hi as we all know Houdini is not something that everyone will use. i think one reason is that there are very little CG done in Houdini. for example when you visit cgsociety.org which i think is a very big community you find practically nothing made with Houdini. and even in this site there are very few updates in the gallery. don't you think so? shouldn't the company spend some money on making some jaw dropping CG. or maybe i am wrong and ordinary artists are not the target market and the company should spend money on other sorts of ads which will affect pros, not amateurs. :?: :?:

Hi,
I must respectfully disagree with your view.Virtually every major every studio uses Houdini in some shape or form now. Its even making healthy in roads into commercial shops. Just off the top of my head I can think of 5 firms that are going to be either expanding their use of Houdini or tooling up with a majority seat Houdini pipe.

The futures bright , its orange !

r

i know that Houdini is widely used in many serious projects.

i think you kind of misunderstood me.

don't you agree that cgsociety.org has one of the biggest cg artist communities on the web?

you know they have this search thing for finding artists. and you can search artists by the software they work with. in the list of softwares there are softwares i have never heard of,there are those that are very limited and specialized like zbrush or shake, but Houdini is not in that list. and i have never seen a cg done in Houdini there.
and it isn't just this site. it's nearly the same everywhere.

so what do you think?

BTW: i think considering these major companies is not that fair. they use nearly every major software we know. so just because they use Houdini TOO it doesn't mean Houdini is widely used.

I think I got what you are trying to say.
There are alot of beginners around that see an image X create in application Y and start using that application … become familiar whit it … and maybe start working professional whit it.
For example there's are alot of cool looking zBrush images around the web so people are more attracted to that kind of software. (at least for their hobby usage)
When it comes to houdini theres a lack of a hobbyuserbase creating such content. When you take a look over at the luxology gallery, there's also alot stuff that motivates beginners to start whit that application. You know A picture that says more than a thousand words ;D.
I think the reason for this is that the Houdiniusers are mostly professionals … not having the time for creating such content. The other thing is Mantra (btw I for myself think mantra is great). For beginners Mantra and shading in general is really hard you grasp. In other application, the ones that have alot of usergenerated content, the rendering process is really easy to setup and the creation of materials is rather easy (but somehow limited). For example in c4d there's only one so called material … but whit that you can really quickly setup almost 80% of every material you can think of whitout writing your own shaders. Same hold true for modo.
Also its way easier for beginners to get good lighting in a short amount of time in other apps. Hell in modo you just check the gi on button put some lights and it renders really fast. For mantra rendering whit pbr takes up to serveral hours per frame.
In short there would be more content if 1) there were more nonprofessional users 2) is mantra was noobfriendly + there would be somekind of megaubershader thing

yes. that is what i meant.

and i think you are right about the reasons for that. and i thinkthe 3rd reason is that company really doesn't care about nonprofessional users.
what do you think?

I will add a couple comments to this thread …

“and i thinkthe 3rd reason is that company really doesn't care about nonprofessional users.”

The Apprentice and Apprentice HD editions of Houdini are a testament to our commitment to non-professional users. We have allowed unprecedented access to our software for hobbyists and enthusiasts. As you can see amazing work is possible by non-professionals:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1515&Itemid=68 [sidefx.com]

Another key point is that Houdini's strengths are in its visual effects toolset and procedural workflow. When we have image contests, the results tend to take advantage of our procedural nature and try to bring something new to the table:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=567&Itemid=66 [sidefx.com]

The CG Society projects are primarily modeling/rendering images of characters/sets therefore Z-brush plus whichever renderer will do fine. Even though Mantra can do the same work, artists tend to go with what they know and learn Houdini to add effects to animated projects.

With a better uber-shader and more modeling/shading tutorials we could start to break out of this although our focus will be primarily effects for now because that is what our customers (both pro and non-pro) rely on us for.

On the other hand our procedural workflow has advantages in all areas of the CG pipeline and customers are starting to explore these other uses such as Asylum's character effect work on Terminator Salvation:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1539&Itemid=68 [sidefx.com]

Robert Magee
Product Marketing Manager
Side Effects Software