I'm learning Houdini and I found some problems to make it difficult.
(1)Huge Difference between versions
Each version of Houdini changed a lot. When new users follow the tutorials, they require to spend much time to search other materials to figure out what the difference and how to do in new version.

(2) Help didn't good enough (Or I miss it, please tell me.)
Search the difference in Help. It doesn't have enough information about the change.

(3)Tools in the shelves
These tools are designed for saving time, but they always confused me after they are created in the network pane. When you try to understand each node, I think it is not easy to make sense in short time. Spending time and doing research become the common tasks in learning Houdini. In fact, using them is just for understanding how they work together. After I understood, I didn't use them anymore. I like to build them manually. It's more clear to me. Bad Tutorials are just teaching The shelf tools and showing off, and no explanation about how they work in details.

In fact, Learning Houdini requires Google, Forums, and people.
Thanks all who help me.

Hope users can share your experience for who are learning Houdini.

Thank you

Tony

A bicycle also takes time to learn to ride. Some things are worth putting in the effort. Or should all bicycle come with three wheels?

Yeah, I agree.

Huge Difference between versions is good, it just means Houdini is young and keep growing.

yup it takes a certain caliber person to make the Houdini grade …..

Rob

Yes ,I agree with you too , Learning Houdini is harder than others like Maya.

I Always said Houdini is pretty like to programming languages , Just It's visual and you should write your tool with Nodes , And this is cool feature that Bold Houdini against other software !


All of the programmers need to use Google , Sites , Forums and etc , Because they can remember all of the commands and this is not defect of the programming languages , Houdini is like this !

example :

Suppose you have two rendering engine , one of them has some many standard materials like Metallic , Plastic , Wood , Glass , Mirror and Silver and the other only has too many small nodes that you should build your own material with them.

It's obvious that learning and working with first one is so simpler ,You can create a project with beautiful materials very quickly .

About other you should learn too many small nodes and merge them for creating only a simple material

But if you wanna create a very customized material , you can only use second one !

Most of the nodes in the Houdini are opened and you can edit them to create another customized node like Shelf Tools.

Because of this attribute , you can do anything in the Houdini .


So if you learn Houdini , You don't need for waiting to release a new plug-in for your special goal from companies , You can do it with powerful nodes of the Houdini ! :wink:

Also don't worry about new versions with too many different !
Houdini's grammar and language is usually same in any versions , You should just have too many practice and watch too many tutorials for learning this grammar , After that every things are logical for you :wink:

Agreed, it's worth learning to ride a bicycle, but as a metaphor Houdini is more like learning to ride an interstellar starship with N'th dimensional navigation ; which is also good to learn.

Also Houdini makes you learn to love mathematics, which is truly eye opening.

if you use houdini like you use maya. youll be better of with maya.

its the same argument with nuke and ae

you get more control, but you get obligated to be smarter which is a good thing.

basically you get more possibility, and responsibility

Oh - and if you go back to Max or Maya after a few months messing and learning in Houdini; it feels like travelling to Harry Harrison's ‘Death World’…..

I've learned the procedural modeling. It's amazing to go back to fix the shape or the relationship between the different objects. For example, changing the thickness. If the history was deleted, there is no chance to adjust the thickness in Maya. Houdini can integrate all together to make fantastic jobs without any plugins like NUKE.

Thank you all.

btw, I believe houdini help is the best.
max and xsi help is good. and maya… well, for me there is no problem but for some people, maya help is really terrible.
you just need to use search in houdini document. then you will notice houdini's search is very useful, not like max or maya's

If you have good knowledge of Maths and Physics plus passion and want to work your on way then Houdini is for you. It's best of them all. Here you have not rely on default solvers, you can create your own. There is always workflow changes with major releases that make sense that SESI updated something which worth to buy it not like those companies who just chang logo and color with no major update every year.

mostly people that come to houdini is because they want more, and they cant stand the idea that maya is the only or best solution out there.

but when they try to learn the package they still expect to behave and have the same UI, tools etc… than maya.

i have 2 friends that comes from other industry that is not CG, they didnt struggle at all. they had a hard time trying to learn maya after houdini, and they comment was, “why maya does it like this?” they didnt have a pre conception on how the package have to behave, or the idea of “ARGG i have to relearn another package.”

is true,there is more information and tutorials for maya than houdini, but slowly changing, now with cmivfx, vimeo. but i found the houdini comunity more responsive than others.

pelos
i have 2 friends that comes from other industry that is not CG, they didnt struggle at all. they had a hard time trying to learn maya after houdini, and they comment was, “why maya does it like this?” they didnt have a pre conception on how the package have to behave, or the idea of “ARGG i have to relearn another package.”

is true,there is more information and tutorials for maya than houdini, but slowly changing, now with cmivfx, vimeo. but i found the houdini comunity more responsive than others.

My first 3d app that I learned was Houdini. My first compositing app that I learned had nodes (Fusion). When I finally started to learning texturing, I done it in a node based app (Substance Designer). I can't stand Maya no matter how hard I tried. I'm not trying anymore. I feel in this app like if someone would cut my arms and legs and than said to me “now you can swim faster because you have more streamlined shape”.

I can work with apps that are not node based, but they have to have really human friendly workflow. I picked Blender, Modo, Cinema4D, Zbrush, Mudbox - each in one day without any problems and I can find usage for each of those apps. While I'm in Maya I just stare on the screen trying to figure out for what this application could be useful. Maybe if I was animator I would understand Maya? But I'm not.