I know… big question.

Thing is that I am in love with Houdini. I go back to it in all my down times and this is a big one by the looks of it

I have acquired some knowledge, guess I am a beginner/intermediate but still haven't come across a course/video/tutorial that kind of covers everything (if that is possible) and by the end of it you have the sensation of “wow.. now I know the software!”

The sensation is that I know bits and bobs but that I still haven't grasped it.

I have been on Maya since version 1.0, of course it will be impossible to have the same confidence in Houdini but I wish I could learn more and learn it better.

Anyone to shine a light? point to a direction?

Thanks,

Richard

Learn the same way the Karate kid did. Wax On, Wax Off. Repeat the same lessons over and over till you can build the node setups in your sleep.

One person suggested that you memorize all the HIP file setups at this webpage and be able to recreate them from memory.
http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/?title=Houdini [www.tokeru.com]

Remember, everything you find online is old, so get used to the fact that the cutting edge stuff is always something you have to get up to speed on. Once you learn a system, SideFX may rewrite it and force you to adapt to a new workflow.

Hi Richard,

Fraser Shiers' “Hipflask” is extremely well structured, utterly precise and in-depth while covering all the basics. He just started with three courses, so while it's really up-to-date, I do not know if he is going to cover all aspects of Houdini.

https://www.hipflask.how/ [www.hipflask.how]

if you want an everything course here is a link to a Udemy Houdini course call Houdini Bootcamp, he goes over almost every aspect of Houdini, I believe it was done in H17.

https://www.udemy.com/course/houdini-create-full-cg-chocolate-commercial-in-houdini/ [www.udemy.com]

I think a good resource (paid) is the excellent series by Steven Knipping. He really goes through and explains very eloquently what everything does and most importantly why.

http://www.appliedhoudini.com [www.appliedhoudini.com]

I have my doubts that you can know “everything” about Houdini. I have even stronger doubts about the necessity of knowing “everything” about Houdini. In fact, I consider “knowing everything about Houdini” a complete waste of time because Houdini has grown a lot over the years and is constantly evolving, new workflows replacing or complementing others, features becoming obsolete and the reactivated for some users' preferences of doing nodal spaghetti.

While I think that tutorials can give you a starting point (or, in the best of all cases, motivate you to do something on your own), “learning” is something you cannot buy online. You need to sit down, grab a project that you REALLY WANT TO DO - and then just do it. This is my firm belief and I have yet to find ANYONE to prove me wrong: Learning things from watching others do them only works in movies. And movies are make-believe, fake and a lot of post-work.

At the end of the day, Houdini is a toolset to manipulate points, which are mere datasets. That's it. There's really nothing else to it. If you can deal with points and combine them into polygons, understand Houdini's language of “vertices versus points” and what “attributes” are and why they are attached to different entities … the rest is but luxury.


Marc

Yes, there are truly a few tutorials to describe each module of Houdini systematically.
Even the few tutorials, most of them are not delving deeper but just a introduction.

You can compare other tutorials with the Master Classes which made by John Lynch.
It really needs a Master to make a master tutorial…

———————————————————

I think the tutorials from Rohan Dalvi are good for beginner and he is very good at shading and rendering.
If you want to go deeper into the VFX field, I think Applied Houdini is the best tutorial.

And if you want to learn more things in other filed of Houdini, it seems lack of the systematic tutorials.
You may try to learn some systematic tutorials of other Application and try to rebuild them in Houdini to enhance your understanding of Houdini.(I find the people like BW Design / Entagma, they all have the experience of other application / programming before learning Houdini…)

e.g. there are many tutorials of Rigging / Hair in maya, many tutorials of XParticles in C4D. You can use any application to achieve a target as long as you know the idea behind it.

I would recommend varomix's lamp tutorial for any beginner wishing you move to Houdini from another 3D program to learn modeling.

Guys,

Thanks a lot.

Not very heart warming :-)

zengchen: I actually spent the past few days Rohan Dalvi's tutorials and they are very good and clear indeed. Thanks for this.

malbrecht: very sound advice, I guess I'd say the same about Maya if someone asked me.

Will check on everything you guys pointed to,

Keep safe!!

Great links, thanks!

Enivob
http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/?title=Houdini [www.tokeru.com]

Sorry, but this site is so out of date, don't even bother with it. I've tried a few examples and everyone is using nodes I can't find. The app has changed, and this website is not that relevant anymore because of that fact.

AggieVizr15

Enivob
http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/?title=Houdini [www.tokeru.com]

Sorry, but this site is so out of date, don't even bother with it. I've tried a few examples and everyone is using nodes I can't find. The app has changed, and this website is not that relevant anymore because of that fact.

^Please don't listen to this guy. Cgwiki is rather up to date (probably more so than most random Houdini tuts you could find on youtube.) This guy probably found one or two nodes he didn't recognize and didn't even bother to google for their modern counterparts, and decided to ditch the whole site for this.