Question To Houdini Pros

[ysd1000]

Hi, first post here.

Let me introduce myself shortly. I'm a graphic designer with 9 years experience, and 3 years experience with 3D (mostly visualization and the odd broadcast commercial mograph style) as a freelancer using Cinema 4D as my 3D software. I'm very interested in doing VFX for commercials right now, which I know is a whole step up from what I do now. I'm not interested in character animation.

I really like C4D, for it's ease of use and fast turnaround. But it's probably not up to snuff for really hardcore VFX work, well in any case it's not used for that kind of work at the moment. Most places (CFC, The Mill, DD, etc.) who produce great quality VFX for commercials seem to use maya, xsi or houdini.

So I tried demos of maya and xsi because these are the mainly used so it seems and have proven to be more than capable, but after testing them I came to realize that for producing some stuff like the (sorry quite amateur) examples below I did in cinema 4d without any scripting, only using it's nodal particle system Thinking Particles and and it's nodal programming interface Expresso. I could have only done it with some quite heavy scripting. Which I honestly don't like.

http://users.skynet.be/fa093311/runner.mov

http://users.skynet.be/fa093311/cityblast.mov

But then I tested Houdini, and allthough it looks vast and also quite intimidating at first, I really enjoy it's procedural fundamentals, it feels like C4D's nodal environment expresso but then with a whole 3D program built with the same priciples and I truly enjoy learning it.

So my question is, to work in VFX is it paramount to know maya and thus Mel-scripting (a vision that quite frankly doesn't appeal to me) as many VFX animators seem to do or can you come by with knowing Houdini with some light Hscript knowledge?

I 'd just rather work smarter then harder.

[doc]

So my question is, to work in VFX is it paramount to know maya and thus Mel-scripting (a vision that quite frankly doesn't appeal to me) as many VFX animators seem to do or can you come by with knowing Houdini with some light Hscript knowledge?

I 'd just rather work smarter then harder.

Your observations are correct. In general, with Maya, you need to do a lot of mel scripting to achieve what you might be able to do in houdini with just a series of nodes.

Another thing that you may find attractive about houdini is that the procedural nature of the program makes it easy(or eassier)

make changes. Which can be handy when you need quick turn arounds.

Luca