Free Chops Intro Class

[cellchuk]

Imagine if Houdini artists started doing all the sound as well. And with better quality! And help drive the Animation! Oh my...

that 'd be cool.

[andrewlowell]

Andrew's book opens up a great deal that is capable with CHOPs.

Houdini's audio processing is terrific. Right up there with pro wave editing and synth tools. The only hitch is you have to build it all yourself. Andrew has taken this part quite far.

I always wondered about this: Animator as sound editor, foley artist and more! Houdini as we normally use it is enough to screw the head of senior mgt on backwards. Imagine if Houdini artists started doing all the sound as well. And with better quality! And help drive the Animation! Oh my...

Thanks Jeff! Here's my take on how this stuff could eventually be used in production. I see immediate uses for the audio/midi going in ... and the animation going out. Houdini is used for graphics, and it's the only program that can really deal with this area effectively, so there you go.

As for people doing serious sound work in Houdini, I would suspect this needs a bit more encouragement and education That's one of the points of the book, which is why I tried to use examples that would be extremely difficult with traditional methods, and that Houdini could do a better and more procedural job with. I suspect this kind of thing could build usage in these areas ...

a. The high-end, meaning mastering Houses that want to add spatial surround and custom algorytms to their edge over the competition;

b. Automation, meaning game companies that are currently using plugins like folly studio for max (which is quite popular supposedly),

c. Experimental, probably individuals that want to pursue fine-art projects which include sound. If these get popular enough the music industry might start picking up on things like nigh-club visuals, and eventually make it's way into things like music videos or psychedelic effects in movies etc.

But, it's always been my personal belief that most 3D artists aren't strictly visual artists. The skills needed to do things like particles / dynamics simulations / rigging / character animation / etc is more akin to the skillset of an inventor, or storyteller than a painter. The only thing making these strange art-forms visual is the fact that they are eventually rendered in some fashion. So, no big stretch for Houdini artists to understand and work with the art and science of sound.

[old school]

Your book will go a long way to achieving this.

I took a look at Foley Studio and it is pretty much the audio part in CHOPs. At least the Max side of the world gets the usefulness of integrated audio tools in 3d.

Just played with the sound and microphone objects coupled in with the Spatial Audio CHOP in H9.1. All still works as expected. Lots of fun!

[malexander]

Very cool. Great to see what you've been able to do with all those CHOPs!

[andrewlowell]

Your book will go a long way to achieving this.

I took a look at Foley Studio and it is pretty much the audio part in CHOPs. At least the Max side of the world gets the usefulness of integrated audio tools in 3d.

Just played with the sound and microphone objects coupled in with the Spatial Audio CHOP in H9.1. All still works as expected. Lots of fun!

Well, having worked with tons of max people (I'm a trainer for max) I would definitely say that the max community at large does NOT get that audio can be useful in a 3D program. In fact, there is a prevailing attitude I've encountered that suggests that doing sound in 3D would somehow equate to "more work", "lower quality" or "that's the sound person's job." At the Houdini venues I've been at this hasn't been the case at all, the attitude is MUCH more open.

With the "more work" argument, people don't do anything in graphics or sound if they see it as "work." They do it because they enjoy it and are good enough to get paid for it.

With the "lower quality" arguments, I probably wouldn't put a 3D guy as the mixing engineer of the next Grammy but there are definitely tasks that can benefit, especially with regards to 3D productions, from proceduralism and direct integration.

With the "that's the sound person's job" .. yeah, for rigid production pipelines. For evolving forms of media, as well as non-rigid companies and working environments I think that's any body's guess. All of the master audio engineers I've ever worked with learned the stuff because they were the only one's brave enough to do it, and audio schools certainly didn't exist (along with most of the equipment, which they invented later).

I've demo'd foley studio. It's nothing like spatial audio in Houdini, right out of the box Houdini is much more powerful. The big problem with foley studio is that the microphone is always the camera; and that there is no MIDI support, and very limited waveform manipulation. Houdini, it's done the correct way, and allows the artist to put the microphones wherever they are needed, and to do whatever you want to the sound (or make your own) before it gets to the microphones.

So, I see a lot more potential for this sort of thing in Houdini's environment ... especially with computers with 128 gig or ram! (chops needs to hold all the audio in memory). But, in case I just scared a bunch of people, 4 gigs should be fine for most things.

Edited February 12, 2008 by andrewlowell

[stevenong]

It's wonderful what you are doing, Andrew. I'll definitely grab a copy of the book or any material you're gonna put out.

Keep the good stuff coming!

Cheers!

steven