Houdini vs specialized tools for modelling, particles, rendering etc

[art3mis]

Hi

Saw this impressive demo and breakdown over on vimeo.

Apparently 3DS Max, Xmesh, Pflow, FumeFX, Krakatoa, and Vray were used.

Being a novice I'm very curious to get feedback from experienced Houdini users as to what toolset they might use to accomplish something identical or very similar to the end result.

In your view which of the aforementioned specialized 3d tools offer advantages over Houdini?

Or does it simply boil down to whatever you are most familiar with?

Thanks for any positive and constructive feedback!

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 27, 2016 by eco_bach

[jrockstad]

The advantage of specialized tools is that they have been optimized, both in the workflow and computation sense, for their respective tasks and are often very stable, fast and efficient. However, that efficiency comes largely as a result of those tools working in a highly prescribed fashion, so you are beholden to the developer to implement new features if you find yourself needing to step outside those bounds. Houdini should be the preferred choice when flexibility and the ability to adapt to complex shot requirements is paramount. 

One more point to consider is that after you bought all those plugins you'd have likely spent more than you would for a single Houdini license and you'd be juggling all those different licenses, dealing with support teams from different developers, and so on. With Houdini's everything's just right there.

[Sepu]

To me the one of the big advantage that Houdini offers over other tools is that everything is one system and they talk to each other. You can definitely create the same kind of effect in Houdini without any issues. Plus you keep everything procedural in one system.

I do not believe they offer any advantage over Houdini toolset. Pflow, Fume, krakatoa, etc are all great tools, but you gotta pay for each one of them. However is always good to learn other tools, you never know what a studio might have, etc. So in my mind learn as much as you can.

[anthonymcgrath]

try creating a deforming object that spits out millions of particles, that then becomes a liquid and then something gooey before solidifying and cracking apart into chunks before assembling back together into a fragmented character and walking off in one of those specialised tools!

actually i'd love to see something tackle that in hou haha

as mentioned for certain tasks epic, but houdinis workflow for getting back and to amidst various data and controlling it is unmatched imo and i've not been using it that long but everything i've asked of it so far its been able to to.

I'm a long term maya user of 20 years nearly... back when Maya was v2 lol and i chose to dive into houdini because of its power in so many places and i figured if i got a good understanding of tackling something in hou i would have a good chance in other more specific software too.  I've took a year out to get to grips with new software and hou has been on my list since v7 but never really got chance to tackle it properly.

 

also with houdini theres really helpful forums and creative sharing, and so many tutorials on tackling all manner of tricks so i'm loving it right now - i cant wait to be a 1 year user and see where i am because i'm not going back

 

my wife loves seeing what can be done in it tho she hates the squidgy stuff i'm up to ha but i find it amazing that this software can make control of this stuff so easy!

 

 

 

ant