Hello everyone,

Since I'm new to Houdini I thought it would be best to join the forum and ask for some sage advice from experienced Houdini users on this forum. Firstly I would like to say how exciting it is to be learning Houdini.

I'm a student at the moment studying art and composting, gradually I've been shifting towards VFX, I realize it would have been best to do a computer science degree but that ship has sailed and only have a year left of school anyway.

Regarding learning Houdini, I thought it would be best to do all the basic tuts available at Side Effects which I have managed to blaze through and go back and do again to make sure the basics sink in. After that I have all the Digital tutors and Cmivfx tuts to go through as well.

Do you think these are good starting points into building a solid foundation in Houdini? Also I realize it would be a good idea to learn some form of scripting. Most people recommend Python as a good one to start off with, having said that, I think just learning how Houdini works and sticking with the shelf tools for now, is the best way to go.

any advice would be much appreciated.

I am not a big fan of the DT Workshops. They might be okay for introduction stuff but otherwise they seem not very professional. No offense to anyone!

CMIvfx has a few good ones but a lot of them need you to have a solid understanding of the basic fundamentals.

Also rohan davi is a good teacher and a very skilled generalist. He is coming from 3dsm if i remmeber correctly. But also you wil need to have the fundamental knowledge to follow most of them.

http://www.rohandalvi.net/ [rohandalvi.net]

I think a start with the free sidefx classes is a great option and from there move on to more complex stuff.

Doudini thanks for your reply, Yeah most of the DT stuff doesn't seem too good in quality teaching, although a few of the recent ones seem pretty good. I'm building on the basics at the moment but I can still check out Rohan davi, thanks for the suggestion. I come from 3ds max and Maya myself. Mostly a max user, having used pflow, FumeFX, Rayfire and TP as well as others. I love the idea that Houdini has everything in one place and can do all that stuff inside a single package. The only thing I don't like about Houdini is it's modelling workflow, Maybe It's just because I'm new but I don't know, just something about it.

Yeah I'll start wutg tge free sidefx classes. I must say, Houdini does have a huge learning curve but I can already see how powerful it is even doing basic stuff.

I also highly recommend Rohan Dalvi's tutorials.

tinyparticle
I also highly recommend Rohan Dalvi's tutorials.

Great, I'll get some of his tuts. Thanks

Adam Swaab has some Houdini tutorials over on Helloluxx. I'm going to check them out.

http://helloluxx.com/product-tag/adam-swaab/ [helloluxx.com]

As a Houdini instructor myself, I recommend that whatever topic you get into to learn about, be sure that learning is always project-based.
If you´re not forcing yourself to get a good render at the end of each project, not only you will never be sure on how strong your grasp of the software is, but you won´t have anything to put into your demo reel.
Understand that for the rest of the world, you are as good as your demo reel.

I see many people around both message boards (this one and odforce) playing with Pyro, Flips, etc…and it´s all cool, but you can tell from their questions that most of the time they haven´t yet grasped the basics of Houdini, specially SOPs. This is WRONG and doesn´t build the correct foundation.

Even though I work at a place where we teach VFX, I´m not going to affirm you necessarily need to go somewhere to learn, but if you learn on your own, you still need a STRUCTURED learning. Mark your own intermediate goals, make those goals project-based, and build a demo reel around those.

After that…go get a job

Netvudu
As a Houdini instructor myself, I recommend that whatever topic you get into to learn about, be sure that learning is always project-based.
If you´re not forcing yourself to get a good render at the end of each project, not only you will never be sure on how strong your grasp of the software is, but you won´t have anything to put into your demo reel.
Understand that for the rest of the world, you are as good as your demo reel.

I see many people around both message boards (this one and odforce) playing with Pyro, Flips, etc…and it´s all cool, but you can tell from their questions that most of the time they haven´t yet grasped the basics of Houdini, specially SOPs. This is WRONG and doesn´t build the correct foundation.

Even though I work at a place where we teach VFX, I´m not going to affirm you necessarily need to go somewhere to learn, but if you learn on your own, you still need a STRUCTURED learning. Mark your own intermediate goals, make those goals project-based, and build a demo reel around those.

After that…go get a job

Sorry for the extreamly late reply, but I just wanted to say thanks Javier for such an amazing reply, I really appreciate it. I've taken onboard what you said and hopefully I'll begin to progress from there.

Wish I had of discovered Houdini a long time ago but was always put off by it's reputation as being incredibly hard to learn compared to other 3d software. But I'm glad I took the plunge. I sent you a private message but not sure you got it. It was just saying thanks for the advice.

Shaun

Nice tutorials sites for learning the amazing Houdini Software…Thanks for sharing them.

You can look here to have more sites to learn this impressive Houdini Software (like Lynda, Digital-Tutors), more sites links will be added as soon as I found more, you can also learn a lots of others incredible softwares on the sites listed here : VFX Hive learning section [vfxhive.com]

_______________________________________________
VFX HIVE | Softwares, Hardwares, Gears, Footages, Learning…for vfx, videography, photography and games… [vfxhive.com]
http://www.vfxhive.com [vfxhive.com]

VFXHive
Nice tutorials sites for learning the amazing Houdini Software…Thanks for sharing them.

You can look here to have more sites to learn this impressive Houdini Software (like Lynda, Digital-Tutors), more sites links will be added as soon as I found more, you can also learn a lots of others incredible softwares on the sites listed here : VFX Hive learning section [vfxhive.com]

_______________________________________________
VFX HIVE | Softwares, Hardwares, Gears, Footages, Learning…for vfx, videography, photography and games… [vfxhive.com]
http://www.vfxhive.com [vfxhive.com]

Thanks, I'll look at those, yes it is an amazing piece of software.