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Effects In Houdini


daisuke

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Well, nice to meet you all. I'm very new to Houdini.

I have been learning effects in Maya for about a year now, and starting to have a grasp of it. Well my mission for now is to understand dynamics / effects in Maya, in other words I would like to master how to deal with effects in Maya. However I keep hearing about the capability of effects in Houdini. Is it really more powerful?? (I think I already know it is..) In what ways is it more powerful and cooler?

:)

Daisuke

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Well, nice to meet you all. I'm very new to Houdini.

I have been learning effects in Maya for about a year now, and starting to have a grasp of it. Well my mission for now is to understand dynamics / effects in Maya, in other words I would like to master how to deal with effects in Maya. However I keep hearing about the capability of effects in Houdini. Is it really more powerful?? (I think I already know it is..) In what ways is it more powerful and cooler?

:)

Daisuke

i create effects in maya, too, for years. first i have to say, learn all the basics in maya. when you finish go to houdini and start the learn process. alot of companys worldwide uses the spectrum of maya and houdini and combine them to one big effect. Houdini is a very good solution to create stunning effects, but its hard to learn. I know alot of things in houdini, sometimes you think, you will never back to maya. But sometimes you dont got the time, because maya is sometimes faster, maybe in commercials.

By the way i have to say, im on the houdini learning path since two years. i know alot, but not much:)

the difference between maya and houdini is the approach of procedural workflow. The workflow in Houdini is amazing, i like it, but sometimes hard to understand..........

good luck, and see yeah next time......

bye

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Thanks for the feedback. Actually learning a 3D app takes really a long time.. it's been just past a year but i still havn't studied all the features of Dynamics in Maya. Maybe it will take another year or 2. The other day I bought a book on houdini so I'm gonna start reading it shortly. Well the change of the interface in v9 kind of annoys me but it's all good.

When I get into Houdini do you suggest that I start learning from modeling? Not getting straight into effects like particles?

Edited by daisuke
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If you look at it from a workflow point of view learn the procedural methods in any module of houdini and you can apply them to any other part.

I stress learning the procedural methods because it is possible to model in houdini in a very linear fashion too.

Get to know the network editor, and how nodes are containers for absolutely anything , also learn about wiring and re-wiring of nodes and how data flows through them. That knowledge will stand you in good stead everywhere.

Don't expect to learn too many abc tutorials you really need to understand the approach and how to esperiement yourself then you can do anything.

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If you look at it from a workflow point of view learn the procedural methods in any module of houdini and you can apply them to any other part.

I stress learning the procedural methods because it is possible to model in houdini in a very linear fashion too.

Get to know the network editor, and how nodes are containers for absolutely anything , also learn about wiring and re-wiring of nodes and how data flows through them. That knowledge will stand you in good stead everywhere.

Don't expect to learn too many abc tutorials you really need to understand the approach and how to esperiement yourself then you can do anything.

yeah thats true. When i looked at first time on houdini, i thought.....what kinda shit is that?:) but when i start to look deeper in the workflow i notice, that you can create effects in houdini in a very free way. you can connect everything to each other. Sometimes you can do more and more efficent in houdini as in maya. Maya is modulbased and you have to script sometimes everything to get what you want. you cannot integrate your model pipeline into your effects how you can it in houdini.....

maybe you got a rope, and you wanna split it up and many different wires, you will be faster in houdini. the approach is another one as in maya. you have to know what you wanna do, and what you wanna get. if you know what you directly want you will be work faster in houdini......

thats my opinion.......mmmm

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form me, the biggest difference was/and still is, the fact that lot of things that would require a lot of mel in maya, are achievable in houdini with 0 lines of code... just a bit of thinking and connecting few nodes...

I was doing some city-scape that was supposed to be alive (to jiggle, bend...) and to do that in the rhythm of sound... I needed about an hour to set that up in houdini, and to have in the same time completely open structure that I can change, make more complicated, whatever... without any need to ''destroy'' base construction. That is the thing I never succeeded in maya without pain. Simple switching of objects that have jiggle for eg. in maya's hypergraph... well it is impossible... in houdini... well it is switching... easy and breezy :)...I could start animating everything almost instantly and develop things as project develops... And with houdini that idea of open construction is REALLY working out of box... no need for plugins, scripts...

that is the reason why I will buy myself a license as soon as I learn enough to use it for a bit more serious work...

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Hi i am Maya user too, and been tweaking Houdini for more then a year, i can definatly point out the good side of Houdini, it's more easier to setup effects in Houdini then writing lots of expression and mel in May, when dealing with effects with particles so on.

So there is not such word as powerful, cuz they all look alike, except usability and ability to make it faster!

That's just my point

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  • 1 month later...

I guess it all depends on the company and what other skills you bring to the table. These job ads are normally a "perfect candidate" scenario, but more often than not the company won't find anyone fitting that exact description to hire, so they'll take it from there.

Personally I've only ever had to use Maya on one project in all the years I've been doing this. I'm pretty sure I could pick it up if I needed to, I've just never needed to :).

M

P.S. I remember seeing a job ad back in 95 (or somewhere around there) for a programmer with 4 years experience in java. Which was fine except that java had only been released 6 months prior to the ad being run... I very much doubt they managed to fill that job ;)

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  • 1 month later...

I agree entirely with Marc (H?)

I don't think that an artist is posting the jobs you see, it is usually someone that is more of a pencil pusher, that has heard these terms and may have an idea of what some of them mean, but at the end of the day, couldn't really have an in depth conversation with most of us about the thing they posted they are looking for.

but as to Houdini VS. Maya, IMHO, neither is an end all package, ok so Houdini VS. Maya in FX. Given the right GUI setup in MEL/Python you could do pretty much everything you can do in Houdini in Maya, but therein lies the rub.... Given the right GUI setup in MEL/Python... With Houdini you can create the GUI on the fly as you build and expand your effect, and eventually you have something that can, for the most part, be used in a countless variety of ways, it takes about 2-4 times longer to code all of that setup in Maya, then test and debug, and then you have the GUI to deal with, which is at least another few days for the experienced scripter, and could be weeks for the less experienced, in the mean time the Houdini user has already passed off the OTL which has been implemented in 5 other shots. And half way through the next part. And that is the Magic of Houdini.

None of the packages do anything different from each other, ask 5 people to draw a flower, you will get 5 different flowers, but all are flowers to some degree.

The major difference is the efficiency of the work flow and how well that company has commited to that work flow. Some people swear by the stack operator method, ala 3dmax and AfterEffects, some love the fact that it takes very little skill / knowledge to get something off the ground in Maya, others want the flexibility and efficiency of the procedural method. But to be honest I have heard many cinema 4d users, 3dmax users, and Maya users, say they love the switch to Houdini and wished they had taken the plunge earlier. I have NEVER heard a Houdini user say "I just tried 3dmax and I love the stack approach, I'll never go back to Houdini!" :ph34r:

-3db

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I'm pretty sure I could pick it up if I needed to, I've just never needed to.

For my new job as a university lecturer I needed to pick up maya.

3dsmax - Houdini - Maya is like two steps forward, two steps back/one to the side.

Though I still think that max got a better learning curve for beginners than maya.

Houdini's learning curve is overrated as it is more a playground than a fixed boundary setting.

Though I must admit I currently need to pull my self together to do effects in Maya - as I don't see the effect of doing effects in maya just to prove that it is possible.

Georg

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i don't have much to say abaout houdini,cause i am just trying to learn it. what impressed me with it is,as long as you know the fundemental and global princibles on topics like particles or rigidbodies,even a noob can get the workflow from other hip files,on how certain things can be done in houdini. while things are bunch of secrets in other softwares,as which method the user had followed,houdini reveals it on your face. this may be ok only for a beginner but it is a nice learning curve.

when i try to do the same efect that i've done in maya,what i see is, man it is true that some heavy expression stuff are no longer a necesity in houdini. and i wish i had known it to use properly and efficiently. for example in miquel perez's hollowman example, you have to consider couple lines of scripting(which is not a hard thing though) in maya. particles>goals>in certain U or V value do this or do that. but in houdini it is absolutly much faster. and once you achived anything you have no problem to adapt it to anything. i have no idea how things are happening in big projects. i have no idea in which level you need to do some heavy scripting,or if you need to. but what i've seen from frenchop's new title of DVD's he is writing(actualy teaching)prety much coding.

masters i don't afraid houdini native coding.but i don't know in what extence you need to use it.pretty much or rarely?

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depends on what exactly you mean by coding. Some people see some text math in a field and call it writing code, I call it expressions. Writing code is more for iterative process and error checking. I have had to write a real script one time in 3 years of using Houdini professionally, though I have used other artists scripts all the time. Otherwise it is really more about expressions, which is nothing more than math. If you can understand a F(x) curve, you basically understand expressions, and the number one thing people fear about Houdini, knowing math.

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