E3- anyone?

[Jason]

Sure, I'll be interested in helping out too. I used to be a UT fan, but they lost me with UT2004 and their hyperactive game speed. Halo is so much better a pace, only a little limited these days.

Next thing I'm excited about is Operation Flashpoint 2. Long way away, though.

Joint Operations is excellent; amazing how they can keep the graphics so good and the framerate so high and still have 100 players interacting without lags and dropouts.

[digitallysane]

Wow! Are we heading towards The Apprentice Independent Gamedev Initiative? (or something).

That would be most interesting...

Dragos

[edward]

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.

Don't quote me on this but I thought the HDK was a site-wide license.

but I'm sure that weighting algo's differ between what is in the software to what is in the game anyway.

While the weighting algo's may differ, the deformation algo is likely to be the same provided you don't use cregions for deforming. So it should be quite easy to do your weighting in Houdini and then export that to a game engine.

[Mcronin]

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.

Will they let you license specific modules? If so game development in Houdini could actually be affordable.

The modelers could feasably use any application... even Wings. For the sake of argument though if I were to outfit an average team for game development...

3 character modelers with Select and ZBrush. $4,800 total

5 environment modelers with Select and Zbrush. $8,000 total

1-2 character riggers with Escape. What is it $7-8,000??? 16,000 total

1 environment rigger with Escape. $7-8,000??? 8,000 total

3 animators with Escape, $24,000 total

2 Effects TD's with Master. $34,000 total

2 Masters with HDK for tools. $42,000 total

4 texture artists with PS, Select and ZBrush or Deep Paint or BodyPaint. $8,400

~$146,000 for the art pipeline.

Sounds like a lot, but consider an average PS2 title with 18 months development using this art staff will have a budget ~6 million dollars in the US. That's an affordable pipeline, and the asset management built into Houdini will make the pipeline much more flexible than using Maya or Max.

I don't expect to ever see Houdini make a significant dent in the games market, but I'd love to see some companies build a pipeline like this. Maybe if down the road VOPs gets a SLANG VOP you'll see it start making headway in the market. Or, if someone develops middleware to cross compile RSL for PS3... That's the sort of functionality studios are going to be looking for. Then they won't have to hire expensive programmers who know the in and outs of microcode and 5 different shading languages to build shaders. Some artists will be able to build their own.

[digitallysane]

Will they let you license specific modules? If so game development in Houdini could actually be affordable.

And Houdini would be the most flexible tool from a "budgeting" point-of-view, too.

Dragos

[meshsmooth]

Well i couldnt rezist

edward

Don't quote me on this but I thought the HDK was a site-wide license.

[Jason]

3 animators with Escape, $24,000 total

On this point; it might even be possible for Select users to do tha animation, especially if the characters are nicely contained in OTL's, right?

I must admit I've never tried to open a already-rigged character in Select. I should try that now.

[scarletFire]

I think one of the main reasons Houdini is not used in games as much is simply the learning curve. Let's face it, Max is a lil simpler to use than Houdini. If these companies can produce games of a high quality, why switch it up? Just to train and or hire a team could set them back a good deal, and we all know the equation "time = money"

I think in the future you will see more companies switch to a Houdini based pipeline. GPUs are getting faster, and Sony's new handheld is reportedly rending real-time NURBS. Soon, I think we are going to see a big shift in games, a shift that will probably create more of an opening for Houdini.

Someone said earlier that they think games will surpass movies in quality soon. If you can show me a game that has water anywhere near as good as "The Day After Tomorrow"(Cheers to you Jason, and your crew), you may have an argument. But as long as I can get 100+ machines to render a frame per day, and games are stuck at 1 machine and around 1/30 of a sec per frame, I'd say it's safe to assume film will be leading the CG industry for some time.

Also, anyone looking for some Halo online should hit me up...I'm sure your boys at DD must play Jason...let the od[war] begin.

[meshsmooth]

Narr Houdini isn

[scarletFire]

you're right-its not that bad to learn, but still much different than what most are used to at this point. And the Apprentice Program is genious. What I don't understand is why others don't follow suit. Instead of everyone out there using software for free, these companies should give some incentive to students to use their respective PLEs. I mean, if you can't save anything or can barely see your render, why even use it? This is just another sign of Houdini's commitment to new users and their eagerness to expand its user base.

Oh yeah, what was the "original" topic? E3...

not going to that, but will be at SIGGRAPH. Hope to see you all there

[mike]

I think it would be an awesome game graphics

yes this is right, some export solutions would be really helpfull.

is "proceed" totally cancled ??

[Jason]

As far as I have heard, yes.

I guess that they'd have to look at it again after 7.0, once the package has been fully fledged with dynamics and there is "less to do".