Mario Trani

GCharb
I don't fear AI, it only means that we'll have to be more imaginative in our work, for me, AI is a driving force that pushes me to work harder, also, they tend to all look alike! 😉

Quite vague statement. The quality and scope of things achievable is growing by the minute - literally. How do you compete against a machine which generates more and more art directable output within minutes which take whole teams of humans weeks or even months to create when the tools we`re using are actually making it even tougher? We surely have to keep being creative, but if just "working harder" was the solution, how did we end up in a situation like we`re in?

I think what we may need is mentioned above and other hybrid solutions, for example like the "airen 4D" renderer - anything which brings us as close and as fast to final outputs as possible. The puristic and heavily manual way we went so far won`t cut it anymore.

Polybud
Do not missunderstood me, I'm not dissatisfied with the actual stage of Houdini, SideFX offers more tools than any other 3D dcc software developer, but next to Sora and apps like that IF we do not reach tools that could shorten labour works as retopo, bone creating, rigging, UV'ing... not by /10 but to zero, in that case we are in trouble.

My view is different. Even though Houdini is evolving massively with each release, it`s also getting drastically more complex at the same time. Just look at Apex, it`s so confusing 0% of users who just need a "simple" rig will accomplish it with that. And that`s in a world where CG already has gotten bloated with time consuming, rather mundane tasks as mentioned by you. What I also find quite worrying is that simulations, whenever you want to step up the quality, get excessively long to calculate. SideFX addressed that issue with first steps in H20 but I think Houdini needs to step up a lot more with hybrid physics simulation and a lot faster because AI is moving at an increasing speed.

oldteapot7
IMO its waste of time and programmers effort and human resources in SESI.

People fall too much in Apple marketing and propaganda...

The type of 3D we usually do in Houdini with heavy simulations, instancing, rendering etc. isn`t what most or anyone does on laptops - yes, it`s ridiculous to use to much man power on such a tiny group of users.