Hi
does anyone know if Wetta digital is using Houdini in their production pipeline or Maya soly?

thanks for your attention!

As I understand it weta did use houdini but not anymore as part of its official pipeline.

R

Oh! I personally is a character animator!
I really hope that one day there will be more character animators in big studio that will be using Houdini! I found now most big studios are just using Houdini as a VFX tool! I can see Houdini could be a very good tool for character animation and character setup! It has got muscles system, cloth, autoRig…….. I really hope more large studios would choose Houdini as part of their pipeline! Because I am planning to do a character animation showReel with Houdini. But if no one in the world is using Houdini to do character animation, that would be a bit discouraging.

If you will make a good showreel where is no matter what kind of software you use. Character animation is much less software related issue then VFX. In most pipelines there are already guys for rigging and whole setup. I know view guys with no maya experience who were hired as maya animators just because studio uses it as a animation tool. What Houdini needs although are those character TDs and animation supervisors with Houdini skills. They decide which tool gonna be used…

But to become animation supervisor you must be an animator first (for a number of years) and most likely this would involve maya. So instead of being Houdini anim. supervis. you become maya one. And circle closed.

brucelay
Hi
does anyone know if Wetta digital is using Houdini in their production pipeline or Maya soly?

thanks for your attention!

http://odforce.net/wiki/index.php/CompaniesUsingHoudini#New_Zealand [odforce.net]

brucelay
But if no one in the world is using Houdini to do character animation, that would be a bit discouraging.

It seems Houdini is growing (slowly) as a character tool. There was The Wild, Framestore is beginning to use it more and more in their commercials also for character work, CORE are using it constantly and I heard stories of other studios intending to switch from Maya-based character pipelines to Houdini ones.
I think much of this is in the user's community hands. If you are a good character animator, do a nice animation and post it on various sites with the mention that is made in Houdini (but it must be damn good).

Dragos

the thing about that list as far of NYC companies there is two companies who don;t use it anymore Like Rhino FX in NYC doesn;t have it in their pipeline as of 2 years ago…Don;t know about the Mill NY I know two guys in FRamestore NY used it but don't know if in produciton . I was wondering this if this the most upto date list of current companies… I don;t mean to be arrogant but I would like to know as well of who is actually at present time using Houdini in production… thank u for any news of this…




thanks alot…


George

I think that list is quite out of date. Animal logic doesn't use Houdini as part of its pipeline.But how I wish it did …..

didn;t they use HOudini on happy feet? I think i read something that they used it for some of the fx shots…. Am i wrong on this one?





George

All Maya. Nobody from the fx team ever mentioned houdini while I worked on the show. Except one R&D guy who did some rock scattering tests early on. Sidefx should of got in there and given away licences like softimage did ! Thats the only reason xsi got used …
.

circusmonkey,

I found you made a good point! I think Houdini should give away some licences to some famous studios! Especially for character animation! Because nowadays, it seems everyone is using the autodesk's product for character animation. I really do not want to see everything is so autodesked! Also, houdini's character's tool is so complete (except for hair and mo-cap editing).

Using Houdini in character also shows some “good taste” too. I will try to learn!

thanks for your attentions

Cylibral
Don;t know about the Mill NY I know two guys in FRamestore NY used it but don't know if in produciton.

Framestore does use it, more and more, including for characters (and I mean character animation, not only the fur or FX part). Mill uses it and recently they are increasing their usage. I don't know if those are Framestore NY or Mill NY, but the point is they are using it, and growing.

(except for hair and mo-cap editing).

The hair toolset in H9 is powerful (but not documented well). For mocap tweaking, CHOPs are your friends.

I don;t mean to be arrogant but I would like to know as well of who is actually at present time using Houdini in production

It's hard to imagine that now every company using it will come to this thread and report to you.

Dragos

brucelay
I found you made a good point! I think Houdini should give away some licences to some famous studios!

The price of one or two seats it's not a problem for any studio. They can even evaluate it for free if they request politely SESI. Giving them more licenses for free miss the point of software company… .

Using Houdini in character also shows some “good taste” too. I will try to learn!

So how do you know it has complete tool set if you just gonna learn it ?

Software adoption is little more complicated process then that. There ware dozens of threads about it. I think SESI does good job about it. What really would help is a bunch of shorts showing that Houdini can animate. Although as fas as I know people in smaller shops love all these tiny features in XSI or Max which are absent in Houdini animation pipeline. Layers to name one of them.

cheers,
sy.

SYmek
Although as fas as I know people in smaller shops love all these tiny features in XSI or Max which are absent in Houdini animation pipeline. Layers to name one of them.

cheers,
sy.

You mean Takes, right?

Animation Layers are a nice feature (at least on paper, for in the current incarnation – 6 – of XSI I heard is rather buggy, as the rest of the package).
They should allow you to layer animation on top of existing channels (animation, mocap). So you have a mocap take and on top of it you put your “animation layer” making the hand of the character rotate in a different direction, for example.
Theoretically it could be done with chops, but with layers you can do it in the viewport without any bother.
I do hope SESI have something similar (but actually working) in sight for the future versions of H / chops.

Dragos

probbins
You mean Takes, right?

As digitallysane said, I meant animation layers. And from my experience they are actually pretty useful. I can imagine CHOPS doing this but, hey, this is never ending story, we all would like to have it right there ready to use. Someday. Actually I've never tested Houdini's pose library and all this facility. Hope this can concur with XSI stuff.

Hope this can concur with XSI stuff.

Anytime.

I actually think Houdini leaves XSI in the dust when it comes to character animation. Yep, XSI has some niceties like animation layers and a quick NLA workflow (for simple stuff), but as a rounded tool for rigging AND animating, I think Houdini is much better.
Unfortunately there are SO few people aware of this in the industry.

Dragos

SYmek

probbins
You mean Takes, right?

As digitallysane said, I meant animation layers. And from my experience they are actually pretty useful. I can imagine CHOPS doing this but, hey, this is never ending story, we all would like to have it right there ready to use. Someday. Actually I've never tested Houdini's pose library and all this facility. Hope this can concur with XSI stuff.

Have you looked at Takes in Houdini?

Have you looked at Takes in Houdini?

What “takes” you mean? Did I miss something? Takes are scene versioning system not animation layering system. I know Houdini's Takes, I appreciate them but they are different story.

Animation layers could be pretty simple to implement in Houdini though. There is already such a command “Create Channel CHOP” in channel editor.

Let's say I selected a bone/control with key-animation already associated with it. I right-click on a parameter with channel or handle in Viewport -> “Create New Channel Layer” and Houdini sends channel to CHOPS, overwrites existing channels with its output (as“ Create Channel CHOP” does) and keeps track of it. Now the only addition is to let me keyframe new channel in viewport. New channel is of course added by CHOP network to underneath one.

One important thing is that Houdini should keep track of new channels names added so with some new control window I could switch between layers, delete all of them (or currently selected) at once etc. Command should be also executable with many selected objects ( all bones in hand). Can be done even in Python I suppose.

The question is how to keyframe CHOP channel in viewport or redirect bones/controls handle to current channels…

Ok, maybe this is not so simple but surly it's not another breaking-news technology. With Houdini architecture rather small but useful addition.

sorry for bigheadedness… it;s not me - it's my thinking process

sy.

My mistake. I haven't had the opportunity to look at takes (or character animation) yet, I had been under the impression that it did this sort of thing.