Hello
I am a Maya user from Greece and I find Houdini very interesting.
I often see the words Houdini and procedural go together.
So what is meant by procedural in Houdini?

Everything!
Look up the word procedural and you will find Houdini embodies it at every level.
Other packages bandy the word around but normally they mean the package has a history function, houdini is procedural to the core. In fact it's hard to find examples of things which aren't procedural in Houdini.
Creating edge groups isn't procedural but mostly everything else is… (this is a personal gripe of mine, so it comes to mind easily )

Procedural - relating to or comprising memory or knowledge concerned with how to manipulate symbols, concepts, and rules to accomplish a task or solve a problem

*ahem* and except for poly modelling,
& changing things upstream, unless you go
to elaborate lengths to pre-post-difference-group
every topology changing node…

-cpb

Well yes and no, I do tons of poly modelling that is procedural. And even the edit sop or polysplit is procedural until you change point or prim numbers. I never said it was “unbreakably” procedural…. :wink:

Houdini is procedural from the standpoint that you can freely work in networks to wire up any combination of nodes and see what the result is anywhere in the chain. You build up your own recipe of operations.

The topic of linear modelling comes up and yes, the recipe can go horribly bad if you choose to go up the tree and break subsequent poiont or prim specific edits. So let's forget about proceduralism and focus on the nodes themselves because that is where the real difference lies in Houdini.

It is rare to find 3D packages that let you model a piece, copy - paste those nodes and try again. If you do break downstream operators, you have a chance to fix those operations. Sometimes it's faster to fix, other times, march up the chain and fork a new branch and try again. You don't loose your previous nodes unless you deleate them.
It is fun to watch new users from Maya come to Houdini. They instinctively delete SOPs and try again. Like a bad habbit.
You don't have to delete anything unless you want to clean up the network.

With Houdini you never have to “save off a version of the file” so you can go back at a later date. NEVER! The network is always there for you to edit if you wish.

Procedural means that you (mostly) don't build the model (or effect) that you want directly - instead, you build a procedure for making that model.

Then, when (not if, but when) you have to change it, you don't do all the work over again, you just change one of the inputs. Or you adjust the procedure in some way by adding or removing operations.

Apart from the time savings of not having to start over when you need to change something, this also lets you have an approximation to what you want at all stages of development. Then, as you go along, you just make it more and more complicated and closer to what you want (and then the deadline comes and you abandon it, sighing over what might have been. But I digress).

jeff
It is fun to watch new users from Maya come to Houdini. They instinctively delete SOPs and try again. Like a bad habbit.
You don't have to delete anything unless you want to clean up the network.

For all practical purposes redoing a broken poly model
is often faster than poking around in all the existing
nodes. Considering the quantity of nodes amassed in the
background when one does poly modelling via the viewport.
True for some kinds of modelling a carefully planned procedural
approach works but for most it would be a case of modelling
parts destructively, saving/locking then using procedural
tools to map/deform/animate the parts.
- Unless the sop selection method is modified to something more…
procedural ! :idea:

-cpb

You are right cpb, I often find myself trying to build something more flexible that I'd ever need to, and then sinking in too complex networks.

I thought of selection/topology problem but don't have a bloody idea how it can be solved. It seems impossible but who knows?
It would be great to have a fully procedural poly model but perhaps there is just too much hassle in comparison to a fast rebuild.