Hi Guys,

I only relatively recently bought the Apprentice HD edition. So my general question is - like the recent intro to Houdini 9 from digital tutors is their any plans for a similar training product on Character Animation with Houdini 9?

Cheers
Aidan

Do you mean character animation or character rigging (or both)?

I'm just hypothesizing, but I think one of the reasons that no one has really developed character animation training content is because the information is so readily accessible, and fairly universal for all the apps. Keyframes are keyframes, poses are poses, character motion theory, etc. That being said it would still be nice I think, I think more people should think of Houdini for character animation.

Character rigging in Houdini I've found is very different from the other apps. There's auto-rig, muscles, and a much better hirarchy and scripting enviornment (not to mention CHOPs with rigs).

There's a few auto-rig videos on the tutorials section of this website, I also recall some older rigging videos for H6 which are probably still mostly valid.

Hi Andrew,

Yip I mean a tute on the whole process - bones/rigging, skinning and then animating IN HOUDINI. By the latter I mean - yes alot of apps do Character Animation, but each has its own Idiosyncrasies. Things like how best to do a walk cycle in houdini? How best to avoid foot slippage? how the character is best made to react with the floor - so it does not go through the floor while animating.

I see the potential for a project based video tutorial set on the practicalities of Character Animation relevant to Houdini. I dont think such a thing exists yet. This also - as you said to uncover Char Anim in Houdini a bit more, particularly for us relative newbs ( to Houdini, not necessarily 3D ).

Char Anim tools and proceedures are more in focus now, I see this in other apps. I have extensively doodled with such things in recent Blender releases - since the release of the open movie “Elephant Dream”, Blender Char Anim tools in the Action Editor and the NLA have steadily improved to give solid results. Also in general 3D forums people are constantly shouting that XSI is the top app for Char Anim.

Would be nice to see Houdini rowing in here, a good start - some tutes by video me thinks.

As a slight aside I created 5 camtasia vids on rigging, skinning etc in Blender for the MODO community. I was asked. As Modo does not have Char Anim tools YET, one can animate in another app and then import the Char Anim ‘movements’ via .MDD into Modo and apply to the model there. Modo - since v301 - now has timeline. These tutes are at this thread, just as an illustration:

http://forums.luxology.com/discussion/topic.aspx?id=23095 [forums.luxology.com]

Scroll down the page for 5 different vids. All done in about 2-3 hours, no script admittedly, so a few hums and haa's,

Cheers
Aidan

I am also interested to know if there is any Houdini 9 tutorial for facial rig.
Thanks!

tutorials for:

facial animation +real time phoneme in houdini
poses in houdini
cloth on a character
fur and hair

dynamics and characters (foot and the floor)

light effect like: electricity lightbeams glows storms …


I buy directly

In this segment, you will learn how to pose Houdini's default Toon character asset. You will learn how to work with the character controls and also how to use Channel Groups and the Channel List to help with the posing. This segment will also take a quick look at some Houdini 9.1 enhancements that support this workflow

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1180&Itemid=241 [sidefx.com]

Robert

Robert, thank you for the toon character tutorial. I look forward to the walk cycle tutorial and anything else you care to do on character animation.

Sheena

with 9.1 and this its Christmas in Houdini land 8)

thanks a lot

Robert,

Thanks for that link to the toon tute.

Does this tute have a look at the rigging and skinning side of things in Houdini also?

Cheers
Aidan

I would keep your eye on the Technical Directors course being created by 3DBUZZ. They have not said for sure but I would be very surprised if that is not included.

I gone through the auto rig tutorials for Houdini 9. They are very informative and practical. I wonder if there will be some rigging tutoirals shows us how to modify the bones on top of the existing auto rig tool. So that, we could use the auto rig tool to create a monster with 6 legs and 20 heads………

I think Houdini got the potential to be the best character tool but just a lot of the things are still hidden so the beginners cannot learn it quickly. If more tutorials and examples about characters are provided , the animators can concentrate more on the acting of the characters instead of spending too much time on the technical matter.

…ah, muscles in Houdini are present for two years at least, if not longer, but there is still no training concerning these tools.

Autodesk bought cMuscles few months ago… here you have digital-tutors comprehensive guide to Maya Muscles.

There are months after realising H9, and we still wait for training that concerns most of Houdini's new features. I mean *training - not one time example.

It's very frustrating for someone who promised to introduce Houdini in a studio and was obligated to train number of newbies and prepare the work flow.

There is such an annoying habit in big studios of doing making-of for every shot made by an artist. This is his duty on the same basis as finishing shot itself. Maybe SESI should force developers in the same way.

You wrote the code. Write some docs about it! Ok, little joke here. I can hear already number of voices: “We don't want them bothering with docs! It will take them time for development of a new features.” (or making old one usable)

The question is what is the worth of a tools that nobody knows how to use?
I wrote it already somewhere here: I really enjoy reading HOM introductory page. It looks like a personal notes during development. And because of this - although HOM reference is full of holes like a French cheese - I not lost in HOM at least.

This also reminds me old Shake documentation, which was written in a very cool, personal way. Like a development notebook.

I'd love to read notebook of someone who wrote photons code in Mantra for example. After a week now I'm still in a hell.

sy.

SYmek
…ah, muscles in Houdini are present for two years at least, if not longer, but there is still no training concerning these tools.
Autodesk bought cMuscles few months ago… here you have digital-tutors comprehensive guide to Maya Muscles.
There are months after realising H9, and we still wait for training that concerns most of Houdini's new features. I mean *training - not one time example.
It's very frustrating for someone who promised to introduce Houdini in a studio and was obligated to train number of newbies and prepare the work flow.

I do hope SESI get their act together when it comes to character features. Because it seems to me there is a deeper problem here, and that is the attention the character tools is getting from SESI. For a long time it looks like a love-hate relationship. They seem to implement the character features (because they have to) but they don't seem at all enthusiastic about those, about documenting them and being attentive to studios' needs.
There is no way a 3D package can compete with the established players (Maya, XSI) without a constantly evolving and documented character toolset. This is doubly true when we talk about small shops which try to simplify their workflow.

Dragos

I just went through the video on the blog"
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1180&Itemid=241 [sidefx.com] "
It is very good! I hope a lot more will come! This would absolutely save users time to figure out everything by ourselves. So animators or artist can concentrate on their creativities……

I hope some facial rig and auto rig (with different combination of no. of arms and legs) videos will come very soon!

I am learning Houdini 9's character tool. It shows better taste when I am using Houdini.

The thing I like about muscles right now is how basic they are. I'd be all for more muscle docs as well, but I recall a few muscle videos for version 8 that got me most of the way there.

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=554&Itemid=263 [sidefx.com]

However, I agree with the wish-list on odforce that there needs to be a unified capture system of some sort; as long as it makes things more basic and not more complicated.

Too much evolution too quickly can easily date a technology or feature. Take biped in max for instance, red-hot for a while and now it's a piece of junk compared to say motion builder (IMO), which will probably be a peice of junk in 5 years.

But, so many people and projects are still using biped it that it's basically impossible to take it out or even update it properly.

I would think Houdini should naturally have a more gradual feature-and-product life cycle because it's procedural nature allows users to fill in the gaps and adapt to trends.