aRtye
@amm so I'm not sure why you keep trying Houdini then? I appreciate the critiques but it would be cool hear the context of why you stay with Houdini. Thx!

H Indie is still best bang for the buck for home experiments, in short. Just now, some Mantra renderings for fun, perhaps I'll put them on the road in next few weeks. Mentioned skin weighting system for use in Maya, this is not to favorize something, it's just feasible in that bounds of home experiments, that is, Maya can import weights and run all that in real time, Houdini can do procedural setup for baking into bitmaps (to describe both from positive side, hehe). Never ever considered Houdini for characters, to be honest, just been curious in that field.
More than that is simply impossible with Indie licence, as anything that counts is earning much more than limit, also I don't see inevitable another user in city, willing to cooperate (unless I want to break the vacation for any small change in some local TV commercial). For comparison, in Softimage times it was around twenty licences in city close to one million - probably half of that pushed together with Avid licences, but on somehow important places.

Initially in times of v13 and 14, I wanted to proceed with small hair styling system, I was running on Softimage ICE for years, one of around ten of this kind for ICE. However, no one of its front-man artists is Houdini user, today. For whatever reason, really don't want to go into (another) discussion. Afaik they (including facilities when it comes to hair works) are on Maya plugins today, from Fabric to Yeti or else.
Anyway, hope dies last - Credo quia absurdum est….