Learning Houdini With Cgtalk Challanges

[Dennis Sedov]

Since I am too fresh to start using Houdini in production, I was going through a hard time of deciding, of what should I do to learn it. As many of you know, tutorials don't really stick to your brain for long, so it has to be something, that is interesting and fun to do, as it also has to be an on going task, which you do everyday.

So, since, I cannot really use Houdini at work, I decided to participate in CGTalk challanges (there are actually many of them). I started with lighting challenge, which gave me a lot of information on rendering and lighting with Mantra.

Here is what I have so far:

Modeled by Christophe Desse and Matthew Thain.

Here is a link to the challange: Lighting Challenge

So in the end, I found that actually completing a specific task (not following a tutorial of some sort) but actually solving you own problems is really kicking you through this learning curve much faster!!!

[whalerider]

Looks nice.

I agree that doing some kind of project is the best way to learn.

I still recommend checking out the tutorials on sidefx.com - the lighting tutorial explains how to use takes, light linking, etc. Some of the things you can discover on your own, others are learned a lot faster if there's someone to show you.