Hi folks,

I'm fairly new to the world of VFX and compositing, so be gentle!

Over the last 6 months i invested quite a lot of time in learning Blackmagic Fusion, but i became a bit frustrated with the 3D side of it, and then i discovered Houdini.

Obviously Houdini kills Fusion for 3D anything, but what i liked about Fusion was the ability to do something in 3D, then move back to 2D and composite, while still being able to tweak the 3D side.

So my question is, is something like this also possible in Houdini? And if so, what is the workflow to achieve it?

So, you create some 3D stuff, then send that out in layers to 2D, where you can apply the sort of effects available in Fusion (and of course After Effects) ……… while still being able to tweak your 3D?

I should also mention, i'm not talking about render-heavy 3D VFX, more fairly simple 3D geometric animation and design that can mostly happen in close to real time.

To be honest there are parts of Fusion that feel really clunky compared to Houdini, so i'm feeling tempted to try to just stay in Houdini all the way.

And to close, maybe anyone with experience of Fusion or After Effects could comment on what really shouldn't be attempted in Houdini and really needs to be left to a dedicated compositing program?

Thanks in advance!

Hi Dazzer,

the Render COP node lets you render 3D images to the compositing context.

https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/nodes/cop2/render.html [www.sidefx.com]

Thanks!

Unfortunately i have no clue as to how to set that up.

If any one could put together a “toy” comp showing the structure needed to do this, i'd be eternally grateful!

There's not much to toy around with: Simply drag a mantra ROP into the render COP's driver slot.

Hi Konstantin or anyone else………

Is it possible to also view the output of the OpenGL renderer in the composite view?

I tried it but i just get a black screen.

I'm messing about with non-photo-realistic graphics, so for me the quality of the OpenGL output would be ok, and i'm hoping it would be a lot faster (using the mantra node it takes 7 or 8 seconds each time for my image to update in Composite view, which really slow down the process!)

Thanks!