O hi

[McNistor]

New around here.

 

Some of you may know me from the official SideFX forums if not most.

Speaking to this small community - because this seems a small community which is not necessarily a bad thing but it kinda does reflect the popularity Houdini currently has - I'm curious about what veteran Houdini users think of the Autodesk's Bifrost and what it reprerents: a direct competitor to Houdini by making out of Maya a more procedural platform.

Needless to say, Maya is already immensely popular and if it will (at some point) cover the things that currently are the things many TDs opt to come for to Houdini in the first place, what place will Houdini find itself in?

Intuition in this situation tells me that the best countermove from SideFX would be to try to hit the competition where they currently hold the upper hand: modeling and animation.

 

Anyway, a few things about me: I'm a Softie (XSI user) that currently is in the process of learning Houdini. I'm a generalist but looking to specialize in character creation and animation, but I've always been interested in all aspects of the 3d production process, FX included. Since the chaps from Autodesk deemed that Softimage is obsolete and can be easily replaced by Maya (laughable, I know) I see myself in the position of looking to other places for the long term and I like SideFX as a company and Houdini's all procedural paradigm.

 

I hope it'll be a joyful ride with Houdini, at least as good as it was (and still is) with Softimage.

-

McNistor

[Jason]

Welcome to odforce, McNistor!

[Skybar]

Personally I will probably stick with Houdini forever. You just can't beat the procedural workflow, coupled with the ability to use everything anywhere at any time. Even if Bifrost in Maya turns out to be a better fluidsolver, I would have a hard time doing anything that is a bit more custom or requires pre/post-processing, which I get in Houdini "for free" and it is really easy to do as well. Throw Mantra into the mix where you can do almost anything straight out-of-the-box is just too much power in one single package.

[Annon]

Houdini 'till I die...

The procedural workflow through all aspects of Houdini is what I cherish about it. Anyone who's worked with me knows I loath having to open up Maya, something I only do if I'm not getting the right stuff from other departments. I'm like a kid throwing a tantrum from the second I see the splash screen!

Welcome to the community.

[McNistor]

Thanks for the welcome Jason.

 

@Skybar & Christian.

I kinda get where you're coming from regarding having to open another 3d app out of circumstantial necessity. I too loath the moments I have to leave Softimage to work in anohter apps like Max or Maya, the exception being Houdini of course because although Houdini isn't as user friendly as Softimage is, it has that appealing smell of genius that went into it and it's quite clear that it has the potential to become more user friendly in the future as far as viewport centric workflows goes.

 

Interesting times ahead though, with Bifrost and Fabric on their developing path and who know if The Foundry are cooking something or not. It's great that Houdini is already with both feet in the procedural world, that's for sure.

[danw]

I'm like a kid throwing a tantrum from the second I see the splash screen!

 

Hahaha, and I thought it was just me.  Opening maya can really dampen my day.

 

I get the feeling Bifrost isn't going to win me back either.  I used Naiad exclusively until back in February, when after porting every aspect of my fluid pipeline over to Houdini except the base sim itself (as both VDB meshing and whitewater sims were vastly superior and quicker than in Naiad), I finally took the time to learn the FLIP solver itself, and within a week I had ditched Naiad entirely.  Houdini just works so damned well for fluids, and is so infinitely more tweakable and modifiable, my results have come on leaps and bounds in only a few short months.

[Sierra62]

I have taken some time and tried Bifrost out.  I still love Houdini, but I have to give some credit to Bifrost for being not too bad.  It even has a few features that I really like.  The feature I am most excited about is the ability cache a sim in the background and still be able to work in the scene.  But besides that I haven't found anything that really makes it stand out for fluids. 

[danw]

I have taken some time and tried Bifrost out.  I still love Houdini, but I have to give some credit to Bifrost for being not too bad.  It even has a few features that I really like.  The feature I am most excited about is the ability cache a sim in the background and still be able to work in the scene.  But besides that I haven't found anything that really makes it stand out for fluids. 

 

Yeah, I'm probably being a little unfair towards Bifrost.  The guys behind it (and Naiad) were pretty much the originators of the FLIP fluid technique, and it will almost certainly be a rock-solid and very productive package.

 

I find after a few years of playing with FLIP fluids though, that a lot of the finer details come down more to the various tweaks and hacks you layer on top - provided you have a solid solver to start with, it rarely needs much changing at that level.  The reason I find Houdini a lot more productive than Naiad was is because it's a lot easier to plug extra effects on top using microsolvers and custom fields, or even jump into the solver and rip bits out as required.  Naiad had a lot of the convenient hacks and tweaks hard-coded in, so the only options you got were whether to switch them on or not, rather than being able to roll your own.

(eg, I recently found I needed to use a "sticktion" effect that was separate from collisions, so with Houdini, I simply turn off the solver's Stick on Collision effect, and plug my own in using copies of the collision fields filled with different data.  Naiad had sticktion, but the most you could do was switch it on or off)

 

As ever with Houdini, it's more down to me being in love the with the Houdini approach, than there necessarily being anything wrong with any other package :-)

Edited July 29, 2014 by danw

[Adam T]

...

 

As ever with Houdini, it's more down to me being in love the with the Houdini approach, than there necessarily being anything wrong with any other package :-)

 

This is pretty much how I feel.

 

All of the major 3D applications are capable of some proceduralism, if you're willing to put the time and effort into writing your own tools for them. I've been a Max user since the first beta, and I have scripts coming out of my ears for doing things that Max was never intended to do. I image Blur Studios and other knee-deep-in-it studios would agree. 

 

Bifrost is pretty cool, and there are other things - tons, even - in Maya that I love, and when twinned with Motionbuilder it's even better. But while it's possible to put procedural features and procedural workflows into another application, that doesn't make them procedural applications.

 

If you're the kind of artist who likes the world to revolve around you, and you like to drive dangerously, Houdini can give that to you like no other application, because proceduralism is in it's DNA, it's in the way you look at data and not just viewports. I have occasional moments of frustration that some tools are lacking, such as advanced UV mapping and even what I'd consider very basic operations from other applications, but there are so many ways to skin a cat (or rig one!) in Houdini that every day is different, and actually enjoyable. You can't get that feeling by pushing same buttons over and over.

 

I've been a 3D artist since year dot, and no application has given me back the sense of self-discovery like Houdini has. I don't like gushing about software, it's a bit embarrassing, but that's pretty much how it is.

 

To quote someone else who suddenly saw past the viewport and realised the true nature of the Matrix: "I know Kung Fu."

[Guest tar]

Why not M***? distilled; it's an innate aversion to shite ideologies and mediocrity.