21 replies to this topic

[sanostol]

I know it's a shame

Marc, on 09 November 2009 - 09:35 AM, said:

Just don't try use XSI on linux ... :rolleyes:


M

[Starrider]

We tried to nail it to: Some stuff which is hard to do in Maya is easy to do in Houdini and some stuff which is easy to do in Maya is hard to do in Houdini.

[tstex]

Starrider, on 10 November 2009 - 12:04 PM, said:

We tried to nail it to: Some stuff which is hard to do in Maya is easy to do in Houdini and some stuff which is easy to do in Maya is hard to do in Houdini.

For people making choices about what software to use - Houdini comes out looking pretty good for two main reasons:

1./ Re-use - big studios with a long history of Houdini use amass a lot of re-usable production assets. That saves a lot of production $$$.
2./ Flexibility - for a studio that heads down the Maya path, they often find themselves in a position where - we need to do something that this software will not do. Do we start again in other software - or get a team of coders to write code to make it possible. This is kind of how studios end up with 100 programmers. Places like Digital Domain (in it's heyday) had almost no dedicated R&D programmers. That saves a lot of infrastructure $$$.

Out of interest - can people suggest how many dedicated maya (M) programmers various studios have vs dedicated Houdini (H) programmers? Starting estimates:

ILM - 100M 0H
DW/PDI - 30M 2H
SPI - 10M 4H
DD - 2H
MPC - 30M
DNEG -
Framestore -
Pixar - 30M 0H
Other ... (please add)

feel free to correct these ...

If you consider the output of these studios, and the 100K price tag of the average C++ coder - you have to wonder if all those developer $$ are making it to the screen - just so people can try and make pixels in a package which makes a set of certain simple things easy - but which soon hits a wall, and offers poor re-use.

Edited by tstex, 23 November 2009 - 12:05 PM.

[old school]

Once you add in all the Maya TD's who spend almost all their time writing mel then that list can grow even higher on the dev side for some of the listed companies. Some add the Mel programmers to the list, some don't.

In general the Programmers for Houdini are for the most part are pipeline td's writing glue and integrating asset tracking, etc. They for the most part are not adding core functionality unless they are really pushing the limits of data size that Houdini can currently support (most recently Bullet comes to mind).

[Nibbler]

tstex, on 22 November 2009 - 09:58 PM, said:

For people making choices about what software to use - Houdini comes out looking pretty good for two main reasons:

1./ Re-use - big studios with a long history of Houdini use amass a lot of re-usable production assets. That saves a lot of production $$$.
2./ Flexibility - for a studio that heads down the Maya path, they often find themselves in a position where - we need to do something that this software will not do. Do we start again in other software - or get a team of coders to write code to make it possible. This is kind of how studios end up with 100 programmers. Places like Digital Domain (in it's heyday) had almost no dedicated R&D programmers. That saves a lot of infrastructure $$$.

Out of interest - can people suggest how many dedicated maya (M) programmers various studios have vs dedicated Houdini (H) programmers? Starting estimates:

ILM - 100M 0H
DW/PDI - 30M 2H
SPI - 10M 4H
DD - 2H
MPC - 30M
DNEG -
Framestore -
Pixar - 30M 0H
Other ... (please add)

feel free to correct these ...

If you consider the output of these studios, and the 100K price tag of the average C++ coder - you have to wonder if all those developer $$ are making it to the screen - just so people can try and make pixels in a package which makes a set of certain simple things easy - but which soon hits a wall, and offers poor re-use.

Sir, little correct:

Pixar - 30M 1H

[dyei nightmare]

mmm i like this thread, im an advanced user in maya, but im learning houdini because i love the procedural nature... i would say this...


for what i would prefer maya?

  for character creation and animation, this means for modeling, texturing, rigging, even nParticles and nCloth are pretty reliable. but if you want to create complex effects you have to program a lot, and  a lot of things in maya are a "black box"  


for what i would prefer to use houdini?

for advanced vfx techinques, when i wanna make complex visual effects involving dynamics, particles, volumes, and procedural animation, to push the boundaries of vfx.  


it doesnt mean that maya is bad for dynamics or houdini is bad for modeling and animation, is just that some people feels more confortable in that way, all is just about personal tastes...

both programs are good, you just need to find where you feel confortable.

[dyei nightmare]

Ratman, on 28 October 2009 - 03:28 PM, said:

They're both a tool, Maya can do some good stuff for certain things, and Houdini can do some good stuff for certain things too. Each of them are right for a given job, you just have to know when one is needed.

  exactly this is in a short, the point.

Edited by dyei nightmare, 28 February 2010 - 05:11 PM.

[jasoncartiver]

Hi guys,

What about referencing? In Maya we can reference characters, props, and environment into the scene where the animator animate.
Can we do the same in Houdini?

I tried digital assets but it removes all my keyframe when I refresh my objects.

Been figuring for two days and I still can't figure out the equivalent in Houdini.
Anyone can shed light on this?

[symek]

jasoncartiver, on 11 November 2010 - 06:55 AM, said:

Hi guys,

What about referencing? In Maya we can reference characters, props, and environment into the scene where the animator animate.
Can we do the same in Houdini?

I tried digital assets but it removes all my keyframe when I refresh my objects.

Been figuring for two days and I still can't figure out the equivalent in Houdini.
Anyone can shed light on this?

You can reference pretty much everything in Houdini for a long time now (6 years or so). Any node(s) in Houdini can be HDA'ed, thus anything can be referenced. The point is that your channels are apparently placed on a HDA surface, not inside, thus they are saved in a hip file, not inside the otl. What makes sense, since HDA is a definition (or 'class' according to programming nomenclature), not an instance. Once you close your animation inside hda, it will be carried along with it.

Albeit an animation can be saved outside a scene in many ways: as baked meshes (most popular method I suppose for a couple of reasons), as *.chan or *.clip files via Chops, or as a subset of hip file (mwrite -c flag, see: http://www.sidefx.co...mmands/mwrite).

cheers,
skk.


AFAIK referencing animated character as a full rig is perhaps the last choice in pipelines I'm aware of, but this of course depends on many details...


ps oh, stupid me, I forgot to mention that in fact you have an option to save animation to a hda parameters (see Operator Type Properties), but this is quite dangerous from a pipeline wise perspective, since you can't recognize which asset was changed by an user (accidentally or not), and which matches referenced otl. This also makes difficult to build a scene procedurally for example to send it to farm. Once your channels are locked inside, you are save (well, more or less).

Edited by SYmek, 12 November 2010 - 04:22 AM.

[exu]

Hi Guys!

I'm very impressed by posts!
there's no any other user forum in the world that this kind of question they would have answered with so polite, positive manner that i saw here!

try to do similar question on xsi base, cgtalk(maya/XSI/c4d sub forum), etc,  for example to see how fast this thread will become a flame and pointless debate…

As Houdini and Maya user, i'm suffering a lot, with pointless, useless, endless......... discussions!

So, my answer to the original post is,
if you came here to get information, you got it !
or try in other user forums to see what you get!  
And this is definitively is a great start point, right?

Cheers

Edited by exu, 12 November 2010 - 04:37 AM.