In case you didn't heard of it yet…


http://cmivfx.com/product_houdini_fundamentals.asp [cmivfx.com]

( as before, the dvd came out on our sever before i could prepare a little speech. lol.. thanks

Hi everybody.

We bridged the gap!
A warm hello to all the new users of Houdini. This video is for them!
The old users know us already, i know they always want more of advanced stuff…
But with the H9 boom, everybody wants to learn Houdini! We couldn't leave the growing community of beginners on the side. We have to please everybody!
Everybody has to discover this wonderful, marvellous, mind-blowing, brillant, killer, ahead-of-its-time-since-the-beginning… application
And beginners won't always stay beginners anyway: so we had to bridge the gap left before our advanced dvd AND set the first stone of a comprehensive and unified Houdini training.
That's finally done with the release of our new DVD called : Houdini Fundamentals ( AND the sequel will be released in 1-2 weeks!
http://cmivfx.com/product_houdini_fundamentals.asp [cmivfx.com]

That's it! Learn Houdini from the ground up, setting some solid foundations and leaving no holes usually left by manual discovery, with no questions unanswered.
So that now ALL users will be able to follow our DVDs about Procedural Modeling of Cities, VEX and l-systems. A great learning experience in perspective.

http://cmivfx.com/product_houdini_cities.asp [cmivfx.com]
http://cmivfx.com/product_houdini_lsystems1.asp [cmivfx.com]
http://cmivfx.com/product_houdini_lsystems2.asp [cmivfx.com]
http://cmivfx.com/product_houdini_vex1.asp [cmivfx.com]
http://cmivfx.com/product_houdini_vex2.asp [cmivfx.com]

Since the workflow between h8 and h9 hasn't changed on Cities and L-system topics ( with the only thing that now we can write shader overrides differently), do you think it's worth upgrading the video, just “cosmetically”? Do you, users, really want that? It would maybe take some unnecessary time that should be put on something else? It depends. We're all ears on that.

David

Salut frenchOp,

Felicitations pour ton travail! J'ai vu tes 2 videos sur VEX et je les trouve excellente.
Je pense que tu passes un peu vite sur les pre-requis en math ( Une video consacree aux maths dans le contexte de houdini serait une bonne chose…manipulations d'intervalles, vecteurs, matrices, barycentres, fonctions log et exp, et des pistes de travail pour approfondir… ).

Je suis aussi impatient de voir une video sur la generation de textures procedurales!

Juste par curiosite tu bosses en france? Avec Houdini?
Pour ce qui me concerne J'aimerai trouver un contexte de travail qui integre Houdini (prospective/amenagement/simulation/education )….mais c'est pas evident en france.

A quand un petit meeting des utilisateurs francais!

Salut La Buzz,

Juste pour ne pas ennuyer trop les lecteurs, je te réponds en français par mail ou private message, d'ac?
a+

-d

My mail:

borhan.berthetAROBASEdbmail.com

A+

I have purchased 4 of the 5 advanced training videos from CMIVFX over the last year. I don't think its necessary for the existing training videos to be remade for new users, especially now that there is a lot of beginner level material now (Digital tutors, 3d buzz classroom, and now CMI Houdini fundamentals). If a user is advanced enough to follow the tutorials, he should be able to figure out the minor differences between H8 and H9.

If CMI VFX wants to update it though, you could release a document along with the video that explains the specific differences that users may encounter.

I really hope to see more videos covering the aspects of Houdini that so many advanced users still aren't clear about!!

The most awesome thing about the CMIVFX houdini training, is that it includes so many facets of houdini in the lessons. The Lsystems training includes NURBS, sprite creation and rendering, capturing pen pressure and curve creation with CHOPS, and so much more. I was a beginner first watching these videos, and they were something that I have watched many times now, and learned new things every time!

Hey Josh3light,
Your point is interesting for two things.
It's true that users who are advanced enough are also advanced enough not to mind at all the cosmetic differences, which are really unimportant!
Cosmetic matters are just for the very beginning.
Actually our idea has been to create a h8->h9 video patch free for the owners of the dvd and the new buyers. I think we'll do that.

It's good to know that, as a beginner, you followed the advanced video, and even if you didn't remember everything the first time, it made it something you regularly came back to.

It's the same thing with books that i buy for CG, they are here to be read over and over again, and not just one time, like the Advanced Renderman when i started or now the Matt Pharr's PBR ( even if i know that i will probably never have to write a renderer myself, the book is a goldmine to understand what's going on under the hood when you hit the render button, so i guess that, in many ways, it's nopb to have some material ahead of your current level, that keeps you motivated to go always further).

About Lsystem 2, you're right, it was maybe the DVD the most about that: about this thing where you've got a pb, you've got a toolset and you have to find some tools to solve the pb which can come from virtually everywhere in Houdini ( which is what Houdini's mainly about when you use it). Actually, as i was doing it, i felt “oh, but this is not just about l-systems, it's about device-driven CHOPs, sprites, non-photorealistic rendering, it's not going to be a classic DVD anymore on just one topic - cos pure l-systems were already covered in Lsys1” - but that's also very good like that i guess
Once you know the bricks very well, there's still this biggest part ahead of you, and the most interesting IMO, where you have to combine them, and the possibilities there are endless. Seeing that is what keeps us all excited everyday i think!

-d

I've been thinking about getting the PBR book myself. It seems to be an issue that many users are not clear on.

I've watched the first half of “Houdini Fundamentals” and so far the quality is good - Gary has done an excellent job explaining the philosophy behind Houdini and the general workflow. If you're a total newbie, don't worry if Gary does not explain all shortcuts he uses at the beginning (like p to bring up the properties window) - he explains them later.

Thanks for your feedback,
As for the way it's presented. Yep, my approach is teaching the “inside” first and then the “outside” which is actually its consequence.
For several reasons

-The “core” of Houdini is one of the most simple there is ( if you compare to maya's hypergraph), the internal structure is really clear, that's why you're already in it when you work ( i called that “the interface IS the Core” in the video)

-You'll have to know the inside anyway! Instead of having a 2/3-passes approach ( which imply to destroy and rebuild your neural connections, lol) let's just have 1 big pass.
- This way people feel then that's there's nothing hidden ( that is psychologically important to “feel the ground underneath” when you apprehend something new), you get more confident. Less surprises, you know what to expect.

and yeah, for instance, once you've understood how you can use the viewport as a network navigator, you understand why there is a Ghost Other Objects button, that's why the buttons comes after, shelves included!

Hello David,
I'm thinking about getting the new DvDs, I'm actually getting the brand new tank tutorial 100% sure. But, I'm still wondering about the fundamental one.
I already did the book Magic of houdini, Digital tutors Intro to H9 and Intro to Dynamics., your L-System-1 Tutorials and a couple of 3D buzz tuts as well. I'm starting to really get Houdini's concepts. Do you think I should still give a shot at the fundamental DVD, at first glance it seems I could still learn a little bit from it. But I'm thinking maybe doing the Tank tutorial would be enough…what do you think?

Thanks for the new releases!!

Another great dvd ! This is the sort of thing I would like to see covered in future cmi vfx dvds

http://hosok2.com/project/worm/worm.html [hosok2.com]

A few months ago, while I was watching some other CMIVFX titles, I noticed that you could see how much the player has cached (in dark gray color on top of the light gray timeline). Now I don't see that. Did something change?
Also, if I leave the player to cache for a few minutes and then drag the time slider too far it automatically rewinds and restarts the video from the beginning. That has to be fixed - let it go back to the last cached frame, don't rewind it.

From what I can see is that Player doesn't cache at all - or just a few seconds. Well, can't be sure, but this is how it works in my case. For a few weeks recently player was crashing my Firefox to death. Now it doesn't cache.

If this is true, I could understand the “hidden” logic of that, but it simply stops me from watching stuff I bought and force me to consider of buying anything comes in future.

It seems that my 512mbit/s internet is too low for cmivfx expectation. Maybe cmivfx should at least put that info on a first page…


sy.

JR:
If you feel that there's some things unclear about groups, attributes, you can use it, but of course the Fundamentals video is more intended to bridge the gap there is before the advanced videos:
It all depends on how easily you feel you've already followed the advanced stuff. Since i don't know the other items ( DT or book) to compare, i cannot really say.


Whalerider/SYmek:
As i said at odforce, since i'm not the specialist of the player, if you have questions/pbs about the video streaming: please don't hesitate to contact Chris at Cmivfx: chris@cmivfx.com or chris@cmistudios.com.
( The player has been tested on crappy internet connections, if there are some issues, i don't think they're related to the bandwith.)


The player constantly improves, you indeed refer to two stages of its development.

A MAJOR upgrade of the player is coming within the month, with chapter markers, bookmarks and more.

-d

… and Chris sent me this i put here :

Hello everyone in houdini land:


We are upgrading our player over the next few weeks before NAB show.

We found an od in a matter of speaking. Some rare units will have performance issues. This is highly due to our custom code to detect hardware for playing back.

We have repaired this problem in a beta system. We will be offering some short beta testing before the show… but ultimately.. current users will notice the following changes one day:

- New UI Design (Based on user feedback and future expandability of features)
- Chapter Markers (that is correct, jump right to the chapter you want without needing to scrub the play head)
- User Book Marks (If you have section you would like to come back to… you can leave a marker at that spot now)
- Performance Enhancements (Major improvements with compatibility. )

All of our test units have always been working during player releases.. but some of our clients, including big studios, helped us design the system for internal uses on all sort of operating systems.

Some of you will get some free products for testing. its al based on bug tracking.

We all cant wait to see what you think about the new system.

-chris maynard

I am on a 4 Mbit connection and after i let it cache for a few minutes (by starting it and pausing it) i can jump to any point.

Back to the DVD - finished watching it and am glad to see that the second half is quite good as well. Proceduralism just looks easy when David Gary does the roller coaster ride project (there is no screenshot of it on the website, but it's mentioned under Understand Procedural Selections). I'm not a Houdini noob, but am glad that I bought the DVD.

whalerider: interesting, so it's worth getting it even if you already know houdini…

well, i'm am not an expert, but i am not a total beginner either.
i learned a few tricks.

for non-beginners - look at the website and decide for yourselves whether u need it or not.