Hi. I'm currently an XSI user, with little bits of experience in Maya, Max and Lightwave.
I've been experimenting a tiny bit with the Apprentice program of Houdini. I want to ask: Does Houdini offer enough for me to devote time away from my usual work and get to know Houdini more?
Full Version: What does Houdini offer me?
This is one of those open-ended questions that can result in endless, rambling open-ended responses, so I'll try to keep mine short and sweet:
1. Maximum flexibility for changes. Number one with a bullet with Houdini since day one, since it's the only truly procedural package out there.
2. Far, far better access to the “back doors”.
3. Faster, better prototyping of approaches, once you learn the package fairly well.
4. A better, faster understanding of the whole visual FX process, should you want to learn it.
There's other reasons, but really, I don't tell everyone they've *got* to drop what they're using to use another software package. Try it…if it appeals to you, you like the flexibility, use it!
Cheers,
J.C.
1. Maximum flexibility for changes. Number one with a bullet with Houdini since day one, since it's the only truly procedural package out there.
2. Far, far better access to the “back doors”.
3. Faster, better prototyping of approaches, once you learn the package fairly well.
4. A better, faster understanding of the whole visual FX process, should you want to learn it.
There's other reasons, but really, I don't tell everyone they've *got* to drop what they're using to use another software package. Try it…if it appeals to you, you like the flexibility, use it!
Cheers,
J.C.
I have to add one more thing. If you're a technical person, then you should most definately give houdini a try. It might be hard the first time you use it, that's because it has a totally different approach on how to do things since everything is procedural. I've seen people giving up way too early on houdini and it's a pity, because once you get the basic understanding, the possibilities grow exponentially. It's very flexible and gives you total control on almost everything without having to script everything. The cool thing about houdini is that you almost don't need to look for tools to achieve what you want, you can make your own tools. So again, if you're technical, go for it
Actually, I respectfully disagree with the last post.
I think Houdini is for you if you are NOT technical (but want to do things other than the simple canned things other packages give you). Can you imagine having to write all the MEL scripts to do some of the things you can EASILY do in Houdini?!? To me, scripting and plug-in writing is technical. People seem to forget this when a production says “We did this in Maya!” - yeah with a team of programmers…
To be honest, I am fairly technical, but I find Maya almost impossible to do half the stuff I want to do in Visual Effects work that isn't a simple push button canned effect. With Houdini it is pretty fast and simple. And now that I have learned Houdini's character tools, I find trying to learn Maya's fairly complicated and inflexible and restricting.
Plus in reality, production is about re-do's and making changes easily and managing work from several different people and bringing it all together. Houdini does these things WAY better than any other package.
Let's face it- Houdini is a little weird compared to other packages and it does take some more in-depth understanding of 3D to use, but once you get the hang of it, the whole package opens up to you since it is very consistent with itself and it isn't buried in confusing nested menus. In my opinion, if you are a CG professional and know how you would like to approach a problem if given the option to using a different tact, then you are technical enough for Houdini.
-Craig
I think Houdini is for you if you are NOT technical (but want to do things other than the simple canned things other packages give you). Can you imagine having to write all the MEL scripts to do some of the things you can EASILY do in Houdini?!? To me, scripting and plug-in writing is technical. People seem to forget this when a production says “We did this in Maya!” - yeah with a team of programmers…
To be honest, I am fairly technical, but I find Maya almost impossible to do half the stuff I want to do in Visual Effects work that isn't a simple push button canned effect. With Houdini it is pretty fast and simple. And now that I have learned Houdini's character tools, I find trying to learn Maya's fairly complicated and inflexible and restricting.
Plus in reality, production is about re-do's and making changes easily and managing work from several different people and bringing it all together. Houdini does these things WAY better than any other package.
Let's face it- Houdini is a little weird compared to other packages and it does take some more in-depth understanding of 3D to use, but once you get the hang of it, the whole package opens up to you since it is very consistent with itself and it isn't buried in confusing nested menus. In my opinion, if you are a CG professional and know how you would like to approach a problem if given the option to using a different tact, then you are technical enough for Houdini.
-Craig
I perfectly agree with you. It is indeed easier to achieve nice effects in houdini where the nodes replace all the coding that would be needed by other packages. What I meant by technical was, anything that include effects and procedural TD work.
I have to say though that I find coding in VEX not as accessible as MEL. It's a lot easier to code in MEL, but a lot harder to get into the core of maya without having to use C.
I have to say though that I find coding in VEX not as accessible as MEL. It's a lot easier to code in MEL, but a lot harder to get into the core of maya without having to use C.
VEX and MEL are completely different beasts, designed to be very different things. VEX is meant for high-speed process of input data and is not a general-purpose scripting language.
Animating an object along its normals through a noise field is as simple as one line like:
P += N * noise( set(P.x,P.y,P.z,time) );
I doubt MEL or anything else could be as simple. HScript is more like the equivalent of MEL but is more based off a shell-scripting syntax than MEL's loose C-like syntax. MEL can directly perform edits on geometry. HScript can create SOPs to do the edits.
Animating an object along its normals through a noise field is as simple as one line like:
P += N * noise( set(P.x,P.y,P.z,time) );
I doubt MEL or anything else could be as simple. HScript is more like the equivalent of MEL but is more based off a shell-scripting syntax than MEL's loose C-like syntax. MEL can directly perform edits on geometry. HScript can create SOPs to do the edits.
Are there enough companys working with Houdini and jobs for me to devote time away from my usual package and get to know Houdini more?
The million dollar question. Without doubt there are less companies using Houdini than Maya, by quite a large factor. But having said that there are less experts in Houdini. So if a company does use it and they want someone good at it then there is less competition…… you`re have to draw your own conclusions.
By the way, does someone know a company in Germnay which uses Houdini in production?
Ok, of course there is no company…