product / medical / arch and illustration

[kangping]

hi everybody,

i have been looking at houdini apprentice and the videos here at sidefx for a couple of days and i'm kind of amazed

my 3d needs are mainly in product visualization, medical vis and illustration (and to a certain degree archives) with modeling and rendering in modo. unfortunately (or fortunately - who knows ) more and more clients require animations with effects (fluids, gas, welding etc), which also seem to become longer and longer sequences. i would like to provide solutions to this... and modo's network renderer, which i currently use, is surely not the right solution (not really stable and reliable...). how would the workflow between modo an houdini look?

is houdini / mantra the right direction to look for these needs? is houdini / mantra generally used in these fields?

i find the idea of nodes great and at first it reminds me of the flexibility of solid works (using / teaching this at uni)... and, pretty much everything else i could see up till now.

i'd be more than thankful for every answer and opinion,

david

[hopbin9]

I think when it comes to picking a product that you'll be using to service your clients, then it really is a personal choice. Not something that can easily be clarified by asking people on a forum.

Modo looks like a great tool for what you described. I've been interested in learning Modo for it's polygon modelling strengths, which Houdini is not good for. I think the two would work well together, but Houdini has a hard learning curve.

[lukeiamyourfather]

...but Houdini has a hard learning curve.

I wouldn't say learning Houdini is harder than learning any other 3D package. Coming from Maya I found Houdini to be much more intuitive and less obfuscated which made it easier for me to learn. It does require a deeper understanding of computer graphics fundamentals though. For example you probably wouldn't ever need to know if your surface normals are unit length on a model in Modo or if the current shading coordinates are in camera space or world position.

In my opinion Houdini would be a good package to compliment Modo for rendering and general 3D work. The downside would be the cost if you plan to do any dynamics work (as you mentioned with the welding, etc.). Houdini Master will cost you twice as much or more as any other capable 3D package like Maya, Max, Cinema 4D, Softimage XSI and so on. In exchange though you get as many Mantra tokens as you want for rendering on as many machines as you want and it comes with queue manager. Also some of the best support in the business.