As a lot of you know I've been pushing Houdini at a facility that uses Lightwave, Max, and Maya.

Try as I might, my meeting with the owners of the company proved frusterating. No matter how many cool tools I build, no matter how many promising renders I show, ultimately I'm losing my argument. I've created 3 completely unique effects, each one was effective, was done in a short period of time, and looked fantastic for 3-5 days worth of work on each.

I created a rain system in 3 days including the additional step of cleaning up all of my work into a bitchin' otl which could be used by anybody regardless of their experience in Houdini. The low res renders I did of the rain are now being used as REFERENCE for the Maya artists… who, by the way, worked on their rain system for over 2 months and didnt even have a solution for rain hitting surfaces and bouncing off of them yet…

I've written shaders to create procedural geometry, impressed the pants off the supervisors who had to call a meeting about why the rain had taken so long in Maya to develop but looked so much better in Houdini in a fraction of the time… and still, ultimately, the decision is to go with Maya 100%.

WHY???

1.) Artist pool
2.) Conversion issues between scenes
3.) Cost

These are very frusterating reasons for me after having gone to extreme lengths to prove what I have proven.

1.) Artist pool
I proved that 2 completely fresh from Maya artists could modify and render my rain within minutes

2.) Conversion between scenes
The Martian Labs guys were kind enough to give me an avaluation copy of Martian Glue. I successfully converted 2 full CG scenes into Houdini in less than 3 days (most of which was spent building an OTL which would gather all the necessary components of the scene and make importing a scene as simple as entering a.) drive letter b.) show name c.) shot name d.) shot length))

3.) Cost
$24,000 so one artist can build effects and have 5 other artists in HSelect implement them with unlimited render nodes… whats so expensive about that?

Ultimately I can feel good about what I've done because I did my best to prove all of their concerns wrong, or atleast prove that there were workarounds for their concerns. The rain I developed in 3 days is now being used as reference for the rain they've been developing in Maya for two months (with 4 artists!!!), I've proven that Houdini pays for itself, yields better results faster, and allows experienced users to create intuitive controls for fresh artists quickly.

Even if I built a CHOP network to spit gold nuggets out of my CDROM they'd be asking me, “Doesnt Maya fluids do that already?”

This is so frusterating. I love the company I'm working with now but I'm completely at odds with their choice in software. Now I'm being given the Maya rain file to implement in scenes. I cracked it open and went straight to the expressions tab. 8 PAGES OF CODE. I dont know c++. If I want anything in this system changed, I will now have to go through the programmer (who, by the way is cranky and has never been in production, he was hired straight from Alias/Wavefront.)

I think in the end this all came down to one thing: NOISE. 200 Maya artists and me, the 1 guy here who has actually made the effort to learn Houdini and discover its strengths. 200 artists screaming to the owners of the company, “Maya maya maya” and me, a tiny little whisper in the background going, “Houdini is a powerful tool…” And not only whispering, but actually proving it! Geez…

In the end it's the masses that determine the direction of things like this. I know Side Effects is busy “improving their software” but maybe they should do what Alias does and just switch every ounce of their focus to marketing. Get a sponser like Limp Bizkit…. ANYTHING to appeal to the masses. I'll be contacting Sarah soon (Hi Sarah!) because I still have some fight left in me to keep pushing this issue, and maybe I could use some extra firepower. Only problem is in this case the company has had what it considers to be a bad experience with SideEffects, so I've been trying to avoid that option. Anyway… just ranting.

On a more technical note, are there any other conversion tools out there BESIDES Martian Glue? The thought of writing out geo data for every frame isnt exactly appealing to the folks here. If Houdini had some built in conversion tool my argument would be substantially more effective. Houdini is so obscure, so specialized, and has a suffering user base. Why not make it easier for Maya shops to implement it into their pipeline? Houdini's been the first software package to do a lot of things… why not be the first to support scenes from multiple packages without a 3rd party?



In conclusion… I love Houdini. I just wish I could use it at work. Working in Maya is going to be hell.

Hi there.

I am sorry to hear about what's going on… Sometimes, it's definitely tough to convince people otherwise until they get seriously burned.

Oftentime, I think there is a major misconception that in order to use Houdini, you have to be a programmer/mathematician, etc. True that it will be extremely helpful to those, however, as someone who is not coming from technical background myself, Houdini truly offers me the flexibility and controls that I need as an artist without resorting to the likes of MEL – unless I am trying to squeeze out every ounce of performance from Houdini.


You've put up a good fight, and I do admire that. Keep on going with the good fight.

After re-reading my post, I'm going to have to argue with myself. Side Effects has done absolutely everything they can to make a brilliant piece of software. They've set their own standard for what a 3D package should be and should be awarded for that. They shouldnt have to write in support for Maya. They shouldnt have to support another package just because it's the popular choice. THEY should be the popular choice. If Side Effects started dedicating programmers times to writing in tools to import Maya scenes, what would stop Maya from releaseing a new build that causes conflicts with Houdini's “Maya importer?” It's in Maya's best interest to ween the world of Houdini artists. And it's working. I'm sure I could have presented a better argument if I could load Maya scenes directly into Houdini and show a perfect pipeline between the two. I'm sure it would have helped a lot. But then the following question would be, “What about Max?”

It makes sense for 3rd party developers to make translational software. They can focuss entirely on that one aspect of production, and make a profit specifically based on that one very common need of effects houses.

Honestly I'll keep fighting the good fight. Houdini deserves to be more main stream. Being a member of the “elite” user base has it's charm, but a larger community could push Houdini so much closer to perfection.

Here's a sort of the wall but still on topic question:

How about camera tracking?

If Houdini could provide camera tracking data, scene conversion may not be as much of an issue. Infact, if it were good enough, Houdini could become the starting point for a lot of our shots, instead of one of the last steps in a pipeline. Boujou costs a hefty 10,000 for a full license. If a Houdini Master could function as a sort of Boujou on steroids, Side Effects may open up some doors to new clients. Curious artists might start using Houdini to get a camera track, and then begin searching around the program to see what else it has to offer, all the while thinking to themselves, “Hey.. hold on… I could do my whole shot in this package… hmmm…”

That's a shame things didn't go better for you. I'm trying to convice a studio full of maya artists as well to give Houdini a fair chance, but haven't suceeded either yet, but I have no intention of giving up either yet.

I guess the reason so many people don't ‘like’ Houdini is people are simply boring and sooo conservative at heart. They like to do things the way they are used to and too many changes scares them. They somewhat enjoy having found some possibly akward workaround for problem X and they know everytime someone runs into it, they'll solve it. I think the work someone has put into a scene is in Houdini more transparent then with any other software I know.
And I agree with all of you, there is no need to be a mathematicans, coder or whatever in Houdini to make very complex things that always need heavy coding / scripting in other software, BUT you have to understand the principles of 3d and understand what you are doing.
In my experience there is a great deal of 3d artists that learned how to solve a problem / create something by executing some commands in a very specific order, but they don't understand why or how it works. They eventually improve their solutions by making little variations here and there, but it's often more trial & error then anything else. For all those kinda 3d artists Houdini is the scarriest thing on earth. Besides things such as coding and math quickily become a routine kinda work if you often have to deal with those things (once you have figured out how you want to solve the problem). I'm attending a course on AI in Design and it seems that often it's the users that stop the progress then the actual technology. By the way, look at the most popular new 3d programs / renderers, they usually have one thing in common, they are very intuitive and allow you to use it without too much thinking. People are quite happy if the program is static and they much rather feel like crying for a new feature or plugin if they run into a problem there is no premade tool for it.

Anyhow, I might be exaggerating a bit, I guess you see my point and it's rather sad, things are that way

Jens

If you still have some fight left, and it sounds like you do, how about calculating the true cost of the maya rain system in terms of man hours etc and comparing that with the Houdini cut. Stick it all in a spreadsheet and leave it lying around when there's a board meeting. It sounds to me like the whole thing boils down to money, it usually does, and there's nothing like a bottom line on a spreadsheet to get things changed. If money isn't an object why don't they let you have one seat of Houdini and see how much more productive you can be with it. CraZY… :shock:
Anyway keep up the fight.

agree totaly
I am very new to houdini, i work in a company who bought six maya licences plus 3d studio max 6+deep paint +poly trans……
I cant convince anybody to try to learn houdini
maybe thisi is like convincing people who never seen the sea, and they know their little pond in a little village they live in ;that this huge amount of water realy exists!!!
we have here some galileo and kopernicus problems guys
each day that i learn something new in houdini i realize there is no limitations with using it…
keep up

I am an executive chef with a facination for 3D fun and creation. My only software affordable to me is Bryce 5. But when I found sidefx's Houdini Apprentice program, I became very happy. To use real software is awsome. I tried the Maya trial software and can not figure out much. Houdini was very quick to learn the basics and now I can model and sort of rig them. CEO's have too much polotics to understand what the true work environment is or what it really need to be GREAT- Houdini. Good luck :twisted:

Like everyone said, I think you proved Houdini is cheaper than Maya. What about the programmer salary for the pages of code and the several artist's salary over months creating the weaker effect in Maya? Add in that yours can easily be modified and converted to snow, Cats & Dogs, Asteroids, etc. and you have even more to argue with.

That being said I have been there and fought that fight at big studios (twice now) and I must say that you can't expect to win this, unfortunately. Studios would rather pay programmer salaries and waste time with inefficiency than take the risk of moving to something ‘unknown’. The best you can hope for when dealing with folks like this (and this is the majority of the CG world with Maya blinders on) is to hope for a dual pipe where the characters are modelled and animated in Maya and then brought into Houdini for lighting, rendering, Effects, and compositing (to avoid the large amount of programming necessary to create a decent Maya pipeline). Don't expect them to go for that either.

Until CORE and DNA come out with their movies all done in Houdini and there is more high quality Houdini character stuff in the Siggraph Electronic Theater, most people will be convinced Maya is the only package out there capable of doing high quality work.

At this point you risk being the butt of jokes about being part of a Houdini “Cult” and you may stop getting taken seriously among your Maya colleagues who feel they know better. So why not consider taking the skills you have learned and your obvious passion and tenacity and finding a job at one of the many Houdini shops looking desperately for Houdini folks?


I would also like to add that I think there is a simpler path to translation to multiple packages if we can just convince Side Effects to do it, or someone in the community to code it up in the HDK. It is called POLYTRANS. POLYTRANS translates between many packages, and I have written the owner/developer and he said all Houdini needs to do is provide the “Hooks” and it will plug right in, allowing conversion to all the packages it supports. He feels the Houdini market is too small to justify his effort in this regard, but he is willing to help and support Side Effects in this venture. But so far, Side Effects hasn't been interested. I keep arguing for this, but it keeps falling on deaf ears.

Houdini's best chance for more acceptance is to gradually move into use into studios (rather than demand full conversion from their current tools) and this requires simple translation and moving between packages.

-Craig Hoffman

Right on!

The guy sitting behind me just enlightened me. He was watching over my shoulder as I tried out some stuff in Houdini. Out of nowhere he says, “Dude, I hate Houdini.”

I ask, “Why's that?”

He says, “Because it takes you minutes what should take 2 weeks. It makes things too easy. You shouldnt have been able to do that so fast…”

I'll add this to the list of times I wish I had a mini-recorder on me. :twisted:

He says, “Because it takes you minutes what should take 2 weeks. It makes things too easy. You shouldnt have been able to do that so fast…”

one of the best comments I have heard about houdini …

Man, that should be splashed across every piece of Houdini advertising. Actually is there any Houdini advertising….. 8)