulation, Unreal or other reel time engine, it comes with limitations and compromises which for some high demanding directors or clients will not be enough. In this case, what will do with your Unreal Sky/cloud or FX sim, even env if som request you received is out of reach of Unreal or GPU simulation software? In Houdini, there is always ground for improvement and build-up to the next level. Best will be a two-way bridge where I could by using USD format use Unreal's strength and being able to also export enough data I need to keep going in Houdini or other DCC

vinyvince
But what about non-compromise quality? All these techs used algorithms to fake your eye's perception as much as possible, at some point

We work in an industry that's based on smoke and mirrors. I'm all for shortcuts as long as the end product is believable by the audience's standards. Far too many times we get bogged down in technical accuracy, and we also tend to assume that the audience is made up of VFX professionals.

I'm not suggesting to phone it in, but merely saying that it's the end result that matters, and there are many efficient ways to make the sausage.

Ian Hubert is someone who has really challenged my view on what exactly constitutes realism and how to go about achieving it. He uses every cheap trick in the book to get there but the end results speak for themselves.

fair enough, I should have qualified my question - I'm interested in Houdini's performance in geometry modeling to 'proceduralize' some of the tasks that would bog down other, less performant programs. I realize that VFX pipeline is crazy complicated and Houdini isn't the pinnacle for compositing, polymodeling and others, but when it comes to SOPS... man, it's so good (is my impression).

When it comes to all the things that Houdini excels at, modeling isn't exactly what pops in my head.

If you're mostly referring to the ability to quickly iterate instances of geometry on points in order to create abstract or non abstract type of images -- sure, the copy to points and the further ability to refine which points to copy to is well implemented. Also the procedural aspect of being able to quickly modify and customize geometry can be very powerful, although I find that a great deal of VEX is required in order to achieve a true procedural pipeline in most cases.

Modeling as far as manipulating geometry to shape it into a desired object, or creature on the other hand is still frustratingly clunky compared to just about everything else out there. There are 3rd party add-ons such as the HDA by Alexey Vanzhula which can help with hard-surface type of results and some mild sculpting, as well as some additional SideFX LABS tools that can also assist with hard-surface modeling. However compared to the tools offered by Maya, Blender or Z-Brush, particularly for organic modeling, Houdini lags far behind unfortunately.

As I posted on my YouTube channel recently, apps shouldn't demand a monogamous relationship. I find myself switching back and forth between Houdini, Blender and other apps more and more frequently in order to get what I need to get done. I often find myself wishing for a way to somehow pick the very best of what each DCC can offer and combine them into an ideal single app -- unfortunately that is mere fantasy at this point in time.

dankray

s88ng
Unreal Engine

lol no

lol ye

s88ng

dankray

s88ng
Unreal Engine

lol no

lol ye

lol how? blueprints are all single-threaded

dankray

s88ng

dankray

s88ng
Unreal Engine

lol no

lol ye

lol how? blueprints are all single-threaded

i don't remember original post saying anything about any metric whatsoever, let alone threading of BPs
so yeah. UE for me

s88ng
threading of BPs

I mean UE looks nice, UE5 just amazing, but "scripting" in UE is more optimized for flexibility not performance, I mean not even close Hou

I get what you are saying, but the initial question was about general performance, or being under impression of having great performance.

So you could agree that you can run and fool around in a fully lit and shaded environment with more performance than you would do in Houdini. I am not pointing fingers or whatnot, just telling my personal experience with the engine. For what it does well, it's performant in my cases. The before-mentioned use-case was an example.

s88ng
initial question

yeah, I really should have put more effort into explaining this question. True and honestly I can't wait for UE5 release. Level of detail on their demo was mind-bobbling.

At any rate, many manipulations in UE can be done using GPU at shader level, i find it more efficient to work in such way (with limitations and such, thats not the point). Imagine VOPs running on shaders in SOP, rather than being computed by CPU and be geometry-time? One can dream.

s88ng
Imagine VOPs running on shaders in SOP

Have you looked into the OpenCL node? It lets you write and run "kernels" on GPU (and other devices). It came in handy once, when I had to "grow" selection of points on a large point cloud.

What else, in all fairness I'm team UE when it comes to comparisons with Unity, because Epic Games didn't settle for C#, but thread the good ol' C++ way. Didn't bring this up, because it's not as easy to pick up as Houdini's VOPs, but I imagine that a lot of optimization could be done there.