amm
khosea
What is in Maya modeling that cant be done in HOudini in equal time if you know both of them? How you achieve your set goal is up to you. Another thing that sort of bipped on my radar, is the technical learning curve in H. Im no stranger to this,nodal systems are very incoporated in our craft, and they are the building blocks of almost all serious software. There is a special way of thinking in HOudini I suppose, and I want to explore that, because during the summer I will be looking for work. Cheers everybody!!!
I've played with that Houdini ws Maya modeling question recently, here's visual conclusion [www.matkovic.com]. Full thread on odForce is here [forums.odforce.net]. I'm not a student, I'm switching from 10 years of Softimage. At least from that point of view, I think this is unhappy, somehow mad comparison between extremes. While Maya theoretically can go procedural, in practice that's unbelievable hard because of tons of exposed, not so relevant parameters (intermediate objects,separated transform-shape, whatever), while one still has to dig into jumble of nodes just to change resolution of some primitive if there's deformer alive on top. After all, Maya is only software on planet, where basic controls over operator (create, inspect, edit, reorder, disable, delete) are dispersed over several windows, and not even consistent. In short, no hope for competitive proceduralism in Maya as it is today.
On Houdini side, it was pretty much linear, comfortable experience to ‘take’ a nodal, indirect part of Houdini, after Softimage ICE experience. While with Houdini ‘direct’ modeling, I found another, unseen madness, tools changing behavior by own criteria (move tool that became tweak tool by own decision), ‘faked’ solutions like ‘surface distance’ proportional tool based on normals ( Ok that one is fixed in 16.5), and, and… at some point just decided to forget Houdini ‘direct’ part, for greater good.
So at the end day, for hard surface polygon modeling, choice is 3d Studio Max or Blender if Max is not possible. Not because groundbreaking possibilities of any of two - it's mainly because of good direct-indirect balance (tweaking ws modifiers) and predictable, consistent workflow, *without* too much of handles, radial menus, ctrl+shift+alt+space+…, glowing lines in viewports and such BS. For NurbS and more real output, these days, Autodesk Fusion 360 is king - has usable construction history (contrary to Rhino), has strong filleting-blending engine *and* subd style modeling presented by former T-spline plugin. Price is great, too.
Houdini (Indie) still stands for experiments and for what McNistor described as ‘alien patterns’, well I'm huge fan of them.
Anyway, if you're already in Houdini world, IMO requirement on your side is, I'd call it a ‘positive attitude toward basics of applied math in 3d apps, and programming’. You definitively don't need to be programmer or math wizard - but there should be something to keep the motivation. If you liked to play with abacus or Japanese multiplication method as a kid, that's good start. Otherwise I don't know…. Of course there's huge improvement in Houdini's direct modeling in short time between v13 and v16, however, ‘indirect’ part is a several times stronger.
That was a very sophisticated and a very interesting comparison reasoning and actually a pretty sound message. I have a hard time consuming everything because of my lack of knowledge, buut I put it in my memory, and whenever I come across some of it again in the future I learn. I like your examples, pretty cool technique of modifying curves and it did open my eye to some more advanced simulations in my brain. I think that I will try Houdini, and see where it takes me. The question at the end is, for example, what the studio I will be working at says. If you are a freelancer working from home, that is not a problem because you can use any tool to achieve the goal and do modeling in the app you prefer. But at a studio, I will have to adjust to what the company uses. Maya is very widespread as far as I know, but to ask them get Houdini for concepting, I dont know, I dont have that experience yet to say what will happen. Houdini is coming up according to many, and they, like you say, do increase the modeling comfortability, and that is a good thing. Im entangled in many choices, but I need to make one, very soon. (No I didnt play with japanese multiplication table, but my mom took me to cinema all the time. Japanese movies included.)