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Houdini Pipeline - addtional specialist software like RealFlow, FumeFX


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Heyhey,

I'm as said before a beginner in Houdini, actually doing some research about the software. And while going over the capabilities of Houdini, I was wondering,... once you are able to use the full scope of Houdini, are you still in need of specialist software like RealFlow, FumeFX etc. in your VFX Pipeline to do your work / create your effects or can you also rely ONLY on Houdini?

Meaning,...Houdini comes as far as I've seen with a powerfull fluid solver, some extraordinary tools to create dust, smoke, fire, ...so one like me would assume you do not need RealFlow etc. anymore. Up to what extend is that true? I furthermore assume it can't be true entirely because then everyone would just use Houdini and nothing more, right? ;)

Can you share a bit of your experience here? I'd be very interested to hear :)

Thx in advance!

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In my experience (small studios) this is getting more and more true. Previously, the bigger your knowledge of Houdini was, the less you had to rely on other tools.

Currently, most "standard" effects are getting so easy to do in Houdini you don´t have to go somewhere else for anything at all. In fact, it´s usually way more troublesome to leave it, because interactions will get way more difficult than keeping everything on the same environment.

I remember a liquid simulation I ended up simming in Houdini (SPH times, not now, with super quick FLIPs) because, even if Realflow churned out fluid particles faster, eveything else was better in Houdini. At that time, I heard of several people importing Realflow particles into Houdini, if only because the meshing process got so much better with Houdini tools.

But right now? the only reason I could imagine for leaving Houdini (fx-wise) would be lack of operator´s shading knowledge which could potentially hurt your final render´s quality, or needing an edge on the creation of an insane amount of particles that made you want to try Naiad or use a point clustering solution such as Krakatoa. Otherwise it would be foolish to leave Houdini, considering it rivals all the other tools you mentioned, but gives far more control.

Edited by Netvudu
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The answer is probably not what you're looking for: it depends on a lot of things (budget, experience, personnel, shots, pipeline, etc.). The recent release of Houdini 12 improves many of the features and makes it more competitive with other applications like RealFlow and FumeFX. Though no single package is capable of doing everything for everyone. Only way to know if it will meet your requirements is to try it in production and the benefits or pitfalls will reveal themselves.

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Did he just ask if you need FumeFX if you're using Houdini? Those be fighting words!

I'll just say no to FumeFX and turn the other cheek.

RealFlow does a lot that Houdini can't and/or struggles to do, but RealFlow is a headache to work with compared to Houdini. You need to put in regular hours using RealFlow to be skilled enough to apply it to a project, and still finish the work within the estimated amount of time. Most studios I know, keep a few RealFlow licenses but under estimate the work and then expect a VFX artist to jump into the software and immediately be productive. Most of these issues aren't a fault with RealFlow, but it does tent to sit around unused until a need arises. Houdini on the other hand, it's fluid system no matter how good/bad is just like everything else. If you know how to use Houdini, run simulations, then you can jump into fluids when you need to. You still need to learn it's limitations to know when RealFlow is needed.

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hopbin9: Nono ;) I ment if you use and know houdini, do you still need stuff like realflow and fumeFX IN ADDITION (or is it sufficiant to stick to houdini). But you and the others answered my question very well!

First of all thx for sharing your thoughts folks! I appreciate alot!

I see it depends (as allways) on the task you have to perform, the tools/pipeline the studio uses, the budget you have, and timelimit you have to reach. But it's good to hear that you are basically able to do a fair ammount of the work with houdini itself. I'm not afraid of learning new software, (I enjoy to do research, playing around being curiouse) but keeping up to date in so many different packages at once seems somehow difficult these days (considering the very fast product update cycles). Especially as VFX guy.

So the background of my question is (just to let you guys know my thought process here): how VFX artists are capable of keeping their knowledge on a constant high level in so many different tools/plugins (for VFX you need to know particles, fluids, rigid body dynamics, cloth, etc. etc.). It is already such vast ground to cover in one app, but covering this (the same tasks) also in different apps (even though it is technically/concept-wise basically all the same thing), it is at least for me somehow unimaginable to manage (in terms of learning, doing research, keeping up to date). For fluids for example I know at least 4 different tools that can do it. RealFlow, Naiad, Maya nParticles, Houdini (and I bet I forgot some other mayor ones here!). Same is true for things like smoke etc. FumeFX, Phoenix FD, Houdini,...See what I mean? Are you expected to know all of them? I think you could spend even 3 lifetimes and would not even be close to know them all in depth (= instant production ready/ instant productive if you are asked to do something with it).

Since I'm new to VFX (being a CG-generalist for quite some years now,...I decided to specialize in VFX just a couple of month ago, taking houdini classes over at vfxlearning.com), I also trying to make myself aware of all the skills you need to have when you want to get hired/specialize as VFX-Artist form reasonable sized studio somewhere(UK, US, CN, doesnt matter). But specialize is not the right term if yo ask me. To specialize means to reduce the topics you cover to a fair ammount, and then push your knowledge there to the top notch level. Ok, so now we have fluids, rigid body dynamics, particles, etc. ect. This feels again like standing in front of an ocean than giving me the impression that I did break down / reduce my areas of interest (for specialisation sake). At the moment, I feel a bit lost in all thouse different areas which are to cover, lying ahead of me to be honest - but at the other hand, what I've seen so far is that it is absolut a interesting task and fun to create stuff using Houdini, and that keeps me going!

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The answer is probably not what you're looking for: it depends on a lot of things (budget, experience, personnel, shots, pipeline, etc.). The recent release of Houdini 12 improves many of the features and makes it more competitive with other applications like RealFlow and FumeFX. Though no single package is capable of doing everything for everyone. Only way to know if it will meet your requirements is to try it in production and the benefits or pitfalls will reveal themselves.

Anyone tested fluid system speed/capacity between h12 and rf?

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Since I'm new to VFX (being a CG-generalist for quite some years now,...I decided to specialize in VFX just a couple of month ago, taking houdini classes over at vfxlearning.com), I also trying to make myself aware of all the skills you need to have when you want to get hired/specialize as VFX-Artist form reasonable sized studio somewhere(UK, US, CN, doesnt matter). But specialize is not the right term if yo ask me. To specialize means to reduce the topics you cover to a fair ammount, and then push your knowledge there to the top notch level. Ok, so now we have fluids, rigid body dynamics, particles, etc. ect. This feels again like standing in front of an ocean than giving me the impression that I did break down / reduce my areas of interest (for specialisation sake). At the moment, I feel a bit lost in all thouse different areas which are to cover, lying ahead of me to be honest - but at the other hand, what I've seen so far is that it is absolut a interesting task and fun to create stuff using Houdini, and that keeps me going!

There is a difference between specializing and being really good at something. You will hear the term "specialize" thrown around a lot in the freelance market, but my experience has been few understand what it means to specialize.

When you specialize you are telling the client or prospective employer to "trust" you. When you say in a job interview (for example) that you specialize in fluids, then you are saying "turn to me with trust and I will lead you down the right path". To claim that you specialize in something you most be able to do the following, and do it well.

1) You must know "what NOT to do". This is key to specializing. You bring knowledge and experience to the table that allows your employer/client to avoid pit falls. You don't solve problems, you prevent them from happening. That is why a specialist can earn a significantly higher pay, cause things just go smoother when they are on the job.

2) You communicate effectively on the subject matter in a way that avoids all confusion. Your employer/client will turn to you for clarity because you can provide it. A specialist doesn't have to perform any labor to be a valuable member of a team.

3) Employers/clients will trust you, cause you naturally earn their trust. Your knowledge, experience and skills on the specialized topic reduces their fears and gains their trust.

4) You represent the top 10% of people who do what you do. No one can claim they specialize if they can't stand out in the crowd.

5) You deliver. You get the job done.

There are a lot of people out there who do only one thing, and they focus their training and skills on learning just that one thing. That is NOT specializing. That is being "limited". To specialize is to cross the chasm between having a highly trained skill and being a person that can be trusted. Trust comes from communication. Skill comes from experience.

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To be short, up to H12 Houdini couldn't bit specialized software in FX simulations. Despite of its many advantages, which I'm sure you've heard about, in most demanding shots Houdini was far behind in term of performance and the level of details it could achieve. This was one of a reasons Houdini wasn't used wider as you could expect.

Note though, you don't have to always use the fastest solution out there. You can be perfectly fine staying with a solution 2-4x slower assuming it has other advantages, and Houdini surly had those, and so many specially recently founded studios has made Houdini its important companion and seems like more and more high-end facilities are switching their Fx pipeline (even prior H12).

Now even though Houdini 12 sims at least as fast as RF/Naiad or Maya's fluids/FumeFX, and - as it is in a latter case - does it more accurate and controllable (and render-able!), it still doesn't mean people will peek it up for these reasons.

Take this: Houdini is pretty much end-to-end solution == it's far more expensive and involving for a studio (its price, price of AUP, new artists, new pipeline elements, its maintenance) than its competitors, if (!) you treat it as a "additional" software to the existing pipeline. Basically Houdini wasn't designed to be a plugin for Maya despite of what some people may say, and what SESI may advertise (albeit truly Houdini I/O capability exceeds most softwares ).

This way things are getting complicated, since an introduction of Houdini in a pipeline becomes a serious operation. Becomes also a threat for people already working on duties it has to carry on. An introduction of RF into a studio doesn't heart anyone.

Other things like the lack of experienced artists, system inertia etc etc, was already discussed.

cheers,

skk.

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Anyone tested fluid system speed/capacity between h12 and rf?

I made first attempt to recreate this scene:

At first Houdini was twice as fast as RF, but the quality of the sim was poor, so it's not comparable. I had to tweak settings and repeat a sim (and haven't seen it yet). I've also heard about 31 million flip sims comparison to Naiad, which made Houdini 2x faster, but again sim looked much different. Looks like Houdini's default settings are too low compared to Naiad/RF. Besides what will I end up with, it's already clear that Houdini became a strong option to those.

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I made first attempt to recreate this scene:

At first Houdini was twice as fast as RF, but the quality of the sim was poor, so it's not comparable. I had to tweak settings and repeat a sim (and haven't seen it yet).

Moving collisions can still be a bit tricky to get just right in H12 FLIP, but a sim like this should be very doable. What kind of problems were you seeing?

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There is also Afterburn, Particle Flow (Box 1, 2 & 3), Thinking Particles too.

I feel these are still closed black box solutions that are not very flexible. Also the workflow is not homogeneous, nor the features are compatible with everything.

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I made first attempt to recreate this scene:

At first Houdini was twice as fast as RF, but the quality of the sim was poor, so it's not comparable. I had to tweak settings and repeat a sim (and haven't seen it yet). I've also heard about 31 million flip sims comparison to Naiad, which made Houdini 2x faster, but again sim looked much different. Looks like Houdini's default settings are too low compared to Naiad/RF. Besides what will I end up with, it's already clear that Houdini became a strong option to those.

I haven't looked at all the details of FLIP in Houdini 12 yet but in previous versions of Houdini the default velocity field was half the resolution of the rest of the container for the FLIP simulation, but the user can change this to a 1:1 ratio with the rest of the container. My guess is this was to improve performance but it leads to loss of intricate motion as it gets blurred and muddled. If comparing apples to apples in terms of the quality and look of a simulation I would speculate that RealFlow (or Naiad) would outperform Houdini by quite a lot (again, that's speculation, if I get the chance I'll definitely compare them).

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Since I'm new to VFX (being a CG-generalist for quite some years now,...I decided to specialize in VFX just a couple of month ago, taking houdini classes over at vfxlearning.com), I also trying to make myself aware of all the skills you need to have when you want to get hired/specialize as VFX-Artist form reasonable sized studio somewhere(UK, US, CN, doesnt matter). But specialize is not the right term if yo ask me. To specialize means to reduce the topics you cover to a fair ammount, and then push your knowledge there to the top notch level. Ok, so now we have fluids, rigid body dynamics, particles, etc. ect. This feels again like standing in front of an ocean than giving me the impression that I did break down / reduce my areas of interest (for specialisation sake). At the moment, I feel a bit lost in all thouse different areas which are to cover, lying ahead of me to be honest - but at the other hand, what I've seen so far is that it is absolut a interesting task and fun to create stuff using Houdini, and that keeps me going!

My advice would be don't over-think it. You could pick what tools you want to use and learn, but frankly the decision isn't your's to make most of the time. A studio will typically have a pipeline established and a set of tools they will use. If that happens to be Houdini then that's good for you, but if it happens to be Softimage XSI, Maya, Max or whatever other tool then that's what you'll have to learn (or they'll find somebody else who will). The best thing to do is focus on computer graphics fundamentals (shading concepts, linear algebra, simulation concepts, etc.) which can be applied in lots of situations with different software. If you feel really passionate or are really interested in a particular thing then by all means dive in, but don't feel you must know every tool out there from the start.

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The best thing to do is focus on computer graphics fundamentals (shading concepts, linear algebra, simulation concepts, etc.) which can be applied in lots of situations with different software.

this sounds like great advice. do you or anyone else have some good sources to learn computer graphics fundamentals? A lot of the books i've browsed through focus too much on the maths behind the scenes, but don't utilize enough visual examples or demonstrate the maths being applied in a visual effects framework.

thanks

z

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this sounds like great advice. do you or anyone else have some good sources to learn computer graphics fundamentals? A lot of the books i've browsed through focus too much on the maths behind the scenes, but don't utilize enough visual examples or demonstrate the maths being applied in a visual effects framework.

thanks

z

http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-3rd-Alan-Watt/dp/0201398559

This was our course book for one of the 3D graphics classes I took. It's kinda heavy but I like it a lot.

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