Swann_
Houdini is a more TD tool, and TD makes tools for artists. If you choosed Houdini that means that you understand that nobody will do tools for you and you have to roll everything on you own.

I don't believe that is SESI's current position on the matter.

However, rather than having artists engage in an interesting conversation on how to improve tools that clearly need improvement based on any simple examination of the market, I seem to have stirred up some sort of hornets nest of people who believe Houdini is perfect as is and requires no further enhancement.

SESI has made it clear that they intend to provide artist tools. So I'm contributing to THAT conversation. So maybe someone would be kind enough to contribute to the topic rather than merely taking the position that artist tools are not needed.

I agree with you, Houdini needs enhancements, like any other 3d package on market. This is more like tool with possibilities rather than ‘out of box package’. Indeed within houdini updates you get more and more presets and whole 'shelf tool' is helping hand for ‘artistic’ users.

Maybe they haven't created enough presets for all of their tools but I think that this is more up to you, to learn this software, rather then start just by complaining on lack of tools that it might have by default.
I believe that more you get into Houdini, the more you understand its position.

Houdini is most intuitive tool on market I have ever seen, with best user manual and millions of examples. Unfortunately at this moment, rest is up to you and not SESI

hat's a good point.

I wonder what my producer will choose when faced with these two options.

Option 1: have an artist open up maya, spend two days grooming and render amazing looking fur.

Option 2: hire a Houdini TD team to work for three months designing a fur system that works. Then have an artists spend two days grooming and render amazing looking fur.

The fact that you CAN roll your own is one of Houdini's amazing strengths. But you shouldn't HAVE TO roll your own just to get something that looks decent.

Good luck with that , Maya may make nice presets for static spheres but as far as being usable out of the box in a production , your going to have a rude awakening. Unless that is, all your clients want are static spheres …..

r

tmdag, I am confused. If you agree that Houdini needs enhancement, then what is the problem with me requesting enhancement? I apologize that I have given the impression that I am just beginning to learn Houdini. That is not the case.

To clarify one point again, I am not just asking for presets.

As to complaining, I don't believe that has happened anywhere in the thread, at least not on my part. As I have said twice, I am trying to open a discussion that will allow artists to contribute toward the enhancement of a toolset that needs enhancment. I started the discussion with a concrete example demonstrating some simple and supportable facts. So I'm a little mystified by the defensive nature of some comments. Surely we are all professionals here, with enough film production experience to understand that software improvement is evolutionary and requires input and requests from the people who use the software in real-world professional production environments. That's where I'm coming from. I am definitely not trolling, not a Maya Zealot and not trying to hurt anyone's feelings by insulting Houdini.

But the remark that Houdini is the most intuitive tool on the market would be met with laughter by the people in my company, which includes some uber experienced Houdini users who are mature enough to recognize there is a long way to go before the software becomes as intuitive as most other tools out there, regardless of it's current power in the hands of a skilled TD.

As a user who depends on his software to deliver millions of dollars in product to a client, the position “the rest is up to you and not SESI” is just not fiscally viable. If SESI were to adopt this attitude, Houdini would diminish in the industry, rather than growing.

It looked like a troll thread indeed. You have started with some out of box ball like you would use houdini for a first time in your life and ask for samples how to setup a furry ball.

I agree that fur needs enhancement with fur tools, like for eg. ‘shave and haircut’ has. At this moment combing hairs is just setting up normal vector angle for guides (within other packages you have more precise combing posibilities). etc….

but this is another case and this thread doesn't look like it would be about that particular problems.
As I understand, You don't know houdini fur tool so how you can ask about enhancing it? what particular tool you would like to enhance ?


I am sorry but still this looks like a troll thread.

tmdag
I agree, as so I think that Houdini is not the best software for getting project out of box without knowing how to use it.

It's probably pretty tough to get anything done without knowing how to use the software, that's for sure.

tmdag
I am sorry but still this looks like a troll thread.

Sorry, I just don't understand how you get that. Perhaps if we could all politely and courteously engage in the discussion instead of being so defensive, it might not feel trollish to you anymore.

lor
Sorry, I just don't understand how you get that.

That is why I wrote my explanation in previous post.


and once again - this thread started by getting nice fur balls out of box and now is about enhancing fur tool, but what particular node you would like to enhance than (if you not mean presets) ?

circusmonkey
Good luck with that , Maya may make nice presets for static spheres but as far as being usable out of the box in a production , your going to have a rude awakening. Unless that is, all your clients want are static spheres …..

r

That's just silly, Rob. Really? After hundreds of films and thousands of shots using fur out of Maya/PRMan that looks photoreal? Really? I'd like to see Houdini/Mantra accomplish this, but the tools are just not currently up to it. All I'm asking is for SESI's attention to developing in this direction.

Honestly guys, I don't see what everyone is getting so upset about.

tmdag, you just seem to be spoiling for a fight. I'm not going there, sorry dude. I'll take my requests where there's a little more courtesy and open-mindedness.

Nick

no, I am not spoiling for fight and I think that this is reasonable question to ask.
You haven't answered to any of my questions in previous two posts and I am not asking to argue, and I don't understand why you avoid answering to them.

At this moment I think that I'm totally lost here - what EXACTLY You want to achieve then, what kind of tool, enhancement of what node ?



If In your opinion I wrote something rude, I am sorry. First of all I am trying to figure out what You are up to ?

My understanding of where Lor is coming from is this: he was just recently posting about this on the Beta forum, where the spirit of such suggestions are considered good discussion points and a genuine desire to find and eliminate weak points in the package. In the beta-testing mentality, it certainly does not ring like a troll thread, at least to me. The beta forum is now closed (locked) and he is wanting to continue the discussion in the open forum.

I certainly think you all have good points - yes you will always have to roll your own for any serious project, and yes, there should be a better starting point in the form of good presets, defaults and creation tools. These things do not conflict with each other. Yes, some have better bang for the buck with respect to the development time that would be committed to them but all these fronts could definitely stand waves of improvement.

Just what those should be is what I think Lor is getting at, here. Rob Magee at Side Effects is probably listening closely to what people expect to get out of the box - he is a very concerned about the (perceived) difficulty and learning curve issues that Houdini traditionally presents.

I agree that Houdini needs some more tools for ‘visual’ workflow, that helps you shape furs better (I am not talking about painting weights for bending/twisting of guide hair and so on).

But I think that setting up a fur ball in few minutes for comparsion is also not a good way.
Of course, maya might have some more intuitive tools that helps you set this up but personally I never used fur before (just little bit sasquatch on lightwave many years ago that in my opinion was really bad also because of lack of interaction etc). I am also not a hardcore Houdini user and in very short period I was able to get some nice results with Fur:
http://vimeo.com/11593476 [vimeo.com]
http://vimeo.com/11586083 [vimeo.com]
(of course I have decided to recreate fur tool rather then using shelf one - mainly for learning purposes, later or for better control)

After Few fur projects I have done I see the lack of control I would like to have (like I've said in top of this post).
Many tools may be done in-house (as I've called them presets) and some tools should be done by sidefx for more intuitive workflow with fur.


At this moment I could say totally same thing about sasquatch - just fire up Lightwave and set up something cool in few minutes… I think that either the way - you should learn a tool a bit before you say something wrong about it. It's not a toolset with out of box functionality, it is quite complex piece of software delivered with big user manual.

Also without getting into the tool you would probably expect functionality of tool you where using before.

Tell for eg. a Modo user to fire up Zbrush and Maya for first time and ask him to model something. I think that result would be the same. And it doesn't mean that Zbrush needs enhancement, maybe it is just a user that needs different way of thinking than he had before.

maybe Sesi is changing their way of thinking but I always fought that Houdini power is because you CAN DO IT rather then You can get it out of box. I mean, there is nothing bad with having more ‘out of box’ solutions but first, get to know with your tool. I have been using Cinema4D, Lightwave, Maya, Modo within commercial projects for a long time and none of them is a ‘out of box’ solution. It is just a way of thinking that you are getting used to and expect same functionality from other package.

This is just a big thought, my opinion and not a fight.

tmdag
I agree that fur needs enhancement with fur tools, like for eg. ‘shave and haircut’ has. At this moment combing hairs is just setting up normal vector angle for guides (within other packages you have more precise combing posibilities). etc….

Have you seen some of the new tools that in H11. Paint Bend, Paint Bend Noise, Paint Twist, Paint Twist Noise, Paint Thickness, Paint Frizz Frequency, Paint Frizz Roughness. Plus You can now scatter guide hairs across the skin geometry instead of positioning them only on the points.

There is more but i dont want to cut and paste too much.

lor: I understand exactly where you coming from. I guess the Houdini community would class me as an artist. Someone who isnt technically minded (its ok, i can take it ). Sometimes i come up against a problem that requires some tech know-how and normally i look into the documentation and try and find a solution, or think about how to solve the problem.

Houdini has made me more technically savvy but i agree it should always reach out to the artist as well.

They do this without compromising the core app. The new fur tools (which is what i used to quickly create the beard) are great and something i have been asking for a long time. I know, they could have solved it in a second with a closed system but instead they find ways to not only solve problems for artist but its open for everyone to see how they did it. If you look you can see how they constructed the new and old tools.

Fur rendering solution in my eyes need sample files to help us understand what is required to get good results, because clogging it up with presets will have to touch the fur tools and the rendering and lighting tools and then you getting carried away with catering to one particular request and H will become quite unbalanced. But then again, fur rendering is a matter of artist skills and choice and thats why in my eyes tutorials and sample files would be serve you. As having a button in mantra “optimized for fur” would seem out of the blue.

One area H does have presets is in L-systems, this was a good place to do this because it didnt need to interact with any other sub-system just the l-system node. Especially since one has to understand who Lindenmayer system work.

As for using my beard, really i spent 30 minutes last night using the different fur tools (Density, Comb, Bend, Clump, Length, Frizz i could have used more) and as you can see I didnt do anything special with the rendering.

Just take you time, which i know may be asking alot but especially with fur, it wont take that long to get upto speed.

Swann_

lor
Possibilities don't help me get shots finalled on time. Tools that enable artists to create great images fast help me get shots finalled on time.

Houdini is a more TD tool, and TD makes tools for artists. If you choosed Houdini that means that you understand that nobody will do tools for you and you have to roll everything on you own.

bingo

phrenzy84
Have you seen some of the new tools that in H11. Paint Bend, Paint Bend Noise, Paint Twist, Paint Twist Noise, Paint Thickness, Paint Frizz Frequency, Paint Frizz Roughness. Plus You can now scatter guide hairs across the skin geometry instead of positioning them only on the points.

There is more but i dont want to cut and paste too much.

Yes I have seen it and I have been using for a while on beta but this is not what I was looking for. Like I said I'm not talking about painting weights for bending attribute (that just bends in all directions) but rather comb bending that would bend in direction of your choice, comb that let you shape long hairs (long guides) etc etc.

hi
ok, having done a fair amount of fur work, specifically in Houdini i will add to this

fur grooming is not great at all, you spend all your time trying to groom around the roots, where somewhere like XSi or from what i've seen in modo you can groom at tip level!
this is a area that i think SESI should fix, it's really unintuitive to try groom quickly at root level

for rendering, micropoly is the best solution, this unfortunately pushes us into the “old school” area of using deepshadows, and loose the ability to have things like secondary bounces, ok so we could probably (as a large studio) implement some tools to use point clouds or something,
but in my opinion there's a slow shift away from spending hours baking out countless bits of information before we can even get to render.

so my hope is that at some point i can do PBR renders with furry creatures, because from some of the tests iv'e done, man the renders are pretty, you just need a few thousand cpu's, which we don't have…

jason
ps. here's a job we did a while back using micropoly, i lit and rendered the mice, cat and queens coat, we also rendered some of these for print, looked pretty cool
http://vimeo.com/11554574 [vimeo.com]

tmdag
Yes I have seen it and I have been using for a while on beta but this is not what I was looking for. Like I said I'm not talking about painting weights for bending attribute (that just bends in all directions) but rather comb bending that would bend in direction of your choice, comb that let you shape long hairs (long guides) etc etc.

Well from what ive found, when you comb the normals and then paint bend, it bends in the direction your painted the normal. So you can bend in the direction you want just comb the normals first.

But in terms of long hair, i dont think it can be achieved using the current toolset. Maybe with lots of practice but we will have to see.

Andy boyd pulled of a commercial with a guy's hair blowing in the wind but for semi-static hair I think a new solution might be needed.

Jason, Modo's hair grooming system is one of the best ive ever seen. I agree controlling mid-point and tip control is what is needed here not at the root level as you say.

But this would completely change the fur tools completely… maybe they might need to go down this road though if they really want to make the tool the best it could be.

Maybe the fur tools are just that though, for fur. Maybe a hair system for long hair might be required because for short to mid-length fur i cant really argue the flexibility. The hair solution though, maybe something emulating like http://www.cyberradiance.com/hairfarm/ [cyberradiance.com] might also be a decent method long hair.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1NbQkP6dmg [youtube.com]

With all these fur tools that are new in H11 what's missing or does not work . Are you comparing to a workflow from another application because you find working in a Houdini way to hard or impossible.

micropoly is the best solution, this unfortunately pushes us into the “old school” area of using deepshadows, and loose the ability to have things like secondary bounces, ok so we could probably (as a large studio) implement some tools to use point clouds or something

Do you know of an example movie where the old school technique has not been used ? Id love to check it out .

rob

Sorry guys, but I agree with lor 100%
i don't know about maya-fur, but i can say that Cinema 4d Hair and Fur can 200 times faster to render…

I don't like Houdini Fur system…