Yeah, that's definitely a good point. Thanks for pointing it out.

TheUsualAlex
Yeah, that's definitely a good point. Thanks for pointing it out.

I'm partly speaking from experience

I was visting my mother a while back and was bored one evening so I installed Houdini an attempt to explain my high-blood pressure. I confused her real good and then uninstalled Houdini.

<<Flash forward one month>>

I get an email from dear ole' Mom asking what the hserver.exe program did because it was showing up in the processes list. She said it wasn't causing trouble but she was worried it maybe spyware.

Wolfwood
What should SESI do? Add a option to “Remove All Users Preferences and Licensing”. For example, when you uninstall some video games it asks you if you want to remove your “saved games”, which is nice.

I agree, manlystanley raises a good point (albeit in a somewhat panicky manner, since we're all here to help and I'm pretty sure that many other 3d installers don't remove flexlm either).

At first I had no intention of replying, but after read through. I have to thank wolfwood for getting my point.
As I said I do this for “Hobyists” it's quite clear that Houdini was not designed for hobbyists. I do CG because I enjoy doing CG, it's not my goal to work for a production studio.
TheUsualAlex you're right when you said “It's probably not suited for you”. Houdini isn't; in my opinion, designed for the casual user. Much like a formual1 racer isn't designed for the casual driver :wink:

I'd have to agree with you about Houdini not being a hobbyists tool, and probably to a measure of ire from the good Side Effects people. I think they would like it to be a more popular tool (not quite Carrara level) but at the same time they have the great respect of professional visual effects people wanting to keep it as open/flexible/powerful as possible.

I think there are two things that keep it out of the reach of the hobbyist; the price point (the solution to which I know nothing about) and the lack of high-level (push-button) tools, which would be fairly easy to address if SESI devoted a some resources to it. What SESI might not realize fully is that some high-level tools will definitely positively affect the way professionals produce work in Houdini. It's sooo much easier to hack a system to customize it than to write one from scratch.

Sadly enough it turns out that the higher the price, the less you seem to get inasfar as canned solutions are concerned. It seems to be an inverted scale where the more you pay, the more esoteric, highly-evolved, less “popularly accessible” tools you aquire. Mentioning point-cloud access in VEX code to 99% of the community will cause a very quick glazing-over of eyes. Most of the VOPs nodes themselves (which are considered to be out of reach of a hobbyist) are not kept fully in sync of what tools have been written into the native VEX support. The lack of support and documentation for all the newer variadic options available to the irradiance() and occlusion() calls are prime examples of the mid-level tools like VOPs not keeping up with the low-level tools like native VEX. And if you know much about the SDK (HDK), you'll see support for extremely powerful and useful general purpose entities like SDF's (level sets) which hasn't yet been granted VEX access.

All in good time, I suppose; but if these things were focussed on then Houdini would enjoy far broader attention, IMHO.

Jason I agree, it's been my experiance the difficulty in use reflects the price. I'm realy not sure of why, but the more a CG program costs the more difficult it is to use. The first time I fired up Maya I was very intimidated by the interface. And pesonaly, when I'm working on a model I don't want to have to go to a sub menu of a sub menu to find the bevel. Of coarse with freeware you have the opposet, everything is right there and you see how little it does. :wink: If I buy a car as cheeply as possable I expect crank windows, standered transmition and no radio. But if I'm paying big bucks for a car it had better have powerwindows, automatic, and a 6 speaker 120watt cd. It's probibly all in who the program is designed for casual users want ease in use, pros want high quality results. So developers design their programs for their target consumer.
The thing is most casual users don't want to take the time to learn how to use a program. Something I read in the CG forums quite a bit is people post something to the effect of “I've been using this program for two weeks and I just can't get those results, what's the secret?”. And no I pop on there and say “spending 6 more weeks learning how to use the program”. It seems there a quite a few casual users out there that want a CG program that they can open, select a model, select a scene, sellect a pose then hit render, and expect a cinima quality render to come out.
ahhhh….aaahhhh…. ahhhh.. ch.po$er.. Sorry I have a cold.

Wolfwood
I get an email from dear ole' Mom asking what the hserver.exe program did because it was showing up in the processes list. She said it wasn't causing trouble but she was worried it maybe spyware.

Holy crap! Your mom knows what a process list is??? :shock:

this is the biggest joke i have ever seen

“I work agrabussness, I don't clear $17k in a year. - But as far as the program it's self, Side effects would have to pay me to use it.”

that is the biggest joke of it all, u'd probibly be earning 100k per year if u knew how to use this tool.

The more you let your software do stuff for you, the less control over it you have.

Im sure Carrara has some fillet or bevel tool, but just how much control do you have over it? In a software like Unigraphic's NX there are at least 15 types of conic transitions from one surface to another, that is without counting all the free form transitions like G2, G3, etc… but sure, I have to press at least 5 diferent buttons for it. And the soft costs about $ 60K…

So I guess the factor goes as:

more control = steep learning curve = high price

…I'm sorry, make that “20 ways for the conics” :wink:

hey manleystanley, didn't realize I was pushing the wrong buttons man, I was just clowning around. My humble apologies if you felt insulted. Don't like it - Trash it! Now you even know how.

cheers

tallkien

Hey men, I didn't read all the posts in this topic but from the first post I should say it is not a big deal to cry about. You can easily disable all the services related to Houdini by going into computer management(Right click on MyComputer>Manage) go to services and applications select any services you don't want to run go to properties disable them or if resisted set them into manual, reboot into safe mode then delete them or disable. easily can be applied to any unnecessary services.
Not recommended for beginners.

Other solution (and the most effective one):
Restore your computer to any point before installation of any unfamiliar program or driver if you are not certain how to clean up and uninstall it completely. Make a safe restoration point for your windows.

I know only Windows, no comment about other OSs.

Unigraphics! interesting to see somthing like UG is mentioned here.
In general high-end products are based on much older but well-proven and tested cores/kernels look into UG in CAD/CAM and Maya in CG. try to compare the maximum file size handling capacity of a high-end product to mid-ranges or freewares. A full assembly of a Boeing 777 in Catia or a 8 millions+ polygons scene in Maya on a regular PC can crash any other program exept very few high-end programs in their range.
Of course if you can afford a modern racing car or a new Ferrari you can afford to keep a fun and easy to drive car such as Beatle with auto transmission too, for your everyday boulevard drive and keep your racing car for competitions.
You can have Silo and of course Wings3D if you can affor to have Houdini or Maya.