Hi All,

Simply question:

Why to choose Houdini instead of Maya, Max, XSI or LW? What are the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threads) when compared to other 3D apps?

:?:

I've been using Houdini Apprentice, primarily for modeling, for several months now. Personally, I find it difficult to go back to Maya which is what I use for jobs. Many people seem to feel this way. Soon I will be able to afford Houndini and I'll only use maya when a client insists upon a maya format file.

I'm most certain that if you download the apprentice version and give it an honest try, which might mean a few weeks of practice, you'll see the power of Houdini. There are loads of tutorial vids out there to get you started.

Weaknesses? Well, I'm still learning, so I may discover some down the road. However, comming from a maya background, I've really found none of consequence.

http://www.vislab.usyd.edu.au/sidefx/ [vislab.usyd.edu.au]

Ive been using 3d max mostly before..some maya and lightwave for modelling. Ive been doing some simple stuff with houdini the last 2-3 months and i really think it is more powerful than the others. You have total control over all steps in your creative process …in network viewer you can easily make 2,3 or more branches of your same creation and work with it in different ways..and go back and apply changes that affects the final result…it is really awesome when you get into it. As example Nurbs paste. Make a ?Lsphere put on a edit op ..reshape it…make a nose from a grid and project it onto the sphere and get a seamless surface…then if your not happy with the shape of your nose …edit the original and see how the seamless surface reshapes. I have not still found a function that isnt there..Give it a try…it will change your workflow

I am a lw/ maya user myself and I was asking the same question.

I suppose the only thing to say is why I am switching to houdni is summed up in a few points

-fully functional and easy/fast to use compositor built in
-full Render man class render engine built in
-fully procedural worflow
-Completely flexible interface to work around me
-Best graph/channel editor i have ever used.(which includes xsi , max, lw, maya and messiah studio)
-very flexible skinning solution


These have swayed me but, the final major one that i have come to terms with is that houdini continuely being built. (ie builds being released every week). Each build means a response to a user … its a bug fix or a feature fix. flow fix. ………. I like fixing. As a lw user tired of waiting forever to get a build which is still buggy.

What I can see is that the architecture they started with has finally panned out and I think the next few revisions of houdini will be rather spectacular. As I am starting to see with 6. Mainly to do with the fact the the user interface and workflow is begginning to flesh out and conform to users workflow, letting the artist access the proceduralism when needed.

….. any who back to animating at work in houdini 5.5 ……all you lucky bastards who are enjoying 6 … i hope you get wrist problems :wink:



ps. the only part of houdini that i do not like so far is the whole shader bit. ………. i guess it is the being ignored that artists need to do nice shading to. I find it very clumbsy compared to maya's hyper shade…..and of course insanely slow to use compared to lw's speedy(but primitive) layer system.

Wow, I have to agree with Wren, he summed it up nicely. The program is getting to the point where it's easy for regular artists to pick up, and they are adding a lot of “convenience” features that have been lacking in the past. Like he said, Houdini still lacks a nice solution for creating materials quickly and easily. Yes VOPs is great and all that, but I wish there was something like Max's material editor: Fast, straight-forward, and relatively powerful.

DaJuice
Houdini still lacks a nice solution for creating materials quickly and easily. Yes VOPs is great and all that, but I wish there was something like Max's material editor: Fast, straight-forward, and relatively powerful.

I hear a lot of people say this and I am curious why people like MAX's material editor over VOPs? The workflow is pretty similar. In VOPs you have a lot more control, which also means you have to do a little more yourself.

What are some things with VOPs that slows down your workflow? I'm interested in your $0.02.


jim.

Firstly, there's vops. If enough people use it,
share ops and push for further expansion of its
capabilities then we'll see a very practical
user-developed toolset emerge. This is what makes
3dsmax such a useful program (despite itself), as
many of the better features started out as 3rd party
plug-ins or scripts that were made to deal with
real problems encountered during production.
secondly, Houdini's f-curve editor is actually fast and
painless to use; no ugly refresh, goofy modal or
key-combo navigation, ugly icons etc.

As for 3dsmax's material editor vs vops I'll take
vops. I had to recently texture some large (as in
a relative kilometer) organic structure that had to
hold up to a seamless camera fly-by, meaning
recursive detail on top of the masking, features etc.
This was put together with about 15 nodes in Max,
but because of all the instancing for grime, recursion,
projections, specular, diffuse, illumination and gloss
it produced a tree of something like 400 nodes!
This was a nightmare for anyone who had to find and
tweak something. In vops the 15 separate nodes
would just be wired up to various combines before
outputting, all clearly visible and understandable.

-cpb

I found listed here many of the things I like about Houdini. I just want to add to this the “feature” I find the most exciting: CHOPs. The things you can do are quite incredible, once you get used to the approach. I came to Houdini Apprentice from Touch Designer, where I saw CHOPs for the first time, and I'm still amazed about the uses I find for CHOPs all the time.
Another cool thing is the whole “open” architecture/workflow. There are moments when Houdini feels more like a “toolkit” than an application, so you can do crazy things with it. Touch is again proof of the Houdini “technology” adapted to unusual stuff.

The thing I don't like is the licensing model, with the four versions: Select, Halo, Escape, Master. Houdini is quite modular, and I'd like to be able to purchase it by modules. For example, have a Select license and add POPs to it. Or CHOPs. Or buy Escape and then buy MentalRay output, etc. This would also make it easier to integrate Houdini with other packages (it's strange that you have to buy Master to be able to use Mental Ray. Pretty hard to justify for a XSI shop, for example)

Dragos

No doubt VOPs is the more powerful solution, and in your case it proved to be more efficient, but it is just a lot harder to get the hang of if you ask me. I don't feel that comfortable with it, but I'm still a VOPs novice, maybe that's why. Even so, it takes a lot of steps to accomplish something that could be done in seconds in max.

Even the coders at sidefx told me themselves “the shader tools assume you understand how to write shaders.”

It is the clumbsiest aproach I have ever seen as far as shading/texturing. Not becuase it is a bad architecture, but because it runs at too low of a level with too much control. There needs to be a Higher order editor that functions with normal texturing workflow and leaving the vop editing to those that need to create complex custom shaders.

well, I can't say I know how to write shaders
or even understand the underlying math yet
I have no problem using vops for texturing.
… except replicating f-edge and faking translucency
with vertex colours. But that's just a matter of
investigation, I think.

-cpb