banana Posted April 27, 2008 Share Posted April 27, 2008 I just started getting into 3 D animation. I am trying to figure out what 3 D program is most suitable to my project. My goal is to produce 3 D music animation. I am thinking about HOUDINI. Is that a right direction ? Some people told me that is very hard to learn. Please advice me. Thank you very much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael Posted April 28, 2008 Share Posted April 28, 2008 what do you mean by "3D music animation"? do you mean animation that is driven/controled by music? - then Houdini is a good choice... a better description of what you're hoping to do would help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banana Posted April 28, 2008 Author Share Posted April 28, 2008 what do you mean by "3D music animation"?do you mean animation that is driven/controled by music? - then Houdini is a good choice... a better description of what you're hoping to do would help. Thank you very much- Yes, more exactly, I am trying to make music video using 3 D animated images rather than using sets and many different video shots. but, many people told me Houdini is quite difficult to learn for beginners. And, i may have to depend heavily on plugins and models built on maya by other people since maya is the most popular program. I know the good thing is that Houdini has CHOP to work effectively with imported music file. Would you give more advice please. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael Posted April 28, 2008 Share Posted April 28, 2008 if you're just making a video with animation (sequences of images that just happen to be 3D) then it shouldn't matter what app you use, and if you're working with others who are using maya/max/etc then in the long run it might be better to use what they use. on the other hand if you're intending to generate animation using audio*, then it might be a good idea to try out the Apprentice version and have a look at some of the example files in CHOPs * I don't just mean images timed with audio...that's easy, I mean something like this: http://www.andrew-lowell-productions.com/a...s_book_demo.mov Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banana Posted April 28, 2008 Author Share Posted April 28, 2008 if you're just making a video with animation (sequences of images that just happen to be 3D) then it shouldn't matter what app you use, and if you're working with others who are using maya/max/etc then in the long run it might be better to use what they use.on the other hand if you're intending to generate animation using audio*, then it might be a good idea to try out the Apprentice version and have a look at some of the example files in CHOPs * I don't just mean images timed with audio...that's easy, I mean something like this: http://www.andrew-lowell-productions.com/a...s_book_demo.mov Thank you so much for your prompt and thoughtful advice. Yes, I am intending to generate 3d animation based on music. My intention is making animation extremely royal or sensitive to the nuance and even to almost every note of the music I choose. I enjoyed the attached sample site. It's interesting to find some of the sample with sound are quite close to my intention. I am still wondering how you'd compare Houdini to Maya in terms of learning curve, modeling, rigging, rendering, animating, dynamics, effects (such as particle) and comparability with other 3d programs. Thank you very much again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael Posted April 29, 2008 Share Posted April 29, 2008 this is a big topic that doesn't really have a simple answer...and really comes down to opinion... but very simply - there is no real difference between Houdini and any other pro 3D app (maya, xsi etc), there are few things that can be done in Maya that can't be done in Houdini, and a few things that Houdini can do that Maya can't...(I'm refering here to 'out of the box' functionality) the learning curve is described as steep, but it's really just a conceptual difference...if you're interested in Houdini, try out the Apprentice version and have a look at some of the example files...just forget everything you think you know about 3D, don't try to work like you do in Maya, discover how Houdini works. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kumpa Posted April 29, 2008 Share Posted April 29, 2008 Houdini is same same, but different. (Ancient arabian proverb) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edward Posted April 30, 2008 Share Posted April 30, 2008 Just search andrewlowell's posts. He has a whole bunch stuff with CHOPs. I think Houdini is good for this type of stuff because it has tools for analyzing music and using that to drive animation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banana Posted April 30, 2008 Author Share Posted April 30, 2008 Just search andrewlowell's posts. He has a whole bunch stuff with CHOPs. I think Houdini is good for this type of stuff because it has tools for analyzing music and using that to drive animation. Thank you very much for your advice Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted April 30, 2008 Share Posted April 30, 2008 Thank you very much for your advice Andrew Lyons (find him on SESI forums as tstex) also did quite a bit of CHOPs music generation and visualization: http://www.users.bigpond.com/tstex/ Mark Story (xionmark) developed CSound for Houdini: http://www.digitalcinemaarts.com/dev/csound/index.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewlowell Posted April 30, 2008 Share Posted April 30, 2008 (edited) I just started getting into 3 D animation. I am trying to figure out what 3 D program is most suitable to my project. My goal is to produce 3 D music animation. I am thinking about HOUDINI. Is that a right direction ? Some people told me that is very hard to learn. Please advice me. Thank you very much. Hey great to see some music interest! let me try to sell you on Houdini in this department. Max and Maya have very limited capabilities with sound. I'm not talking about working with sound here .. I'm talking about can't even get the sound and drag it around, or read it in efficiently etc. MIDI, forget it. Houdini on the other hand has quite a few sound capabilities that pro-audio programs don't. So, even if your intention is simply to use music and MIDI as the starter for animations, there's quite a bit of "pre-processing" that you might have to do, such as eq'ing the music to drive along more specific frequencies, or with MIDI, anticipation of note pitches and values. In terms of learning curve .. my opinion .. forget about it. Houdini is definately a more advanced application, but it is also a much better tool for these tasks. I tried for months with 3ds Max script to create my own sound plugins before discovering Houdini's native capabilities. So, unless you'd like to write your own programs, Houdini is a nice package and a very flexible user interface for these things. It also has a built in compositing program that you could also seamlessly integrate for more sound driven effects AFTER your 3d effects. Yeah also check out some of Andrew Lyons videos .. amazing stuff. Also the Houdini community is somewhat-connected to this vibrant community as well, as it's a spin-off of Houdini CHOPs .. more for real-time music visuals etc http://www.derivativeinc.com/home/home.asp good luck! Edited April 30, 2008 by andrewlowell Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banana Posted April 30, 2008 Author Share Posted April 30, 2008 Hey great to see some music interest! let me try to sell you on Houdini in this department. Max and Maya have very limited capabilities with sound. I'm not talking about working with sound here .. I'm talking about can't even get the sound and drag it around, or read it in efficiently etc. MIDI, forget it.Houdini on the other hand has quite a few sound capabilities that pro-audio programs don't. So, even if your intention is simply to use music and MIDI as the starter for animations, there's quite a bit of "pre-processing" that you might have to do, such as eq'ing the music to drive along more specific frequencies, or with MIDI, anticipation of note pitches and values. In terms of learning curve .. my opinion .. forget about it. Houdini is definately a more advanced application, but it is also a much better tool for these tasks. I tried for months with 3ds Max script to create my own sound plugins before discovering Houdini's native capabilities. So, unless you'd like to write your own programs, Houdini is a nice package and a very flexible user interface for these things. It also has a built in compositing program that you could also seamlessly integrate for more sound driven effects AFTER your 3d effects. Yeah also check out some of Andrew Lyons videos .. amazing stuff. Also the Houdini community is somewhat-connected to this vibrant community as well, as it's a spin-off of Houdini CHOPs .. more for real-time music visuals etc http://www.derivativeinc.com/home/home.asp good luck! Thank you very much for your tremendous advice !! They are very interesting. I wish there are some video tutoring of Chops for beginners. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrewlowell Posted April 30, 2008 Share Posted April 30, 2008 Thank you very much for your tremendous advice !!They are very interesting. I wish there are some video tutoring of Chops for beginners. http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com...&Itemid=132 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banana Posted April 30, 2008 Author Share Posted April 30, 2008 Thank you very much for your tremendous advice !!They are very interesting. I wish there are some video tutoring of Chops for beginners. I was trying to play synth and projects downloaded from Derivative. But, I can not play them for some rason. I am using XP with ATI and 1Gh Ram. I can open and run the Touch player. Can you help me. The art works in the site are quite awsome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
banana Posted April 30, 2008 Author Share Posted April 30, 2008 Hey great to see some music interest! let me try to sell you on Houdini in this department. Max and Maya have very limited capabilities with sound. I'm not talking about working with sound here .. I'm talking about can't even get the sound and drag it around, or read it in efficiently etc. MIDI, forget it.Houdini on the other hand has quite a few sound capabilities that pro-audio programs don't. So, even if your intention is simply to use music and MIDI as the starter for animations, there's quite a bit of "pre-processing" that you might have to do, such as eq'ing the music to drive along more specific frequencies, or with MIDI, anticipation of note pitches and values. In terms of learning curve .. my opinion .. forget about it. Houdini is definately a more advanced application, but it is also a much better tool for these tasks. I tried for months with 3ds Max script to create my own sound plugins before discovering Houdini's native capabilities. So, unless you'd like to write your own programs, Houdini is a nice package and a very flexible user interface for these things. It also has a built in compositing program that you could also seamlessly integrate for more sound driven effects AFTER your 3d effects. Yeah also check out some of Andrew Lyons videos .. amazing stuff. Also the Houdini community is somewhat-connected to this vibrant community as well, as it's a spin-off of Houdini CHOPs .. more for real-time music visuals etc http://www.derivativeinc.com/home/home.asp good luck! I was trying to play synth and projects downloaded from Derivative. But, I can not play them for some reason. Do I have to purchase them to view? I am using XP with ATI and 1Gh Ram. I can open and run the Touch player. Can you help me. The art works in the site are quite awsome. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tstex Posted May 1, 2008 Share Posted May 1, 2008 Thank you very much for your tremendous advice !!They are very interesting. I wish there are some video tutoring of Chops for beginners. CHOPs can seem a little challenging at first, but you can do some amazing stuff with them. Although you can do some interesting short passages of audio synthesis (due to ram restrictions) with CHOPs on their own, I ended up using it mainly for generating control data at lower sample rates, that I fed to other synthesizers. Csound in my case - but I think Andrew Lowell has built interfaces to more accessible synth packages than Csound. At the end of the day though, CHOPs is similar to cycling74's MAX/MSP ( http://www.cycling74.com/products/max5 not the 3D package) and other more low level computer music software. You need to know a little bit about audio Digital Signal Processing (DSP) to get the most out of it. With knowledge from some of the books below, it's pretty easy to find and connect the right CHOPs to cobble together all sorts of amazing synth patches, reverberators, alternate microtonal tuning tables, spectral analysis based systems, and 5.1 spatialisation patches ("Pan" is on the Exchange). It is aso possible to feed in recorded sounds and analyse them with the various filters, and analysis tools to generate animation data. Best of all - you are time sample-locked to your animation data - and in fact there is no distinction between tha data that drives your animation and that which drives your audio. Magic stuff... Check these books out: This one is a great starter: http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Music-Tutor...3081701-7888666 This one had most of the multi-speaker panning code in it - plus a lot of other useful stuff. Goes well with the Roads book above: http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Music-Synth...e/dp/0028646827 Csound is an old and cryptic audio programming suite, but will teach you tonnes about DSP and synthesis. Many of the algorithms in the sample code that comes with this book can be translated into CHOP networks. I pulled a lot of reverbs out of here: http://www.amazon.com/Csound-Book-Perspect...pd_bxgy_b_img_b The reverb in this animation specifically. Crap rendering - but this was a long time ago now. Maybe I should re-render my animations with the new PBR stuff? I hope v4 and v5 hipfiles still open?!?! http://www.users.bigpond.com/tstex/pan.htm Enjoy! Cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted May 5, 2008 Share Posted May 5, 2008 On the topic of music-driven animation, does anyone know who did this awesome video? And how? It would seem like Houdini could easily do any of this. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xypy9_aut...antz-graf_music I've loved this video (and sound) for a while, just forgot about it for a while and it just popped up again. EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantz_Graf http://www.warprecords.com/news/?ti_id=512 ...I'd really love to be able to say to them, 'I just wrote a computer algorhythym, and the computer did it all. I wrote a program and it all just intelligently works it out,' but it doesn't exist, it's fools gold thinking that someone can sit there writing a piece of software that can make intelligent decisions about pace and animation... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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