Is anyone out there using Houdini for broacast graphics? If so, in what capacity? Is it the wrong tool for the job? I ask this as someone who's used Electric Image for 10 years now - was impressed with Prisims back when I worked at another company but never considered it because of the price.

Our general workload for 3D is things like flying type and visual effects, i.e. smoke, lightshafts, particle gags and so on.

Would I be nuts to consider Houdini for motion graphics?

Opinions…?

thanks!

i don't think you would be nuts at all.. i'm in the broadcast industry as of now and i wish we had houdini here. before i got here, they had electric image on board but are now running maya (which I can't stand).. as for this company, i know we won't switch as i know i'd be the only person using it and they wouldn't be able to handle the price tag. we're also primarily a mac shop , so it wouldn't work out with us in that sense either.

but if you're looking to switch to a new program all together then I think houdini would be more than reasonable for what you would want. heck, go grab the apprentice version and have your crew test it out for a little bit.. wouldn't cost you anything but internal time and you would know how you feel about it afterwards. be patient and give it time tho. any product extensive as houdini won't be figured out in a matter of a few days..

also check out houdini select and escape if you don't need to have the full master liscense. those packages are very reasonable and more than worth their price. another common thing that houdini shops will do is have a very limited number of master copies and the rest are escape or select. so that may be an option for you as well..

good luck..