character animator

YOU: Well you haven't seen much in the way of Character work in Houdini because it's a realitively new feature for them. From what I understand, Houdini only started to expand into Character tools seriously less than 2 years ago with Version 5. I've only been using Houdini since last summer with 5.5 and the character tools seemed adequite, but now with version 6 I'm realizing how really great the tools are.

>> I guess not, (new feature for them), we are not talking about hobbyists or singal artists, but about major studios who spends thousands on training, a guess the word NEW wouldn’t fit !, and please note that I don’t know much about Houdini, and I suppose that you are a pro, so please we are both beyond the fact of being loyal to specific companies, we are seeking the best in the market to provide the best for our coustomers.

YOU: Final Fantasy, I know for a fact began production before Maya was even available in Beta form. I worked at a company that beta tested Maya 1, and prior to that one of our animators was offered a job working on that movie. Square was using Power Animator 7.5.1 and Softimage 3.6 at the time, and eventually went to Maya around version 2, but still stuck with SI 3.8 as well. At the time production started Houdini was at version 1 and it wasn't a good option for Character work. Going from Power Animator to Maya wasn't a big deal because the two packages were so similar.

>> Maya is a part of power animator, as a matter of fact, Maya is a collection of existing and new tools combined when Alias merged with Wavefront under SGI, so, my point is that Maya has the same tools found at power animator, but they are more advanced. Talking a bout SoftImage, am not defending on Maya, or any specific package, Don’t forget that I posted here to check the possibility of transiting to Houdini, am not trying to prove anything here, not the most powerful or least or anything, I do believe that the artist is the one key not the software ..

>> I didn't understand what you said, what do you mean by saying: ((You see alot of Maya Character animation because it's been a character tool from day one, and previous to that Power Animator was a Character tool. Things like Bingo were actually made by people at A|W to demonstrate Maya's character tools. SideFX seems to be determined to establish Houdini as a complete solution for animation, not just an effects tool)), is Houdini still unfinished? Or maybe beta, but in a new name? Every major package has effects, character animation tools, Power Animator is from the same company, what do you expect? What difference dose it make if the package has character tools from day one or two? The point is: what you get from your software? How easy? And how fast?

You: "As for why Pixar supports Maya directly, that's easy to understand. Pixar wants to sell that renderer. Maya is probably the most popular tool for film work, but it doesn't have what could be classified as a production class renderer, not even with MR built in, simply because neither Maya's old software renderer or MR for Maya are true distributed renderers. Pixar filled that hole. So for studios using Maya, PRMan has become the renderer of choice, and Pixar is selling plenty of licenses"

>> Well .. MR isn't that bad, you probably didn't even try to render with it, now it's fully integrated with Maya 5.0 providing direct access from within Maya, just as XSI. For Maya being the most popular, tell me, do you know that Pixar uses Maya too in their productions? (refer to http://www.pixar.com [pixar.com] to make sure), Is it because it's popular too? Or maybe cheap?

You also said: “Lastly, Maya's UI may look different on Irix, but it's functionally identical.”

>> That’s exactly what I said, I didn't mention anything related to the functionality, what I was trying to say is that I prefer Maya on IRIX, which means that I prefer the IRIX GUI style .. and also, am sure you know that IRIX is the best OS for visualization, some people call it (the historical visualization system), as it fully supports OpenGL 1.2, and the graphics cards provided by SGI are the best choice ever, MXE, and the new VPRO ..

if possible provide me with the most complex and amaizing animations made with Houdini, the ones hard to be done in other packages (weather fully CGI or combined with a film) ..


Stremik
Another thing about Houdini and PRMan is, that Houdini's output to RIB is way better than Pixar's own RAT.
The best on the market actually.

am waiting for the prove.

MatrixNAN, MichaelC thanks for your great posts ..

While searching for houdini learning media, I found this ..
http://web0.futureforums.co.uk/houdini/pages/community/index.html [web0.futureforums.co.uk]

I'm very pleased to know that Side Effects really cares about educating the customers for free, A|W doesn't, the only free learning media are the (How to's) which are old, and discussing very basic concepts ..

I noticed that Houdini's interfaces are almost the same in both (Windows & IRIX), while Maya is somehow different in IRIX (I think better than windows), I guess leaving a package like Maya would be a hard decision especially that am using it for years, but if you don’t like what you're doing (using the correct set of tools) you'll never be creative enough to catch up with the demanding needs ..

Why I can't see any real life animations done by Houdini? I mean like “Bingo”, or “The End”? And if Houdini is the best, why did Square use Maya as a main modeling, character animation tool for creating their historical animation (Final Fantasy: The spirits within)?

Or Ice age? Why only Maya and RenderMAN used? Why I don’t hear much about Houdini?
If you would say it’s the price, I wouldn't agree, because if a studio can afford Maya Unlimited (7000 $) as a Modeling, animation tool, and RenderMAN (10.000 $) that’s ten thousand dollars, as a rendering, shading tool, and also Shake as a compositing tool, how they can't afford Houdini?, and as you said MatrixNAN and also you MichaelC that Houdini's renderer is almost as RenderMAN's power and functionality, and you can't live without the powerful compositing system MichaelC ? Which means that a studio wont need any other package if they purchse Houdini.

I do believe that Houdini is very comprehensive, but tell my why it is not being used by the major studios?, and why Pixar Animation Studios (the leadership with its Marionette, and RenderMAN) made a special version of RenderMAN created just for Maya, I mean why did they care about Maya specifically (the other software used to connect to RenderMAN are created by other companies, not Pixar), and you all should know that Pixar uses Maya beside their in-house animation system (Marionette), why not Houdini?

That would be all ..

Yours,
Character Animator

Interesting post MatrixNAN, I really enjoyed reading it,

One little thing that every major 3D package supports RenderMAN, as it’s the industry standard renderer.

When you said: “You can build shaders graphically for RenderMan and render directly out to RenderMan from within Houdini. Their compositor does do RenderMan also not just Mantra”

Do you mean that you can build shaders using Houdini's (I don’t know the name of the material creator, so lets just say Houdini's Hypershade or Multilister) and then render them out to renderman, you can do that with maya too, but it wont give you the same greate results when you create them with SLIM, and if you can within Houdini with out the quality and projection affected, then I shall consider using renderman just as a renderer, if I decided to transition to Houdini, note that the renderman shading language is the best ever, although it needs some scripting sometimes, but once you learn it you well never use the graphical interface ever.

You also said: ((I could go on and on for pages about the bugs in Maya)), I do agree with that, but not that much, Maya is a very powerful, comprehensive package, and the programmers at A|W wouldn't release a buggy version.

It seems that you are using Houdini for a while, we all have strong (also strange) relations with our packages, but am really considering to try Houdini.

As I told you, I prefer the Maya interface, but that might change, am considering to get an Octane with IRIX installed, where can I see Houdini running on IRIX ?

And is there's something similar to Maya's HotBox in Houdini ?

one last thing: Did you use Maya? I mean as a professional or a talented user?
thanks again ..

Yours,
Character Animator