I just wanted to express my gratitude for giving me and others the opportunity to learn Houdini Master 8.

I'm at a loss for words for how powerful and incredible Houdini is. It breaks all other platforms boundaries with regards to power, speed, and features, in my humble opinion. The elegance of the UI and networks/procedural approach to building things is sick (Overly Brilliant). Being able to so easily build new modules and reuse your procedurals is much easier than building MEL scripting interfaces that do the same sort of things. Clicking and dragging editable parameters as well as being able to assign the levels of input to your subnetworks is the icing on the cake.

You guys have really done it, Keep up the astounding work.

Oh and BTW, offering such unrestricted access to your top shelf product in the way of an apprentice program is very very smart marketing and not to mention a good detourant to piracy. Having the power of Houdini Master 8 and being able to explore such a powerful program, even make demo reels, really sets you guys apart from many other 3d platforms. More companies should follow suit with their top shelf versions of software so users can learn the powerful features of their software, you have been the first and I'm really glad that I happened to stumble across this unbelievable software. Needless to say, I've set aside XSI and Modo, which I recently purchased, and have been obsessed with Houdini ever since I stumbled accross it.

I do have one question, are the renderman and Mental ray features not included in the master apprentice version? If so, why not just include them also? I mean what would be the harm? The ability to build shader networks in Renderman and Mental ray is a huge part of the rendering and lighting workflow in today's environment. Since you have already unleashed the power of the rest of the features of the software, why not include this also (If it is not included already)? By no means is this a complaint or rant, I'm extremely gratefulo for what you have included to be evaluated.

I can only speculate that it must be a licensing thing. RM and MR must be the inhibitor to including this in master8 apprentice if it isn't already included. If it is included and I'm just being an idiot, how do I get it to work?

Anyhow, congratulations on a brilliant piece of software and thank you for making it available to all of us to explore and learn. Houdini will finally be demystified. You all have done an unbelievable job.

Lastly, I'm quite surprised that Houdini has been such a mysterious and daunting platform for so long, I really foresee it becoming the leader of the pack and hope that it does. Perhaps it already is.

Thank you again for a great product.

Christian Choi
The Choimation Image Factory, Inc.
http://www.choimation.com [choimation.com]

Nice comments, Christian. I agree!

Cheers,

J.C.

Wow, thanks very much for that. It's great to hear that kind of excitement!

As for your question about Apprentice and Renderman/Mentalray, we exclude those features from Apprentice because we have no way to enforce the watermarking of images created with those renderers. So if we did allow apprentice users to output to rman, there would be nothing to stop them using the free version of Houdini to do real production work (as long as they use rman as their renderer).

Mark

Hey choimation,

Hear! Hear!

Cheers!
steven

mtucker
Wow, thanks very much for that. It's great to hear that kind of excitement!

As for your question about Apprentice and Renderman/Mentalray, we exclude those features from Apprentice because we have no way to enforce the watermarking of images created with those renderers. So if we did allow apprentice users to output to rman, there would be nothing to stop them using the free version of Houdini to do real production work (as long as they use rman as their renderer).

Mark

Ahh I understand. There is no post procces that will stamp the watermark. I was trying to learn Mantra last night and a wierd thing happened.

I know I should probably report this to the bug area but speaking of renderers, nothing would render, it would come up with a message saying renderer is closed or something like that with standard vex shaders.

I had just installed the latest version, I didn't uninstall the old version (320), maybe this is the problem.

The other thing that keeps happening is that my Visual Studio 2005 Beta wantss to debug zfcgsvr.exe or something like this when I try to launch the renderer or when my computer first boots up. I think this is the licence trying to access the sidefx site. This problem has been happening ever since I installed the first version but happens when I try to render in the latest version.

Any thoughts?

Just a couple of small things but the software is truly awesome. I love the copy function, I'm trying to figure out what to put in the stamp area to get cool fractaled copies. I love the fact that this software is so deep you can create some unbelievable stuff just with copy and fractal.

Thanks again guys,
Christian Choi
The Choimation Image Factory, Inc.
http://www.choimation.com [choimation.com]

zfcgsvr.exe definitely has nothing to do with Houdini. Search on your computer for where that program lives. If it doesn't look legit, I'd get your computer virus and spyware checked just in case.

Oddly enough, my laptop continually crashes with a ZeroCfgSvc upon login, but not my desktop at home which has about all the same software. I've been wondering what the hell ZeroCfg is. I have seen some wireless network card driver with a “Zero Config” option before, but not on my machine.

<later>
Ah yes, doing a search on Google reveals a few mentions of ZeroConfig and wireless adapters. I'm going to search more tomorrow on this myself.

jason_iversen
Oddly enough, my laptop continually crashes with a ZeroCfgSvc upon login, but not my desktop at home which has about all the same software. I've been wondering what the hell ZeroCfg is. I have seen some wireless network card driver with a “Zero Config” option before, but not on my machine.

<later>
Ah yes, doing a search on Google reveals a few mentions of ZeroConfig and wireless adapters. I'm going to search more tomorrow on this myself.

Yes it is my wireless trying to access the internet. For some reason it was all working fine until I installed Houdini. Does houdini continually try to access the internet?

Thanks,
Christian Choi

After the initial install of Houdini, if Houdini couldn't find an existing license, it will attempt to contact SideFX's license server to get the license for you. Nothing of concern, of course. : )

But it won't contact the license server at all unless you tell it to install an Apprentice license. This sounds like it is happening before that.

Perhaps hserver is just initializing the network interface and somehow causing a crash with ZeroCfg even if it's not attempting to communicate with the outside world; perhaps its setting a loopback mode or something not well supported by ZeroCfg?

mtucker
Wow, thanks very much for that. It's great to hear that kind of excitement!

As for your question about Apprentice and Renderman/Mentalray, we exclude those features from Apprentice because we have no way to enforce the watermarking of images created with those renderers. So if we did allow apprentice users to output to rman, there would be nothing to stop them using the free version of Houdini to do real production work (as long as they use rman as their renderer).

Mark

I think Side Effects should include support for RenderMan renderers with an apprentice license. I would imagine that the people most interested in using this product are those that desire to work or already work on mid to high end productions with a sophisticated pipeline, likely including RenderMan. There are many free RenderMan renderers available, and being able to interface with them would provide the sort of support that other CG software companies would not be able to offer.

I understand that there is no way to stop users from using the free license as a RIB generator and feeding those RIBs into a full version of PRman for instance. But any studio or individual doing this would be violating the license agreement. This seems to be a redundant two-tier form of protection that makes sense on paper and not in practice. End users are either in compliance with the license agreement or they are not. If they wish to violate it, trying to block them with multiple traps won't prevent illegal usage. If someone wants to run a full version of Houdini in production illegaly, they will. I'm certainly not an expert on license agreements but I imagine that doing this, or using Apprentice in production in any way, both violate the license agreement in the same way.

Studios and individuals using Houdini in compliance with the license agreement do so because they choose to, not because the protection makes it impossible to do otherwise. Non-users can't see the benefit of getting CHOPs for free, but I think being able to use Rman, Rman VOPS and RSL in Houdini for free would bring in much more interest. Maybe include some RIB statements that could be used as a watermark, and only allow binary RIB and/or piping directly to the Rman executable, disabling disk saving? Obviously there are ways around this, but there always are.

I can't say I agree with your take there… :? SESI might as well give Houdini away for free. As mentioned earlier, there's no way for SESI to enforce restrictions from renderers not their own.

Even if the case of persuing a user who blatantly broke the EULA, it would still cost SESI quite a bit to sue those users. With the kind of resources SESI has, I say let SESI focus on making Houdini better.

After all, considering that Mantra has a very close resemblence to rman, learning VEx/VOP would still be very beneficial to users. So, in this case, I wouldn't see a real need for renderman.

To be honest, Houdini Apprentice is already VERY open as it stands right now that anyone has sufficient technical knowlege of Houdini can already get pass alot of things, with the exception of rendering restrictions and may be some other stuff. And anyone who knows HDK, well, it's up to your imagination.

So, I personally am very thankful for SESI for Houdini Apprentice as it is now. : )

Anyhow, just my humble little opinion. : )

Take care,
Alex

Yeah, I think Houdini Apprentice is as open as a non-commercial software can be. Everything is there for the beginner or power user to learn and experiment. The only thing I would like (but it's by no means a show stopper anyway) would be to be able to render at PAL resolution (720x576), even if the watermark would be a little bigger. Again, it's just a convenience for someone in a PAL country.

Dragos

digitallysane
Yeah, I think Houdini Apprentice is as open as a non-commercial software can be. Everything is there for the beginner or power user to learn and experiment. The only thing I would like (but it's by no means a show stopper anyway) would be to be able to render at PAL resolution (720x576), even if the watermark would be a little bigger. Again, it's just a convenience for someone in a PAL country.

Dragos

yh Pal or NTSC with watermark so that it can nicely fit into tv screen resolution.

TheUsualAlex
I can't say I agree with your take there… :? SESI might as well give Houdini away for free. As mentioned earlier, there's no way for SESI to enforce restrictions from renderers not their own.

Even if the case of persuing a user who blatantly broke the EULA, it would still cost SESI quite a bit to sue those users. With the kind of resources SESI has, I say let SESI focus on making Houdini better.

After all, considering that Mantra has a very close resemblence to rman, learning VEx/VOP would still be very beneficial to users. So, in this case, I wouldn't see a real need for renderman.

To be honest, Houdini Apprentice is already VERY open as it stands right now that anyone has sufficient technical knowlege of Houdini can already get pass alot of things, with the exception of rendering restrictions and may be some other stuff. And anyone who knows HDK, well, it's up to your imagination.

So, I personally am very thankful for SESI for Houdini Apprentice as it is now. : )

Anyhow, just my humble little opinion. : )

Take care,
Alex

Not that I'd want illegal software to become to main focus of this, but I am not suggesting that SESI spend their resources chasing anyone that breaks the rules if they were to make their rules more lenient. I agree that Houdini is by far the most open free app available. But I don't agree that they may as well just “give it away.” I imagine that sentiment would have been common back when someone else many years ago first suggested issuing a near restriction-free demo version of Houdini back when that sort of thing was unheard of. The bottom line is it just seems a shame that one of the most powerful tools is legendary for working with RenderMan renderers, both are available for free, yet they cannot be used together.

I'm not sure if you get the “give it away” notion. By watermarking their mantra renderer output, SESI can help control casual piracy of their software while allowing total evaluation. If they allowed RIB output, then it truly is “giving it away” since they can't control what Renderman does after the fact. Houdini would literally be a fully functional, “free” piece of software with no restrictions whatsoever, except mantra output. Hopefully you can understand why that would be a bad thing.

Cheers,

J.C.

JColdrick
I'm not sure if you get the “give it away” notion. By watermarking their mantra renderer output, SESI can help control casual piracy of their software while allowing total evaluation. If they allowed RIB output, then it truly is “giving it away” since they can't control what Renderman does after the fact. Houdini would literally be a fully functional, “free” piece of software with no restrictions whatsoever, except mantra output. Hopefully you can understand why that would be a bad thing.

Cheers,

J.C.

Yes I definitely understand that. I wasn't suggesting completely unrestricted RIB out either, obviously. I understand why RIB on disk is out of the jurisdiction of SESI. I'm no Houdini or RenderMan expert but I thought there was a way to pipe directly into the rman executable for rendering without needing any RIB…and I assumed there might be other ways to sheild the process of Houdini talking to Rman. Call me naive but I figured license agreements were something most studios chose to follow, not something that were just a tool to break someone over when they “inevitably” break the rules. I admit that I'm coming from the position of a home user that would like to have a CG app that can take SL shaders or use it's node-based shader builder and render in RenderMan, for learning purposes. It's certainly not fundamental to learning, but it'd be damn cool. I usually find it hard to believe when something is “impossible” but I guess it does happen.

Ever wish you never posted something? I'll get my coat… ops: