I work with this guy who's an old-hat with Houdini. This is our second company in a row working together, and while on the last Maya-based project I didn't have a lot of time to think about other packages, I'm at a point now where I want to find something that works better for me and Houdini is very, very appealing.
I have a few questions I was wondering if folks could answer for me. Keep in mind I'm a total noob. I know Maya, LW, C4D, and Blender, but Houdini is a different animal.
- Do Houdini node networks push data, or pull? IE, do nodes at the top calculate first and then send data downstream (a la C4D's XPresso), or do nodes downstream ask upstream nodes for their data (a la Maya)?
- How are nodes cached? If I jump out of SOP level into the object level, and none of the parameters are animated in my SOP network are changed, can I assume the mesh is cached at the final displayed SOP and the one at the object level is kind of frozen, so that the nodes inside aren't calculating live?
- Lastly, I'm trying to watch some tutorials (3D Buzz's stuff is amazing – can't believe they have so much up for free!) and it seems like sometimes people are referencing parameters at levels upstream or downstream through expressions would cause cycle errors in Maya. I can't remember the name… There was a function that they ran that referenced a parameter by name. How does all that work? Does Houdini avoid cycle errors through magic, or are the networks non-acyclic (pushing data as opposed to DAG-style data pulling), or do those parameters get stored in a way that put them outside the graph?
That was a mouthful. Thanks in advance for any light you can shine on the above.
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