Workflow Help Needed

[Visual Cortex Lab]

HI guys,

I need your help. I'm trying to investigate and then make my tests about this topic. the reason for my tests is that I'm trying to add Houdini (and then a Houdini little department) in the company I'm working for.

I know this is an high risk I'm taking care of, I'm not an Houdini Expert, but as I told many times lately I definetly want to work with Houdini sooner or later and trying to create the needed interest directly in my company would really be a great success for me.

We almost work with XSI for Animated Feature films and Maya for Motion Pictures Films. At first I need to find how to integrate Houdini into the XSI pipeline. Effects that I need to investigate first of all are all sort of Particle style effects, such as air dust, volumetric lights, and others like grass, plants, smokes, and so on .. I'll go in details maybe later on if this thread will bring the needed interested from you.

First question anyway is, how to properly export data from XSI (geometry with their animations, like characters) and import 'em into Houdini.

we use MentalRay (XSI and Maya) and I'd like to know how hard is to create shaders (or uses our owns) into Houdini to be able to render with MentalRay, or if the best is to create a .mi file to spit into a MR-ready renderfarm.

I have few effects which I need to show "how easier" can be done within Houdini, if you guys would like to help me on this we'll talk about that in details.

thanks in advance for your time.. I seriously hope I'll can archieve such result, including Houdini here, which would means using houdini again in Italy.

looking forward for your feedbacks

cheers.

[Visual Cortex Lab]

hm .... nobody here have a XSI <-> houdini pipeline?... sounds pretty odd ...

[Marc]

yeah, I don't know anyone who uses XSI sadly...

[deecue]

the only places i see xsi being used at is motion graphic/commercial houses.. but i doubt those places have any houdini knowledge so i don't think that will help you out much

i know nate (matrixnan) is pretty big on xsi.. don't see him much around here anymore though.. maybe he'll pick this up and be able to help out..

[aracid]

hey sum][one

the only thing ive done with xsi was use the export feature, and export a stack of objs and braught that into houdini, but i wouldnt call that i pipline,

i havent tried anything as far as cameras and shaders go.

when investigating this,

i heard that there was a tool in xsi that u could import obj's on a per frame basis, that would act similiar to a file sop in XSI.

but i never needed to go back into xsi, so i left it at that.

all the best

aracid

[altbighead]

try calling sidefx.. according to SESI site

Our Goal

Like you, we are passionate about production and know that building a successful pipeline involves more than just software. We want to help you find the best way to adapt to your changing production needs while exploring the leading edge of our industry.

This means finding the right mix of software, services and processes to build and support a successful pipeline. Our belief is that Houdini can play an important role in this process but our consultants are committed to finding the best fit for your organization even if that involves a non-Houdini solution.

How do we do it?

Our production consultants come from film industry and have the skills to understand your point of view. These same skills and insights uniquely position our consultants to help you articulate your production goals and needs and to provide custom solutions, one customer at a time.

The consulting process begins with an analysis of your current situation and of your aspirations. There are no forms to fill out. We want to talk with you and provide initial discussions at no charge. From there we can work together to find a responsible solution that may or may not involve Side Effects Software products and services.

When is the best time to call us?

Get there early. The ideal time for us to talk is when you first begin defining the pipeline for a new project. Call us in the planning stages when there is time to explore the options and to consider the challenges you face with an open mind.

When you hit the wall. Our consultants have all worked in production and know what is is like to reach the point where your technology is not meeting your needs. Let us help you in find a quick solution that meets both your budgetary and time constraints.

How can you reach us?

Call us at 310 319-9876 today and ask to speak to one of our production consultants.

best of luck

[michael]

you might have a look here:

http://martian-labs.com/products.php?product=glue

[Visual Cortex Lab]

Just wanted to update this thread...

I've successfully conviced the company about Houdini.

we should be ready to go by end of march, hopefully, which means licenses and a senior user which will guide me and help me with pipeline organization and startup

then I will have to train couple, maybe bit more, guys and then the Houdini FX team will be fully loaded.

cheers.

[TheUsualAlex]

Fantastic! Congratulation, fellow Houdinites!

[Andz]

[one,Feb 23 2006, 04:05 PM]I've successfully conviced the company about Houdini.

25034[/snapback]

Congratulations sum. Is your company sending you to get some training? I guess we started playing with Houdini and hanging around the forum about the same time.

*edit

I guess not, I just looked at your Member number.

[Visual Cortex Lab]

Congratulations sum. Is your company sending you to get some training? I guess we started playing with Houdini and hanging around the forum about the same time.

*edit

I guess not, I just looked at your Member number.

25036[/snapback]

sadly not... but I'll get the luck to get a great (and senior) Houdini user for few months (since he now lives in Italy) which will gives me all the needed support for the pipeline integration.. and obviously my own missing knowledge, which is almost the same as getting a training.

cheers

[Andz]

sadly not... but I'll get the luck to get a great (and senior) Houdini user for few months (since he now lives in Italy) which will gives me all the needed support for the pipeline integration..

25037[/snapback]

Nice, working with others is even better than any formal training.

[MatrixNAN]

Sorry Guys,

Yeah I have not been around as much. A lot of times I look at posts and don't post myself. I am so busy with work I just managed to go see a movie for the 1st time in about 4 months. Ugh. Anyhow getting models back and forth between XSI and Houdini is not real bad particularly with XSI 5.0 You can export OBJs to Houdini and back without a problem both Houdini and XSI handle OBJs wonderfully some of the few 3D apps that handle them well. You can't bake Polygon models Shaders in Houdini so you need to export those High Resolution Models into XSI and use their normal mapping tool to create High Resolution Displacement Maps unless of course you use ZBrush. Also Softimage has a special XSI pipeline tool called Dot XSI. This lets you create more easily a way of importing data from another program into XSI. Both XSI and Houdini are fairly non linear animation more so than any other 3D programs so thats good but XSI is not as strong in the nonlinear animation category as Houdini is. So in order to get around this with say character animation you would setup a procedural system in Houdini and save out the models with locking the nodes at different key points in the animation workflow in Houdini as OBJs and then import them into XSI and create morph targets / blend shapes with them whatever you want to call them.

Currently I am trying to work on a character rig combo setup that will pass back and forth between Houdini and XSI. Houdini actually in my opinion has stronger character tools than XSI but if you want to export to games you have to do it with XSI because the game exporters don't really work in Houdini. However as you probably know you can load the actually game engine directly into XSI and do real time node shading systems which is rather wonderful for games. So depending upon which Rendering system you plan to use depends on if XSI will be your end all application or Houdini. Houdini does support Mental Ray but its not that good nothing like what XSI has. If you are wanting to go Renderman / Mantra then by all means you want to end up in Houdini. Houdini if you were doing film or feature films I would think that making Houdini the end all application would be easier due the simple fact the matter that Houdini is more nonlinear than XSI so its harder to go from Houdini to XSI than it is to go from XSI to Houdini. If you have any specific questions please pm me.

Cheers Guys,

Nate Nesler

[edward]

You can't bake Polygon models Shaders in Houdini so you need to export those High Resolution Models into XSI and use their normal mapping tool to create High Resolution Displacement Maps unless of course you use ZBrush.

25059[/snapback]

Is "mantra -u" what you're looking for?

[MatrixNAN]

Hey Edward,

Hummm Maybe I don't know if it is then that will really help my workflow because I plan on using Houdini to expand on the ZBrush capabilties with UV Unwrapping with the pelt tool on the models and creating some custom modeling tools in Houdini based on my artistic workflow as a major workflow enhancement. That would be awesome if we could.

Cheers,

Nate Nesler

[aracid]

Sorry Guys,

You can export OBJs to Houdini and back without a problem both Houdini and XSI handle OBJs wonderfully some of the few 3D apps that handle them well. 

25059[/snapback]

Hey nate

one that point, have u got an idea on how to import a series of objs into softimage?

ie.. model in XSI --> animate in houdini (DOPS) --(series of obj's)--> render with XSI ?

thanks man

good too see u one this site again

cheers

[RickWork]

Hey nate

one that point, have u got an idea on how to import a series of objs into softimage?

ie.. model in XSI --> animate in houdini (DOPS) --(series of obj's)--> render with XSI  ?

thanks man

good too see u one this site again

cheers

25076[/snapback]

I wrote a very basic obj sequence importer for XSI a while back for a project that we were doing that had to be rendered in mental ray via xsi.

The point counts were changing per frame so as a quick hack, I animated the visibility per frame of each obj. This should have been a persistant Op in XSI but I think I was too lazy at the time to write it

If you know scripting it's just a for loop on importing a file.

We don't use obj anymore so I don't know if i still have it. I'll see if I can find that plugin for you or if I have some time I'll whip up a new one.

/Rick

[MatrixNAN]

Hey Aracid,

A straight sequence of OBJs as Rick was suggesting then yeah you probably want to script the visibility flag on the OBJs in a loop. If you want nonlinear type animation so you can change the speed of the animation in a nonlinear since then you want to do it 1 of 2 ways. You could bake out displacement maps for each object based on every frame of the animation for the deforming model. This is generally not a good idea in Mental Ray. Mental Ray with detailed displacements equals very long render times. Option 2 would be to take the models assuming they had like topology and make them into morph targets to have them applied to a slider interface control and then you could just key the slider as linear animation to drive and control your nonlinear morph targets. If you don't have like topology thats ok because you can get like topology by having a single quad based model and shrink wrap it to each OBJ object that you would use as a morph target. You would script this of course. There are some learning videos for XSI on Scripting which will help you tremendously I suspect moving back and forth between XSI and Houdini.

XSI Scripting Learning Videos

XSI Video Tutorials:

3D Tutorial XSI Learning Video Resource

I probably would avoid trying to do a translation script between Houdini and XSI for particles because well the power just is not there in XSI period to even script. For instance XSI does not have the variable $FF aka Floating Point Frames like they do in Houdini. We all know how useful that is in Houdini but it is not even avaible in XSI. So as I assume your not even thinking of going that route anyhow because that would be a major undertaking regardless.

That is really nice of you Rick I hope you find that script. Brian is a good guy. Let me know if I can be of help to you here this comming week and next week after that I am under the gun again at work and might not resurface again until the quarter is over. Ugh. lol

Oh yeah and before I forget. I don't believe the visibilty flag on/off method of script will work with motion blurr. Motion Blur sucks in Mental Ray anyhow but there was a plugin that was featured on XSI Base for helping with bad motion blur in Mental Ray. I am guessing you are doing effects and not DOPS on Characters for Nonlinear Animation Deformers. If you are having the model break up then I think you will have to do the visibility on/off scripting method. So you are either going to have to fake out XSI/Mental Ray to give you a Motion Blur or do it in post with Compositing and or do a motion pass in Houdini and apply it in post in the Compositing. Yeah it gets kind of nasty and hairy around the motion blur problem.

XSI Base Website

Rick did you ever find a way of getting the motion blur to work with your scripting method?

Cheers,

Nate Nesler

[MatrixNAN]

Hey Brian,

I have the OBJ Sequence Importer for XSI. Download it at this link. I looked it up on XSI Net under Converters.

OBJ Sequence Importer XSI Addon

XSI Net

To install a .addon file for XSI go to the File menu -> Addon -> Install. Then browse for the file in the install window and click the install button to install the selected addon file. That should get you going man.

Oh and here is a vb script:

Description:

This script uses the sequence animation command to additively offset fcurves on selected objects. The order of selection determines the offset.

Note that you must have more then one object selected to see the effect.

Usage: Example: Create a simple up and down animation on a sphere by keying Y.

Translate the sphere in X (do not key it in X) and duplicate it two or three times (or as many times as you like). Select objects in order you wish to have them sequenced. Run script!

Notes: Works on any type of Fcurve on your object.

Nature: Script

That should fix the problem of no motion blur. Now if you get that plugin from XSI Base to fix the bad motion blur in Mental Ray you should be all set.

Cheers,

Nate Nesler