Hey Guys,
There is all kinds of documenation in video format on SOP POPs and more if you just buy the DVDs from 3D Buzz. Volume 1 of the best of 3D Buzz is what you are looking for. It has tons of videos on Houdini so you need to get this DVD it will cost you about $50. I have written this exact statement so many times that I have stopped posting it everytime some one complains. Escape is not $14,000 its $3,000 there is a big difference. Master is $17,000 but after everything its a little more than $20,000.
http://www.3dbuzz.com/xcart/customer/product.php?productid=16&cat= [3dbuzz.com]
XSI's particles suck compared to Houdini's even at SOP POPs which is a far cry from straight POPs. Maya is better at particles than XSI but still comes no where near Houdini no matter what.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Won't be at Siggraph for the 1st Time :cry:
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Houdini Lounge » Houdini User's Guide
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Houdini Lounge » The Great Divide in CG Facilities: Adapt or Die
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey Guys,
Well I would not begin to compare Houdini and Lightwave to each other. Houdini is so much more powerful for VFX and Lightwave ever dreamed of you can not put them in the same realm. I own a full commerical copy of Lightwave 8 and I have used it commerically on some projects but I have gone over to XSI, and I am saving up money for Houdini. Lightwave does not even have a node based shading system which is really important for VFX. Also their particles are very primative at best and controlling them to any detail would require large amounts of L-scripting which would cost you more money than what it costs to buy a copy of Houdini. If you are talking Character Animation then XSI, Houdini, or Maya are better because the rigging system in Lightwave is so bad you have to buy a plugin just to actually get it to work right. Basically every package but Houdini is going to require lots of scripting for their digital assets. This means alot more people which with atot more computers and alot more software licenses. Yes you will have to pay more for a single Houdini Artist but that artist alot of times does the work of several on a production for creating custom tools and getting around the hard problems without spending alot of money to develope a custom in house tool system from scratch.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Well I would not begin to compare Houdini and Lightwave to each other. Houdini is so much more powerful for VFX and Lightwave ever dreamed of you can not put them in the same realm. I own a full commerical copy of Lightwave 8 and I have used it commerically on some projects but I have gone over to XSI, and I am saving up money for Houdini. Lightwave does not even have a node based shading system which is really important for VFX. Also their particles are very primative at best and controlling them to any detail would require large amounts of L-scripting which would cost you more money than what it costs to buy a copy of Houdini. If you are talking Character Animation then XSI, Houdini, or Maya are better because the rigging system in Lightwave is so bad you have to buy a plugin just to actually get it to work right. Basically every package but Houdini is going to require lots of scripting for their digital assets. This means alot more people which with atot more computers and alot more software licenses. Yes you will have to pay more for a single Houdini Artist but that artist alot of times does the work of several on a production for creating custom tools and getting around the hard problems without spending alot of money to develope a custom in house tool system from scratch.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » New great laptop
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey Peter,
No no do like some of the people that call into the tech help line about their mug holder being broken on their computer. They just use the CD Rom drive or the DVD drive to hold their drinks until it breaks. I mean its nice and convient the way it slides into you computer almost as if the inventor knew you would like to have a drink holder come in out of your computer. I mean what could be more convient.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
No no do like some of the people that call into the tech help line about their mug holder being broken on their computer. They just use the CD Rom drive or the DVD drive to hold their drinks until it breaks. I mean its nice and convient the way it slides into you computer almost as if the inventor knew you would like to have a drink holder come in out of your computer. I mean what could be more convient.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » New great laptop
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
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Hey Peter,
Well as far as I can tell that Dell Computer does not have an Asus Broad in it. So it should be fine. It has the NVIDIA Quadro 1400 FX Go card in it and has about 80 gigs of hard drive space. It also scored really high for the GFX speeds. Its in that linux to the Emporer Linux Rhino. The article link is the 2nd one on it.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Well as far as I can tell that Dell Computer does not have an Asus Broad in it. So it should be fine. It has the NVIDIA Quadro 1400 FX Go card in it and has about 80 gigs of hard drive space. It also scored really high for the GFX speeds. Its in that linux to the Emporer Linux Rhino. The article link is the 2nd one on it.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » New great laptop
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey JC,
JC I am not arguing that you didn't say that at all. I read that in your post. I was just wanting to know for my own personal knowledge what problems you encountered with Asus and Linux. Your post is literally the first time I had heard of it. I am not challenging the Authenticity of your statements or posts. I just personally have not run into this problem but I am always interested knowing of problems with particular hardware companies and I am always on the look out for hardware that is well made and linux compatible because it makes life sooooooo much easier like you stated. Thats why I was posting the laptops that had worked out linux solutions with them.
I like the Dell one that I posted most because you can do a dual boot on it if you want of both Linux and Windows and it is setup for Animation:
http://www.emperorlinux.com/mfgr/dell/rhino/?tab=details&id=261 [emperorlinux.com]
Here is an additional article on it.
http://www.cgnetworks.com/story_custom.php?story_id=2932&page=6 [cgnetworks.com]
Trust me I know all about the nightmares of trying to get linux on a machine and notebooks are the worst for this that was not made with Linux compatible hardware. You try and install Linux on a non-compatable notebook and you just won't be installing linux period because you will never even make it through the installation alot of times because it can't get in the working drivers.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
JC I am not arguing that you didn't say that at all. I read that in your post. I was just wanting to know for my own personal knowledge what problems you encountered with Asus and Linux. Your post is literally the first time I had heard of it. I am not challenging the Authenticity of your statements or posts. I just personally have not run into this problem but I am always interested knowing of problems with particular hardware companies and I am always on the look out for hardware that is well made and linux compatible because it makes life sooooooo much easier like you stated. Thats why I was posting the laptops that had worked out linux solutions with them.
I like the Dell one that I posted most because you can do a dual boot on it if you want of both Linux and Windows and it is setup for Animation:
http://www.emperorlinux.com/mfgr/dell/rhino/?tab=details&id=261 [emperorlinux.com]
Here is an additional article on it.
http://www.cgnetworks.com/story_custom.php?story_id=2932&page=6 [cgnetworks.com]
Trust me I know all about the nightmares of trying to get linux on a machine and notebooks are the worst for this that was not made with Linux compatible hardware. You try and install Linux on a non-compatable notebook and you just won't be installing linux period because you will never even make it through the installation alot of times because it can't get in the working drivers.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » New great laptop
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey Peter,
If you can talk them into installing a NVIDIA into this notebook then I would say you would have a pretty great notebook.
http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux-laptop-lc2464.html [linuxcertified.com]
http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux-laptop-lc2500.html [linuxcertified.com]
Linux + NVIDIA Highend Cards
http://www.emperorlinux.com/mfgr/dell/rhino/?tab=details&id=261 [emperorlinux.com]
Tons of Linux Compatible Notebooks including Asus ones.
http://www.vgcomputing.com.au/nsintro.html [vgcomputing.com.au]
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
If you can talk them into installing a NVIDIA into this notebook then I would say you would have a pretty great notebook.
http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux-laptop-lc2464.html [linuxcertified.com]
http://www.linuxcertified.com/linux-laptop-lc2500.html [linuxcertified.com]
Linux + NVIDIA Highend Cards
http://www.emperorlinux.com/mfgr/dell/rhino/?tab=details&id=261 [emperorlinux.com]
Tons of Linux Compatible Notebooks including Asus ones.
http://www.vgcomputing.com.au/nsintro.html [vgcomputing.com.au]
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » New great laptop
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey Peter,
What JC said may pertain to this notebook because Monarch Computer offers linux on 90% of their computers. Well guess what its not an option on this notebook they are selling.
http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=700015&Category_Code=Notebook [monarchcomputer.com]
Which is the very notebook you are looking at. I will hunt for some linux compatable computers. I have been on Linux for about 8 years now so I know alot of places to get linux stuff.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
What JC said may pertain to this notebook because Monarch Computer offers linux on 90% of their computers. Well guess what its not an option on this notebook they are selling.
http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=700015&Category_Code=Notebook [monarchcomputer.com]
Which is the very notebook you are looking at. I will hunt for some linux compatable computers. I have been on Linux for about 8 years now so I know alot of places to get linux stuff.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » New great laptop
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey JC,
I have never heard of their linux problems interesting. I have a Asus board in both of my computers and I have never had a problem but that is not to say that is not the case with other Asus products. What are you refering to in particular. Is there a thread that this is listed or something?
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
I have never heard of their linux problems interesting. I have a Asus board in both of my computers and I have never had a problem but that is not to say that is not the case with other Asus products. What are you refering to in particular. Is there a thread that this is listed or something?
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » New great laptop
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey Peter,
I replied to this thread ealier but it did not take. Asus makes good quality hardware. I buy their motherboards all the time for my custom built computers. They also made the best NVIDIA Game card out there that you could buy so I would defantly take a look at buying that notebook. They usally charge a bit more but their stuff is top notch.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
I replied to this thread ealier but it did not take. Asus makes good quality hardware. I buy their motherboards all the time for my custom built computers. They also made the best NVIDIA Game card out there that you could buy so I would defantly take a look at buying that notebook. They usally charge a bit more but their stuff is top notch.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » Gelato Intergration into Houdini
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey Craig,
Sorry I missunderstood you. Yeah I know future releases of Houdini are suppose to sport the new OpenGL 2.0 specification. So it will be interesting to see if Houdini 8.0 has OpenGL 2.0 implemented or if it will be the next version. Your right XSI is probably the best for OpenGL/NVIDIA Shader hardware acceleration implementation and then Maya 2nd.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Sorry I missunderstood you. Yeah I know future releases of Houdini are suppose to sport the new OpenGL 2.0 specification. So it will be interesting to see if Houdini 8.0 has OpenGL 2.0 implemented or if it will be the next version. Your right XSI is probably the best for OpenGL/NVIDIA Shader hardware acceleration implementation and then Maya 2nd.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » Gelato Intergration into Houdini
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey Craig,
Well Houdini is getting fully supported indirectly because of their Renderman Architecture. Lightwave is not supported, XSI is not, Cinema 4D is not etc. Only Maya is getting directly supported by NVIDIA. Max is having a special rendering thing done with a 3rd party studio that you have to pay for. Since Houdini allows you to create Renderman shaders directly in Vex and also export out RIBs directly you can have these converted in the Renderman Conversion Tool. Even the Mango tool plugin for Maya is just a converter for Maya files. So there is no direct Gelato Tool everything goes through a converter. The Renderman converter is free with Gelato. So the point is Houdini is supported even though it was never really meant to be directly. I don't really see a difference between Mango and the Renderman converter with regards to Houdini vs Maya other than the fact that their is a pretty interface built directly into maya because its a plugin. However I suspect that the Renderman converter has a pretty interface too. lol So there won't be a big difference in my book.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Well Houdini is getting fully supported indirectly because of their Renderman Architecture. Lightwave is not supported, XSI is not, Cinema 4D is not etc. Only Maya is getting directly supported by NVIDIA. Max is having a special rendering thing done with a 3rd party studio that you have to pay for. Since Houdini allows you to create Renderman shaders directly in Vex and also export out RIBs directly you can have these converted in the Renderman Conversion Tool. Even the Mango tool plugin for Maya is just a converter for Maya files. So there is no direct Gelato Tool everything goes through a converter. The Renderman converter is free with Gelato. So the point is Houdini is supported even though it was never really meant to be directly. I don't really see a difference between Mango and the Renderman converter with regards to Houdini vs Maya other than the fact that their is a pretty interface built directly into maya because its a plugin. However I suspect that the Renderman converter has a pretty interface too. lol So there won't be a big difference in my book.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » Gelato Intergration into Houdini
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey JC,
Yeah I don't believe them for a minute about the not being able to do a software only mode. They would just have to rewrite their modules to for the 2nd option for the software side which I suspect will be a big deal. Such a move would not reflect their focus with this product which is to troubleshoot the problems that are facing them to get film quality graphics for real time interaction within 5 years. The extra flexibility would be nice. It might make sense that when a studio upgrades the render farm they add in the cards and have a smaller farm. There is extra cost to the cards but you would not need as many computers. The math will have to be done and it will depend on the studio mostly with their pipeline. I can understand the frustration with the hardware intergration. Yeah because if you bought all these machines from a major distributor then they have all these nice hooks you have to call them up about everytime you need to upgrade or do anything for that matter so that will defantly add to your costs. So I won't be suprised if studios don't make the move until they are ready to do a full upgrade of the renderfarm computer nodes. You guys make alot of good points. I think TV, Video, and Commericals in particular will have to do something like this because time is super fast on those mediums and with HD looming within 1 year and the talk of 2k and 4k frames they pretty much don't have much of a choice to still deliver within the 1 week or 2 week time frames at fall lesser budgets.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Yeah I don't believe them for a minute about the not being able to do a software only mode. They would just have to rewrite their modules to for the 2nd option for the software side which I suspect will be a big deal. Such a move would not reflect their focus with this product which is to troubleshoot the problems that are facing them to get film quality graphics for real time interaction within 5 years. The extra flexibility would be nice. It might make sense that when a studio upgrades the render farm they add in the cards and have a smaller farm. There is extra cost to the cards but you would not need as many computers. The math will have to be done and it will depend on the studio mostly with their pipeline. I can understand the frustration with the hardware intergration. Yeah because if you bought all these machines from a major distributor then they have all these nice hooks you have to call them up about everytime you need to upgrade or do anything for that matter so that will defantly add to your costs. So I won't be suprised if studios don't make the move until they are ready to do a full upgrade of the renderfarm computer nodes. You guys make alot of good points. I think TV, Video, and Commericals in particular will have to do something like this because time is super fast on those mediums and with HD looming within 1 year and the talk of 2k and 4k frames they pretty much don't have much of a choice to still deliver within the 1 week or 2 week time frames at fall lesser budgets.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » Gelato Intergration into Houdini
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey JC,
LOL Oh no and thats why some things never line up. lol Yeah I know its more work. I am just thinking if you get a 2 to 6 times the rendering speed you save that much money in the rendering process then you have that much more money to use to fix the quirks between the two renderers and it may even be possible to setup a procedural system that solves some of these problems although some others will have to be done by hand. What I am thinking is that it might be more cost effective to do the extra work if you save on the massive amount of computing power needed to complete the final render frames. I mean you take a 2 to 6 times render time saving over a 1,000 machines and thats quite a bit of money involved there. Of course it would have to be preplanned to eleminate the problems between the two final renderers. Just food for thought.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
LOL Oh no and thats why some things never line up. lol Yeah I know its more work. I am just thinking if you get a 2 to 6 times the rendering speed you save that much money in the rendering process then you have that much more money to use to fix the quirks between the two renderers and it may even be possible to setup a procedural system that solves some of these problems although some others will have to be done by hand. What I am thinking is that it might be more cost effective to do the extra work if you save on the massive amount of computing power needed to complete the final render frames. I mean you take a 2 to 6 times render time saving over a 1,000 machines and thats quite a bit of money involved there. Of course it would have to be preplanned to eleminate the problems between the two final renderers. Just food for thought.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Technical Discussion » Houdini and Mental Ray
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey Guys N Gals,
http://www.odforce.net/wiki/index.php/MentalRaySetup [odforce.net]
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
http://www.odforce.net/wiki/index.php/MentalRaySetup [odforce.net]
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » Gelato Intergration into Houdini
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey Guys,
Well normally you are rendering in passes anyhow so whatever pass you are having problems with render it with another render and then composite them together. I know its a little more involved then that since renders don't match up exactly but still its not that bad and you can fix it in the compositing stage.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Well normally you are rendering in passes anyhow so whatever pass you are having problems with render it with another render and then composite them together. I know its a little more involved then that since renders don't match up exactly but still its not that bad and you can fix it in the compositing stage.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » Houdini Books
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey Cylibral,
Can you provide the links to the books from DD and ILM. No I am the only Houdini artist that I know of in Atlanta. Also I am the only XSI artist in Atlanta too it seems. Lots and lots of Max people. Then there are the Maya people mostly thanks to Fathom studios. Then there is the Lightwave group which is smaller. Then there is me for the XSI, Houdini, ZBrush, etc, etc, etc. Shed a tear. Unless I can get something built up here in Atlanta I will probably leave GA once I finish my 2nd Degree at Georgia Tech in Artifical Intelligence. I am also considering the Master Track at SCAD for VFX. You have to go down to Sahavana though you can not do it from the Atlanta branch right now. Are you at NYU? I always kind of wanted to go there but did not have the money.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Can you provide the links to the books from DD and ILM. No I am the only Houdini artist that I know of in Atlanta. Also I am the only XSI artist in Atlanta too it seems. Lots and lots of Max people. Then there are the Maya people mostly thanks to Fathom studios. Then there is the Lightwave group which is smaller. Then there is me for the XSI, Houdini, ZBrush, etc, etc, etc. Shed a tear. Unless I can get something built up here in Atlanta I will probably leave GA once I finish my 2nd Degree at Georgia Tech in Artifical Intelligence. I am also considering the Master Track at SCAD for VFX. You have to go down to Sahavana though you can not do it from the Atlanta branch right now. Are you at NYU? I always kind of wanted to go there but did not have the money.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » Gelato Intergration into Houdini
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey Guys N Gals,
Can I use it with Maya? Is there a Maya plug-in available?
Yes. Gelato comes with MangoTM, a plug-in to Alias Maya modeling and animation package that allows Maya users to render their scenes with Gelato. Mango permits artists to use the Maya GUI to select the attributes for Gelato shaders and then converts the Maya outputs to a Python (pyg) file that Gelato can read. Mango is included with the Gelato software at no additional charge.
What about other DCC applications, like 3ds max or Softimage?
Frantic Films has created a 3ds max plug-in for Gelato called Amaretto. It should be available for sale soon. When it is, we'll have information available on this site. For our part, NVIDIA will focus its efforts on improving the Mango plug-in for Maya and and will not be creating plug-ins for other modeling and animation applications, but we encourage third party developers. To assist others in developing tools and plug-ins for Gelato, we have created a developer program. Details are at http://film.nvidia.com/page/gelato_developers.html. [film.nvidia.com]
More info on the Gelato Mango Plugin that is just a converter for Gelato. I don't how much of a difference there is between the Mango converter and the Renderman converter other than the fact that it is just easier. Additional Info on this.
http://film.nvidia.com/docs/CP/4825/Gelato_product_overview.pdf [film.nvidia.com]
Yeah George your FX1100 will work fine according to NVIDIA's papers. Also you want to run it on linux. I think you have to emulate linux shell on windows or something like that in order to run it on windows. I have not tested it out so I won't say for certain. I can't test it out myself because I have a Quadro 980 XGL card which is not compatable with this solution.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Can I use it with Maya? Is there a Maya plug-in available?
Yes. Gelato comes with MangoTM, a plug-in to Alias Maya modeling and animation package that allows Maya users to render their scenes with Gelato. Mango permits artists to use the Maya GUI to select the attributes for Gelato shaders and then converts the Maya outputs to a Python (pyg) file that Gelato can read. Mango is included with the Gelato software at no additional charge.
What about other DCC applications, like 3ds max or Softimage?
Frantic Films has created a 3ds max plug-in for Gelato called Amaretto. It should be available for sale soon. When it is, we'll have information available on this site. For our part, NVIDIA will focus its efforts on improving the Mango plug-in for Maya and and will not be creating plug-ins for other modeling and animation applications, but we encourage third party developers. To assist others in developing tools and plug-ins for Gelato, we have created a developer program. Details are at http://film.nvidia.com/page/gelato_developers.html. [film.nvidia.com]
More info on the Gelato Mango Plugin that is just a converter for Gelato. I don't how much of a difference there is between the Mango converter and the Renderman converter other than the fact that it is just easier. Additional Info on this.
http://film.nvidia.com/docs/CP/4825/Gelato_product_overview.pdf [film.nvidia.com]
Yeah George your FX1100 will work fine according to NVIDIA's papers. Also you want to run it on linux. I think you have to emulate linux shell on windows or something like that in order to run it on windows. I have not tested it out so I won't say for certain. I can't test it out myself because I have a Quadro 980 XGL card which is not compatable with this solution.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » Kill Zone 2 Particles done with Houdini?
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey Arctor,
Thanks for the info. I know Valve is using Houdini for their VFX in their games now so I was just wondering.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Thanks for the info. I know Valve is using Houdini for their VFX in their games now so I was just wondering.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » Gelato Intergration into Houdini
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey Suvo,
Your right you do have to have a NVIDIA card but its any Quadro FX series cards. Just the higherend cards was true a while back. There have been updates though so that they even work with an NVIDIA 500 Quadro FX card. They actually have a converter for RIB files and they also convert Renderman Shaders to Gelato shaders. So create your scene save it out as a RIB and create Renderman Shaders through VEX and then save them out and convert them with NVIDIA's convert Renderman RIBs and Shaders to Gelato Scene files and shaders. This converter is free.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Your right you do have to have a NVIDIA card but its any Quadro FX series cards. Just the higherend cards was true a while back. There have been updates though so that they even work with an NVIDIA 500 Quadro FX card. They actually have a converter for RIB files and they also convert Renderman Shaders to Gelato shaders. So create your scene save it out as a RIB and create Renderman Shaders through VEX and then save them out and convert them with NVIDIA's convert Renderman RIBs and Shaders to Gelato Scene files and shaders. This converter is free.
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Houdini Lounge » Kill Zone 2 Particles done with Houdini?
- MatrixNAN
- 405 posts
- Offline
Hey Guys,
Does anyone know if the particles in this game were done with Houdini or not? http://www.gametrailers.com/gamepage.php?id=1668 [gametrailers.com]
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
Does anyone know if the particles in this game were done with Houdini or not? http://www.gametrailers.com/gamepage.php?id=1668 [gametrailers.com]
Cheers,
Nate Nesler
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