E3- anyone?

[Jason]

Anyone go and see E3? Any lasting impressions?

[digitallysane]

I just saw on the E3 site, we'll have Halo 2 in November.

I'm serious about this!

Dragos

[TheUsualAlex]

I just saw on the E3 site, we'll have Halo 2 in November.

I'm serious about this!

Dragos

And so the od[War] is coming soon.

[Guest Guest]

if you have the spare bandwidth check out the 700mb halflife2 video from E3 - simply amazing!

http://www.fileplanet.com/files/140000/140589.shtml

[Jason]

Yeah, that does look cool.

I must say that Halo2 looked a little.. too much like Halo. Besides high-res armour and location damage, it looks the same as always.

SplinterCell3 and B&W2 looks amazing though.

A great game site is www.gamershell.com; much faster than fileplanet for me.

[digitallysane]

I must say that Halo2 looked a little.. too much like Halo. Besides high-res armour and location damage, it looks the same as always.

Aaaargh!!

Of course you realize this means war!!!

Dragos

[Jason]

yeah? YEAH?!!

i declare od[war]!

[digitallysane]

OK then !!!

[digitallysane]

Speaking of war-- this time software war: why is Houdini missing completely from the game dev market?

I think it would be an awesome game graphics / animation / pipeline solution, if only the price would be lower and the HDK free (or at least make available some File Toolkit or Export Toolkit).

Is Side Effects simply not interested in this market (which seems to bring some big money to discreet and softimage).

And I think this situation also makes Houdini less appealing to animators, knowing that with Houdini knowledge one cannot find a job at a game company.

Dragos

[concept4]

Any of you play halo online? I say we have a war this weekend perhaps....

[Mcronin]

I've heard that EA has a small team of TD's that work with Houdini; I could've sworn I saw a job ad from EA at some point last year. I would however like to try making a game using Houdini. There's quite a few features in Houdini I would've have just loved to have when I was working in games.

I'm thinking it may be possible to develop a toolkit for Houdini Apprentice to create assets for HL2 without using the HDK. Would anyone be interested in such a thing?

[Jason]

SESI did have a product at one stage called Proceed, which I hear was a game dev toolkit. Probably something vaguely similar to the (silly) Maya RTK.

One year SESI decided to focus on the feature film market, and I for one was very glad to hear that.

But as for just using the software, I think Konami has a band of Houdini users doesn't it?

[digitallysane]

I'm thinking it may be possible to develop a toolkit for Houdini Apprentice to create assets for HL2 without using the HDK. Would anyone be interested in such a thing?

There is already XSI for HL2 which does just that, free for download.

http://www.softimage.com/products/exp/hl2/...wnload/EXP_HL2/

But would be cool for some other popular game.

It's kind of frustrating for an Apprentice of Houdini to surf the Softimage, Discreet or Alias sites and see such an array of top-qulity, top-selling games made with their products while Houdini is simply absent on that market.

And, again, this is not something to be liked about a software when an animator tries to find a job, and is proficient in that software.

This is even more intriguing considering that Touch 101 from Derivative, using Houdini technology, is doing incredible things for real-time stuff. So the technology is there.

Dragos

[digitallysane]

One year SESI decided to focus on the feature film market, and I for one was very glad to hear that.

I don't know what to say. I'm not an "industry insider", but it seems obvious to me that the game industry is expanding, and the games become incredibly complex (which means more work for the studios). In time (if not already), I suppose the quantity of work done for games will far surpass that of work for film. Which means Side Effects is deliberately ignoring the soon-to-be the most important market for 3D software.

Just a personal view.

Dragos

PS I found a quite interesting article which somehow touches this here

[Jason]

I'd think that they'd definately not be ignoring the game industry. By creating a procedural kick-ass film production tool like Houdini definately makes it saleable to the games market too. I consider the features market a super-set, on the most part.

In some ways, I'm kind of surprised that Houdini is not bigger in the games industry already. It's an excellent way of prototyping systems in a very clear way. Think of it this way; just say a games company needed to prototype a boosters for a spaceship. The entire system could be built which a couple of grid sops, shaders and point sops, etc. The impact on memory and performance is very easy to figure out and tweaks and changes are simple. Now to get a programmer to duplicate that effect in C++ and HLSL is (pretty) simple. Houdini just needs to support OpenGL2/CGI HLSL and we get even closer.

I know the games industry has has a high reliance on lowpoly modeling and good texturing tools. I believe that the tools in Houdini right now are very good for that, especially the texturing. What is it missing? 3D Texture painting? Do games companies use something like Z-Brush or Deep Paint for that anyway?

Houdini also supports so many geometry and image types. Perhaps it needs to spit out some game formats? I'm pretty sure *every* games company would just convert .obj's for their models and package stuff using custom tools.

So what is it that Houdini is missing for games? Poly optimizers? It has the TristripSOP to help with performance too.

Or is it a marketing thing?

[digitallysane]

Or is it a marketing thing?

Yes, I totally agree, Houdini has all that it takes from a toolset point of view. I actually think it could be the _best_ game app there is, if it would be only for features, exactly for the reasons you mentioned.

However, i think there are only 2 big things which keep Houdini away from the games market: the high price (a game company would need the feature set of at least Escape, if not Master: character tools and CHOPs, and particles and dynamics) and the fact that the HDK is so expensive. A game company _must_ use a development toolkit, to be able to integrate the 3D software with their proprietary engine and pipeline. VEX and all the other stuff is not an option here. Yet, they surely won't need RenderMan output and other film-related stuff, which brings me back (again...) to the problem of more flexible licensing and upgrades.

Dragos

[Marc]

There are a few game companies that use Houdini.

EA UK uses it quite a bit, and I believe EA LA was looking into it, but I don't know if they ever actually bought any licenses.

Mainly though, I'd say the japanese game manufacturers are the biggest users. Genki, Namco, Square and a few others have quite a few licenses of Houdini.

Here's an example : final fantasy X

I don't think its so much a matter of no games companies are using it. Its more a matter of SESI not having the marketing budget to milk it for all its worth. Alias and Soft have got seemingly endless budgets to allow them to release a constant stream of case studies telling people how wonderful their software is.

I think as the global level of awareness about Houdini raises then so will its usage in the game industry increase. Its kind of a chicken and an egg scenario. Games companies have got an infinite number of Max and Maya users to choose from to make their game, and only a handful of Houdini users. So its pretty clear which option they'd choose.

When Houdini users are a dime a dozen then it too will be considered as a serious contender in the games industry.

What we need to do as a community is get out their and make it known that Huodini kicks ass. Look at the lightwave guys, they're not such a huge company but they've got a really big presence due in a large part to all the rabid fans out there making websites and tutorials and whatnot.

<pimp mode>So we need to get some fresh content in here. The gallery is getting stale, and the tutorials section is positively gamey. I challenge everyone to come up with something and submit it to our site. If we're the premier Houdini community in the world (which I think we are) then we should be able to come up with some mind blowing stuff to show it off. I'm busy with the redesign which will hopefully be finished someday, and it would definitely help to have fancy new stuff in here.</pimp mode>

[Mcronin]

There is already XSI for HL2 which does just that, free for download.

http://www.softimage.com/products/exp/hl2/...wnload/EXP_HL2/

I'm aware of XSI EXP for HL2, the point is I don't want to use it. Plus, it has limitations (4,000 triangles per model being a big one) which you wouldn't have if I were to make some tools for Apprentice. I'd like to do it because I'm a HalfLife nut and I like game development. I'd like to try to do some game development with Houdini.

As for using Houdini in game development... I don't think price or the HDK are an issue. I worked on several games including some recent ones, where the pipeline consisted of various pieces of software which in total cost the comapny more than a single seat of Master would cost.

For example the last PS2 game I worked on...

Every artist had Maya Complete.. 2,000

Every artist had 3DsMax... 3,500

Every artist had Multigen... 22,000

Every artist had CS... 1,200

Then there was some special tools; like for the animators, they had filmbox in addition to all of the above. The cost of Software is pretty insignificant when you look at the cost of production, it's probably actually the least of a producer's worries when putting together a budget.

As far as the HDK is concerned, it's only like what 4,000, right? Middleware licenses, which all these developers use are much more expensive than that. These comapnies are all using things like Renderware and Havok, or are licensing entire game engines. The PS2 Dev kit alone is like 19,000 and you have to buy one for each programmer on the team plus extras to view assets. It'd be nice if the HDK were free, but 4,000 is a drop in the bucket, especially when you consider they'd only need a license or two to get the game done, if that. There's much that can be done outside of Houdini. If you can grab the necessary info from Houdini and get it into a text file, you have little need for the HDK.

[Jason]

I'd think for most of the work in games, Houdini Select would be adequate. One or two licenses for POPs (and maaaybe CHOPs; Renderman psfhaw!) would be needed and some Escape for those guys needing to do quick pose tests of characters, but I'm sure that weighting algo's differ between what is in the software to what is in the game anyway.

And one copy of HDK.

Not bad, actually.

[digitallysane]

I'm aware of XSI EXP for HL2, the point is I don't want to use it. Plus, it has limitations (4,000 triangles per model being a big one) which you wouldn't have if I were to make some tools for Apprentice. I'd like to do it because I'm a HalfLife nut and I like game development. I'd like to try to do some game development with Houdini.

OK, pretty valid reasons in my opinion. If you get started with your game dev and you find a solution which involves the Apprentice edition, count me in if you need some help.

Dragos