mestela
From what I recall, you can't make any nodes that would be in a dopnet. So no rbd, no wires, no cloth/fem, no pyro/smoke etc.
Okay, this is what I expected.
mestela
Note that you can create sim setups in FX, convert them to HDAs with the important parameters exposed, and run those in core. This is a common workflow to create reusable sim tools; the lead artist in a studio will have an FX license, make HDAs, and distribute them to the rest of the team running Core.
And we plan to get some FX licenses also so this might be an option.
The challenge is we are a very non-standard Studio, where each individual works on relatively independent projects that often require a great deal of custom programming to import datasets ranging from satellite measurements to large particle simulations needed to build the scenes.
I'm the first person in our group doing extensive experiments with Houdini for our type of data. I need to determine at what level someone can do useful work with Core, or will everyone need FX. I'm doing data importing experiments using the Python interface.
If it's possible for everyone to write their own data interfaces and loaders in Core, then we're good. FX would then only be needed in cases where we might want a generic water or particle sim as background for a dataset.
mestela
A notable exception is the solver sop. It's available in Core, and lets you create sop based setups that can access the result of the previous frame, so you can get sim-style behavior.
Devil is in the details, but that's the high level summary.
That is useful to know.
Thanks,
Tom