Hey,

I was wondering if it would be possible in the next release of Houdini -> Houdini 6.2 to have the Mental Ray shading in the Escape and Select versions. I am sure people would like to see RenderMan too. I have a very good reason for this. Maya, Softimage, and 3D Studios Max as of version 6 will all have Mental Ray standard with their animation suite. Although Mantra is an awesome render and I do love it, it is not standard compliant plugin to other animation software however Mental Ray is. Therefore, it would be possible for us as a small studio to work on shading in mulitple packages and all renderout to the same rendering system for very little money. RenderMan is great but it is too expensive for the small studios to put in place. Mental Ray is affordable for us. Would it be possible for SideFx to put Mental Ray in the next Houdini Version for Select and Escape. I know Master has Mental Ray but it is 17,000 and our little studio can not afford it and we don't need all that power for just doing medical and previs architecture contracts.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

Just an idea but if you're really on the cheap, perhaps you could just bring everything into Select for rendering in Mantra.

Yes, that would be great. I really don't understand why RenderMan and MentalRay support is available only in the most expensive Houdini option. I think many studios with already established pipelines around RMan or MRay could (and would) use Houdini Select (or Escape, but is it really available??) along Maya or XSI but they can't integrate it in their pipelines, and they don't want to bother with yet another renderer.

Hey,

Yes we could bring everything in to Mantra Houdini or we could bring it into Maya or Max which will all have Mental Ray. But if we use Houdini Select with Mantra that means only one person can do the shading as opposed to 3. If we bring it into Say maya then we can use Max and Maya to do the shading with mental ray. That gets us 2 people out of 3 working on shading. Now if Houdini Select were to support Mental Ray we would buy it and Ditch Lightwave and then all 3 of us could work on shading. Otherwise its an added expense that I am have a very difficult time justifying at the moment. However if they did have the mental ray I could justify it. The fact of the matter is I can get SILO for $109 and it does booleans properly every time. We tried about 20 booleans in a row as a test and it never did break. We have continued to test it along these lines so its perfect for doing hard edged Architecture forms. The shading is useless. For organic plants we are going to use XFrog. Its only $239 I believe. So … Its a matter of economics for the best tool for the particular problem in the pipeline with the least hassel. Because if people have to spend alot of time trying to figure out who to get around some bug in a program then it costs us more money. Houdini is something we are defantly going to do if we get a TV commerical. We are looking at Game contracts very soon but Escape is not out yet and master is too expensive for just games. Select we would probably do though. Still we really do need Mental Ray functionality in Select and in the future Escape.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler

How do you find Houdini for architectural modelling?

At the architectural office where I work, I use 3ds Vis and I have used max for 4 years so I am really comfortable with it and can model Architecture with it quickly and accurately. I am looking to get my own software to do other freelancing and want to buy Houdini select but don’t know how well it goes for architectural modelling, and shading. My major hurdle is I don’t have the 4 year of experience with it so it would be a set back. But Houdini is what I want to know like the back of my hand the real question is can I make a living with it between now and when I am a FX demon…. :?

I too came from architectural modeling in VIZ/MAX. I gave it a go in Houdini, trying window features, etc. (nothing too scarey ) All together I found that it was way too excessive for such work.
I did find that the modular aproach that houdini uses was very friendly towards those that would have a large geo lib. Handy if you are at the final production end of a job rather than a CAD monkey.
XSI is a great modeller but I never really use any other part of it now. an ideal would be to have the XSI modeller with the VEX, CHOPS and COPS of Houdini.
IMHO mantra is sh*te out of the box, and would be far more comfortable with m-ray as an intro to houdini. I'm sure that most of you were pretty unimpressed with the first test-render they did with mantra, but then were shocked to see how deep it is after all.

well I was hoping to make reuse able model control systems in houdini for faster more advance modeling and whip out jobs quicker. It would be easy to then type in the exact window size and boom that window would be constructed through the node system. It would require some scripting and creating some not too difficult chains of nodes but once you made one window type you could use that as the base node system for all the others and the same goes for doors and what not. It would allow for a better return on investement and help stream line the production pipeline. Basically use the node system to create like a class system with inheritance the way they do programming C++. It that was kind of my idea. Plus I feel comfortable with Houdini. I also started on 3DS.

Cheers,
Nate Nesler