romanus Posted September 18, 2014 Share Posted September 18, 2014 Hi there, I'm cg supervisor at www.ingreme.com (small post production company). In this last year we've made some "complex" projects and I almost died (nights without sleep and software limitations) making a desert collapsing, revealing a city in one month for example. Nevertheless we had superb help from the community and software developers (thinkbox, chaos group, cebas, nextlimit and Sitni Sati). Far from Hollywood quality, we've managed to make it. I'm just telling this story because I would like to know your oppinion about: 1 - Support community. If we are in the middle of a production and we find a bug in the software (like we did in the example above), side effects has effective help (phone, forum, etc)? Care to share your experience on this? I feel the 3dsmax community is really awsome, always sharing scripts and knowledge, experts making dvd's (like allan mckay and many others). Do you know if Houdini community is like this, or it's kind of closed and secret like softimage was for a long time? 2 - Learning curve. I've made some Houdini tutorials and I think it's really powerfull tool. But because i'm so sticked to 3dsmax, I felt that I can take around 3 years (part time) to start using it in production to achieve similar (and way better) results that I have using 3dsmax and it's plugin's collection. Since I'm cg generalist, i'm talking about fluids, render, rigging, lighting, animation, shaders, fur, cloth, etc, etc... 3 - Houdini - VFX only? If you look at our portfolio http://www.ingreme.com/v2/html/ or http://www.ingreme.com/v2/flash/ (more fun!), you can see we do a litte bit of everything. We can make a desert collapsing with shots using 1.200.000.000 particles and a simple i-phone rotating 360 degrees! Many people say Houdini is only for VFX... what's your honest oppinion on that? Kind of newb questions but i'm hoping that (with all the info i'm reading in foruns, articles, etc) help me to decide if i'll join the dark force or not, eheh Thanks for any valuable info on this! Cheers, Rui Romano Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tar Posted September 19, 2014 Share Posted September 19, 2014 I'm not using 3dsMax but the general vibe is Houdini does what all your plug-ins do. Keep 3dsMax around for modelling but you can't grow out of Houdini. Support is par-excellent - bugs can be squashed extremely quickly - support help is also very very good. Learning curve- it's individual but once you know the language of Houdini you'll be fine. Forum help - very good, it will be smaller amount of users than 3dsMax but you can find a lot by searching it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danylyon Posted September 22, 2014 Share Posted September 22, 2014 Hi Rui Nothing to add for support curve. It really is excellent. Learning curve. The beauty about Houdini is, once you've learned your way around it's pretty easy to learn new features. It is always the same thing. No matter if you write a shader, make your own deformer or do something with particles, for example, it's the same paradigm. Houdini is definitely not only for VFX. VFX is probably the most complex thing you can do, so everything else is possible. I've done character animation in Houdini and had a blast. Especially rigging is very clean (It's easy to copy paste part of a rig to another character and reconnect what's needed for example.), I never had "double transformations", because it's always clear what's going on. Looking at your studio, I think it would be a great match. Especially because of it's procuderalism. It's very easy to do things like, have your IPhone spin with different Languages on screen. Then render all in one go. That being said, you might struggle with artists. Best would be if you have a senior Houdini artist help everybody out and guide the pipeline. If you solely relay on freelancer it might get tricky. I imagined there are a lot more max freelancers than houdini. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sebkaine Posted September 22, 2014 Share Posted September 22, 2014 (edited) I find that 3Dsmax is still a very efficient tool for small team. In paris there are some famous team of Max Killers who produce stunning work in short deadlines, best exemple that come in mind is http://www.unit-image.fr/projects. http://player.vimeo.com/video/68382468?autoplay=1 To produce this quality you have at max 15 Max warriors ... The workflow in Max is messy relying on ten different plugins that cost you around 15.000$ when you combine them all ... but if - money for licenses - messy workflow Is not an issue you have to keep all elements in mind FumeFX allow juniors to produce cool fluids that are good enough for validation in a matter of days and sometimes hours Rayfire workflow is fantastic for fast efficient shatter TP give you powerfull proceduralism without as much complexity as VOP Realflow or Naiad combine with krakatoa and Vray are also very cool tools I personnally hate 3Dsmax and will never use it for sectarian reason ... but i find that skilled max artist are very efficient and can produce impressive work in very short deadlines. In the long run i think that invest some times in H step by step to discover the tool is definitly a good idea. - Proceduralism in SOP / POP is good starting point as it will learn you to work with group / attributes / expression / vex - then try to learn the different solver one by one like FLIP / RBD / PYRO is good This one is good as a starting point. CmiVFX has also some cool video http://workshops.cgsociety.org/courseinfo.php?id=393 But for FX / RENDERING houdini is magic ! i also have high expectation in rigging / anim, i have the intuitions that it can be as good as maya, check 3D Buzz series on rigging to make your own pov. The thing i like the most with houdini, is that it is a pleasure to work with it, it works in such elegant way that it bring you a world where only limits is in your brain , never in the tool. When you come from a maya background this is a big change. Houdini suck for highly interactive operation like Modeling / UV layout i would pick a tool like blender / modo / maya LT for such task ... Cheers E Edited September 22, 2014 by sebkaine 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edward Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 I feel the 3dsmax community is really awsome, always sharing scripts and knowledge, experts making dvd's (like allan mckay and many others). BTW, did you mean this Allan McKay? http://workshops.cgsociety.org/courseinfo.php?id=563&utm_campaign=mcknov563&utm_source=cgsociety&utm_medium=plugblock&utm_medium=plugblock&utm_source=cgtalk 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
romanus Posted September 23, 2014 Author Share Posted September 23, 2014 Hi there, Thanks for your precious input. Emmanuel, I agree with you 100%... I think our main advantage using 3dsmax is velocity to achieve "nice" results. But for complex tasks, ufff... nights without sleep getting workarounds to it's limitations, bugs, crashes, etc... So, for now, i'll do exactly like you said... slowly invest my free time to make specific tutorials... from the basics to the most complex. When I feel I can use it for production, we can safely make the transition. Of corse, like Dany sayed, the ideal situation would be to have a senior artist here to make the transition easier... but i think that's not going to happen until I convince my boss that the transition is safe... like Emmanuel sayed, a big investment was made with this plugin collection (we have more than one license in most cases... so the value is around the double or more). I will buy online courses to speed things up though. Edward, exactly that Allan McKay I'm also seeing that 3dsmax guru's I follow are moving or at least experimenting Houdini I don't believe in coincidences, hehehe Once again, Thanks for your input Cheers, Rui Romano Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sebkaine Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 In cmivfx i would strongly recommand those one David Gary stuff are not producing great outpout , but they are gold mine to get the core ! The vex ones are really useful ... https://cmivfx.com/store/152-houdini-fundamentals https://cmivfx.com/store/101-houdini-vex-volume-1 https://cmivfx.com/store/137-houdini-vex-volume-2 https://cmivfx.com/store/47-houdini-procedural-cities I also find those one very useful https://cmivfx.com/store/280-houdini-fractals https://cmivfx.com/store/421-houdini-connections https://cmivfx.com/store/460-houdini-directable-particles You don't have to check all tutorials , you just have to understand precisly attributes / groups / expression / vex / python If you are vop / vex master you will easily adapt yourself to any situation ! cheers E Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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