Hi JabbaTheNut welcome to Houdini.
Houdini is a full DCC (digital content creation) to put it very simple Houdini stay side by side Maya and 3D Studio Max, Blender, Cinema 4D etc…
Houdini is capable to animate and rigging character, modeling cars and cities render and make simple composting.
To be honest if you will do a very small production I will recommend Blender to you this package is small powerful and it is free probably very god choose in a small budge.
But if you want to do big things with beautiful simulation like: Water, Fire, Muscle, Wind, Destruction, Motion Graphics, Crowds etc… WELCOME TO HOUDINI.
Let's understand the big difference in Maya and Houdini
Maya pro
- a lot o training
- nice tutorials for real beginners in 3D world
- better in character animation
- more responsive in 3d view port for animation
- a lot of plugins
- a very good render for realistic character in the box
- a friendly community
- a lot of good reference
Maya cons
- for small production it is expansive
- destructive way to work not good for little people in a teams.
- plugins need time to master and is an extra payment and can have bugs during some integration…
- your help (company's help) can be a little lazy
- (probably other user can appoint more issues)
Houdini pro
- a very good help (company's help) the better I ever see
- forgot plugins all you need is in the box
- modeling, render, lighting, animation, simulation all is procedure very good to small or big teams.
- a very nice community to help you
- a lot of videos to help you (not for real beginner in 3d)you need to knew something ;-)
- very powerful builtin render very close to Pixar RenderMan
Houdini cons
- To learn alone is not good (find a master to guide you)
- Different way to think (in the start scary you in the end you love it)
- For Houdini Indie you can buy a limited number of copies…
- The documentation is very hard to understand at first try (use videos tutorials and ask the community)
JabbaTheNut I am sorry for my poor English but if something is not clear you can make more questions here.
But if you talk more about what you want to do probably a lot of user can help your question.
Example if you want to make a movie like BAHUBALI or Galaxy Guardians or League Of Gods the community can understand your needs to help you and your team.
For all the three movies you can use Houdini and probably more movies too
No software is perfect all depends your effort but SideFX is a company that listen their user.
Until right now we don't have a very fast render…until there(Houdini 18??) you have some solution like Redshift 3D or GridMarkets to help your production.
Any way you are welcome to our community.
Whenever is possible we'll try to answer you question.