We have been hard at work on a new website and it is available now in beta form at:

http://beta.sidefx.com [beta.sidefx.com]

To see the site you need to log on using your existing profile.

• Please contact us at webmaster@sidefx.com with any login issues.
• Please post any beta feedback to the new forum.

Here is a quick outline of the keys features of the site:

• Responsive Design - this site is designed to be seen on desktops and on mobile devices - please test in different scenarios.

• Forum - this site has a “out of sync” forum which is for testing purposes only - anything you post will not be part of the final published forum. Please try it out to test its features but be aware that these posts will go away when we launch. When we go public there will be a sync with the existing sidefx.com forum so that messages are not lost.

• Tutorials, Stories and News are available for viewing. Please review these for readability and layout - The tutorial page has filtering to help find the lesson you need. Please test this and let us know how it works for you.

• Profiles - An important feature of the new site is your profile - you can create a public profile which includes social media links and portfolio pieces.

• Galleries - Please add content here to help grow the Gallery. You can also publish your own tutorials.

• User Tutorials - You can also add your own tutorials to the site - go to your profile and click the edit icon (gear) - you can add tutorials using the tutorial tab.

• Product section - These are broken down into Film/TV and Games.

There are some key elements that are not yet on the beta site - these will be added soon:

• Download
• Store
• Journal


Please test the site as much as you can. Any feedback we get now will help ensure a better experience for the whole community when we launch.

Thanks,
Robert

Here is a preview of the new look:

It looks very nice, indeed!
I hope it will still keep some of the current´s site info regarding Schools? It took us a lot of work to become a certified school! 8)

Netvudu
It looks very nice, indeed!
I hope it will still keep some of the current´s site info regarding Schools? It took us a lot of work to become a certified school! 8)

Check out the Education section in the footer - Certified schools are featured in the schools section

It's pretty nice! I like that things are given a bit more space, rather than being crammed in, but I think it's gone a bit too far in this direction.

Even on this HDish monitor the big banner on the main page takes up half the screen. I think the size of the banners on the other pages (e.g. customer support) works better. On the main page there's also a lot of extra padding sitting below the preview text of those articles (e.g. Avengers/Houdini Engine/etc) which could be tightened up.

My impression of the main pages that you get to after clicking on film or games or whatever, is that all the info seems quite vague and hidden. I think the sort of people looking for houdini would be looking for more concrete straight up examples of how houdini works and what it can do - eg. with more concrete info (text/images) showing why houdini is different to other 3D apps.

If I was considering houdini for the first time, I'd be more impressed by seeing in-situ screenshots and animations of houdini producing great things - eg showing the power of procedural workflows, rather than assorted renders and quite general marketing text.

My 2c!

mattebb
My impression of the main pages that you get to after clicking on film or games or whatever, is that all the info seems quite vague and hidden. I think the sort of people looking for houdini would be looking for more concrete straight up examples of how houdini works and what it can do - eg. with more concrete info (text/images) showing why houdini is different to other 3D apps.

If I was considering houdini for the first time, I'd be more impressed by seeing in-situ screenshots and animations of houdini producing great things - eg showing the power of procedural workflows, rather than assorted renders and quite general marketing text.

My 2c!

These pages are overview pages. Each section will get a “Learn more” button which will lead to pages with screen grabs, videos and feature details.

The login page is a bit off kilter on Windows 10 with Chrome:

rmagee

Netvudu
It looks very nice, indeed!
I hope it will still keep some of the current´s site info regarding Schools? It took us a lot of work to become a certified school! 8)

Check out the Education section in the footer - Certified schools are featured in the schools section

I trust you Robert, but I don´t see an education section in the footer. I can see it in your screengrab but not in my browser. It goes from Product to Support without an Education menu.
Furthermore, I also think down there, it will become quite buried for people to find if the main page gets a lot of news. I think it could go on the top menu just like in the current site…
…but that´s just me and my two euro cents :wink:

it's i think this: http://beta.sidefx.com/products/houdini-education/ [beta.sidefx.com]

i find it at the moment a bit too simple, would be nice to have a nice portrait of each school but i'm sure they will add more later.

It's this page - it has links to each certified school;

http://beta.sidefx.com/education/schools/ [beta.sidefx.com]

I send my feedback…. yes Luke Letellier also on FireFox the login page is strange…

but I can't access now on beta website?

Mat

I have a problem. My username contains a dot and this works with the new page. I can login. However when I try to edit my profile I get this message:
Username can only contain letters, numbers, dashes or underscores.

Which means I am not able to change anything there without changing my current username.
Can't we have a separate username from the profile page url?

rmagee
It's this page - it has links to each certified school;

http://beta.sidefx.com/education/schools/ [beta.sidefx.com]

ah, that´s very nice indeed 8)

From what I've road tested so far it looks good, I like the profile integration to the forum and the overall colours/design.

This is more personal taste but I too agree that there is a lot of “large” elements. I've gotten into a habit of using my browser at 90% or even 75% zoom level for when a website is too big and I'm happy to see the new site seems to scale very well

It looks very nice! I have tested it on Firefox MacOSX and didn't run into any issues. I will keep testing on Safari (Mac), Edge (Win) and Firefox (Linux) and let you know if I run into any issues.

Really like the new design. The Store section doesn't seem to work .. I just tried to buy an Indie license, but it removes the Indie portion (leaving the Mantra Token + Houdini Engine license, total cost $0.00). Hitting Continue mails me those tokens…which is odd, or unexpected anyway.

Could it be because I also have a full FX licensed to the same email address?

The look is great.
It lacks proper product pages, product comparison and other detailed information like: “what is included in the license I bought” and so on.

Still, good job!

Please, how can I download this OTL? Or where do I find the “Exchange” on the new site?

http://www.sidefx.com/exchange/info.php?fileid=514&versionid=514 [sidefx.com]

Please, anybody? How do I download these OTLs and HIPs?
http://archive.sidefx.com/exchange/info.php/download.php?fileid=105&type=HIP [archive.sidefx.com]