I used xsi for character animation only ,and is there someone can tell me
which one are more easy to make comlex character animation, houdini, maya or xsi?
and I can't find a way like motion mixer in houdini.

All three are more than capable of very complex character animation. You need to find out which works best for you.

In Houdini the motion mixer is called CHOPS, (The button that says “Motion and Audio”)

Hey,

Well I can not speak for XSI since I dont know the app. I do know maya however. I would say houdini is more power than maya for the chops. I dont think maya's nonlinear animation is very strong and houdini's is quite strong. You can build entire plugins to manage systems of manipulation with nothing more than expressions in houdini. Thats not something you can do in maya. In maya you have to break out MEL or Maya SDK which for the most part is still largly MEL embedded in Maya SDK. The 3 things maya has that Houdini does not on character animation is fur, cloth, and influence objects. Houdini has something close to influence objects in the way of metaballs. However they are not as flexable as Mayas Infulence object. To do fur in houdini you have to use particle lines emitting from an objects surface go to www.odforce.net gallery and you still see the fur example I am talking about. This is fine if you do not have to stylize the hair. Then for cloth you can use a spring sop. They have training videos on the Spring SOP method on www.3DBuzz.com Houdini Course only. Houdini has a better bone system than maya. They can key nonlinear animation as linear and then manipulate it more easily. In houdini 6.1 you can transfer rigs from one like character to the next. Mind you I did not say exactly they just have to be somewhat the same form. They also have a make muscles OP that allows you to choose how much fat you put in the skin of the character. All the muscles move and are rigged so that they follow a medically acurate representation of the human body. You simply grab a tube primative and say make arm. It is also auto rigged for you. This feature is still in developement. There are more things in Houdini along the line of character animation and the things you can do quickly become very lenghty. So I think you will have to explore the new world of houdini to answer your question totally. You might endup more than likely animating in Houdini for your character then exporting the animation over to XSI and doing the fur and cloth in that program. Since they are both very procedural XSI would probably handle the animation done in Houdini better than Maya. Check out Martian Labs they should be quite useful to you. They can also write custom plugins for you needs if you like.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

hi, can you tell me a way to export houdini's animation data into maya?
great thanks.!

Maya to Houdini I don't know about how to do Houdini to Maya.

Hey,

Here is how to do Maya or Softimage to Houdini Its called Martin Glue. You can't go from Houdini to Maya or Softimage that way. They may have to write a custom plugin for you if you want that. http://martian-labs.com/product_index.html [martian-labs.com]

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

Hey,

Ok here is your anwser. How to go from Houdini to Maya and also how to go from Maya to Houdini and its a free solution. I don't know how perfect it is or what the limitations are.

http://www.odforce.net/tips/h2m.htm [odforce.net]

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

thanks. hope houdini can make fur and cloth easiler