Best way to start learning Houdi-god

[Fay_Hiba]

Hello guys,

I'm just asking if there is a best way to start learning Houdini from scratch. 
There are many things that I cant really understand like SOPS, DOPS, VEX and how the nodal interface works in itself. 

Cheers,
Fay 

[Atom]

Here is the first video I tutorial I went through when I started using Houdini. I did not really understand what I was doing but the result did work. It took me about a week or two before I really started understanding the power of the network approach, having come from 3DSMax, Blender and C4D which all take a stacked layer kind of approach to modifiers.

 

If you click the link in my signature you will find a page with links to various examples and down near the bottom is a list of video tutorial authors. I recommend Peter Quint and Rohan Dalvi videos as good starting points for learning as well as SideFX Go Procedural on Vimeo

Edited September 23, 2016 by Atom

[Fay_Hiba]

Hey Atom!
Thank you for your answer! 
I'll definitely going to keep learning from GoProcedural, simple and comprehensive! 

[anthonymcgrath]

On 23/09/2016 at 2:08 PM, Fay_Hiba said:

Hello guys,

I'm just asking if there is a best way to start learning Houdini from scratch. 
There are many things that I cant really understand like SOPS, DOPS, VEX and how the nodal interface works in itself. 

Cheers,
Fay 

hey i had to reply to this...

I've been using houdini for about 2 months now and if i could/can switch my workflow completely over to it in the future then i will no questions asked.   I'm a long time maya user for nearly 20 years... literally back since v2 of maya when ppl were excited about paintfx.  I got my first look at hou back when it was version6 and didn't really get chance to get my nose in it.  Then i watched someone using it again on motorstorm3 and was blown away by what could be done but again, never got chance to get involved on it and half those tools weren't ever used which was a bloody shame

regarding learning.. your already on the best forum for learning so your in a good starting place - this and sidefx website and you wont go wrong.  Get involved, follow what ppl are doing and ask questions of your own.  Vimeo and youtube have hundreds of tutorials on there so if your fond of fb and wotnot.. drop the 'social media' for half an hour of each day and make it a part of your day to watch one and follow along then experiment which the software makes you want to do alot anyhow!  I've sat through a whole afternoon at home on my days off and watched numerous hou tuts on youtube with a coffee and a pie haha!

there are very few houdini books out there tbh but there is one worth keeping in your collection "houdini on the spot" - its a good read and alot of the tricks still work but tbh nothing beats following a vid tutorial - paid and/or free and seeing what you can do.    Rohan Dalvi has a good few starter tutorials on youtube to begin with.

above all DONT be scared of it - seriously - just start small ... learn some basic tricks via the video tutorials.. follow along... build your own cookbook of tricks and recipes and play with it   then read up, ask q's on the forums and get the help... download some scene files from various ppls questions and see whats been done to fix it or attain the effect!  Dont think too much about what your going to do with it down the line or how to get data from package A to B (hou is very good at this tho) or how to render it and things... just concentrate on learning the setups - theres ALWAYS a way to convert it or reconstruct it to some usable data later on

and here's a bit of inspiration for you.... I put this together in 2 weeks recently with one week being sussing stuff out in houdini... its quite basic but i learnt so much doing this...

 

good luck and dive in - the water is decidedly procedural
ant
 

[konstantin magnus]

I created a tutorial aiming at total beginners:

 

[Luijee]

Hey Fay,

I would recommend building a solid foundation in general computer graphics and mathematics. From there I found exploring other people's HIP files extremely helpful.

This site is filled with loads of cool examples and easy to understand gifs

http://www.tokeru.com/cgwiki/index.php?title=HoudiniGettingStarted

There's always interesting topics on here and the sidefx forums too, just dive in.

[konstantin magnus]

 

[shawn_kearney]

I am pretty new, also, so I very much understand how you're feeling. Houdini is very intimidating. It probably took me 150 hours of intense frustration to start feeling confident with how things sort of work, at least enough to start hacking stuff together. Getting used to Houdini is a pretty slow process, but it builds on itself pretty rapidly, I think. Honestly, once I sort of started figuring out how things work I am finding it much easier to pick up, and far more consistent in operation than Maya. I went through the Pluralsight tutorials, spending most of my time on  the intermediate lessons. Try also focussing on one aspect at a time, be it modeling, fluids, pyro, particles, whatever you're interested in atm. I think what we learn from one toolset will help in other areas.

But you'll get it! Just put a lot of hard work into the first few months, watch a lot of tutorials, it will pay off.

[Fay_Hiba]

Hello guys, a little bit late I had to change my computer to go back to Houdini ( I went from a bad laptop to a new tower omg what a new breathe! )

Cant thank you enough for all these informations!! I'll start again from scratch, and I see you there in few months then ( in a meantime I'll send some work in progress on other topics ) 
Anyway, lets do it then!

If you guys have more information to absorb just send it to me on this topic, I think this will help more than me in the future