HI guys,
I need your help. I'm trying to investigate and then make my tests about this topic. the reason for my tests is that I'm trying to add Houdini (and then a Houdini little department) in the company I'm working for.

I know this is an high risk I'm taking care of, I'm not an Houdini Expert, but as I told many times lately I definetly want to work with Houdini sooner or later and trying to create the needed interest directly in my company would really be a great success for me.

We almost work with XSI for Animated Feature films and Maya for Motion Pictures Films. At first I need to find how to integrate Houdini into the XSI pipeline. Effects that I need to investigate first of all are all sort of Particle style effects, such as air dust, volumetric lights, and others like grass, plants, smokes, and so on .. I'll go in details maybe later on if this thread will bring the needed interested from you.

First question anyway is, how to properly export data from XSI (geometry with their animations, like characters) and import ‘em into Houdini.

we use MentalRay (XSI and Maya) and I’d like to know how hard is to create shaders (or uses our owns) into Houdini to be able to render with MentalRay, or if the best is to create a .mi file to spit into a MR-ready renderfarm.

I have few effects which I need to show “how easier” can be done within Houdini, if you guys would like to help me on this we'll talk about that in details.


thanks in advance for your time.. I seriously hope I'll can archieve such result, including Houdini here, which would means using houdini again in Italy.

looking forward for your feedbacks
cheers.

Hi,

We use maya, XSI and houdini with prman, mental ray and mantra in our pipleline.
I wrote a lot of tools to translate the data to and from houdini.

As a starting point I suggest you check out the odforce wiki:

I made 2 tutorials for the wiki (let me know if you have problems with these)

XSI to houdini
http://www.odforce.net/wiki/index.php/SoftImageXSIToHoudini [odforce.net]

Houdini mental ray setup:
http://www.odforce.net/wiki/index.php/MentalRaySetup [odforce.net]

Other useful links:
Writing mental ray shaders for houdini by Jan Walter:
http://www.techimage.co.uk/products/houdini/houdini_tutorials.html [techimage.co.uk]

Jan also has a pdf on his site where he discusses writing your mental ray shaders with the same parameters as your prman/mantra shaders, or rather the same type of shader for all of your renderers. This way in houdini you can use a switchSHOP to switch to the right shader based on the renderer you use.
I think this is the pdf:
http://www.wahn.demon.co.uk/Houdini/filmakademie.pdf [wahn.demon.co.uk]

If you know perl/python then you can write out data from houdini to any format you like:
http://www.odforce.net/wiki/index.php/PythonToHoudini [odforce.net]

I hope this helps.
Cheers,

/Rick

Thanks a lot for your fast reply…

I'm checking you links right now…
what about animation?.. can i export/import curves from XSI animation?… what if i need to “import” an animated character into Houdini, let's say, that will interact with some POP for example?… in my case i'd like to make some air dust interact with the character animation .. therefore i'd need the mesh with its own skeletal animation.


Edit .: … just read your advice of exporting a sequence of obj …
I'll give a try at that way.

sum][one
Thanks a lot for your fast reply…
Edit .: … just read your advice of exporting a sequence of obj …
I'll give a try at that way.

For performance reasons, I import the obj sequence with a FileSOP and then write them out to .bgeo and read in that .bgeo sequence for the animated geometry.

I just wrapped up 2 spots this way for character dust effects. It's simple and it works for me You could always go the XSISDK/HDK and write a custom importer/exporter if you wish.

RickW
For performance reasons, I import the obj sequence with a FileSOP and then write them out to .bgeo and read in that .bgeo sequence for the animated geometry.

oh .. great advice… actually the .obj File SOP was quite slow actually ..

thanks again ..

now gotta find something/someway that lemme convince the people here that… WE need Houdini!!

cheers and thanks again … I'll go on with my tests/demo making..



EDIT: ouch … ROP wont work with non commercial… well.. I'll keep in mind when I'll (hopefully) have a license here. cheers!