hello all,
just a few lines to ask you if you know if there some houdini courses in France, i m working on visual fx since 2 years and i m very interested in learning houdini, but i find it difficult ( i read a part of the help , not yet finished ,lol, do some turoials…) and just want to know if someone here knows if there some houdini courses in France or near france
thanks …
see you
sylvain.

I dont think there is anything in France. The closest will be:
- Bournemouth Uni and London Escape Studio ( not totally sure about this one)
- Madrid Aula Tematica
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=462&Itemid=66 [sidefx.com]
- Germany's Film Akademie did some introduction to Houdini once.

Hi psilo, we are preparing a new course for this next August at Aula Tematica in Madrid, if you are interested or need any information regarding to this you can email me at:
pablo@aulatek.com

Hope to know about you soon!

Hi Sylvain,

you can contact Alain Jouan from AE SARL who is the exclusive Houdini reseller in France. He can organize courses and formations.

http://www.edansla.com/afterproducts/contactus.php [edansla.com]

Hope this helps.

Are there many post-houses with Houdini on board in France?
(sorry for hijack)

thanks for answer,
SY.

SYmek
Are there many post-houses with Houdini on board in France?

To my knowledge, only 2 vfx companies have Houdini licence(s) here in France:

- Buf Companie ( http://www.buf.fr [buf.fr] ) - but is not using it, afaik they got it for a job involving sharing datas with some other vfx companies using Houdini and needed to exchange datas.

- LaMaison ( http://www.alamaison.fr [alamaison.fr] ) - we are currently setting up a XSI <-> Houdini pipeline and will use it in production asap.

Congratulations!
Can you tell something on how this would happend, I mean, where was the origin of houdini's decision?

quite interesting,

cheeers,
SY.

SYmek
../.. where was the origin of houdini's decision? ../..

Mostly for two reasons:

- A technical one, while I still think XSI has a great architecture and workflow, it is still to closed, you feel that you are ‘allowed’ to access only parts ‘they’ want you to access, and this is very frustrating because ‘behind’ what you can access there is a great potential for development - I'm speaking from SDK development point of view here. I wont go into more details, in short features are added to please some demands, not to complete a ‘subsystem’ as a all and make it work smoothly with the rest of the application. Some ‘subsystems’ are filled with ‘holes’, and you don't have enough access through the SDK to fill those ‘holes’. That said, the SDK in itself is one of the best SDK I've seen so far, it is really great, and if you can't access something it is generaly not a SDK design issue, but more a choice at a higher level. And that is the second reason:

- A political one, Softimage attitude is more and more surprising. Despite the fact there are great software engineers there - I know some of them personaly, they love their work, work hard and are brillants - I still don't get the road taken by the Softimage management team. I wont go into more details either here, I'll just said that the road taken by Softimage appears to diverge from what I expected at first.

That said, XSI is still our main platform, the workflow is still unbeated by other applications, it allows us to work very fast, but we can't afford to hit walls anymore, and the fact that we barely can anticipate features develoment anymore leads us to considere Houdini as our ‘Plan B’ in some cases, and as our main weapon in areas where XSI is clearly inefficient.

thanks for “in-depth” explanation. What I've found interesting (as I'm involved in desiging postproduct. company right now) is not merely the reason to pipe-in Houdini as its quite obvious but your ability to adopt a new tool, find people for it, and place in our well established pipeline. As you said SoftImage XSI is highly organized and pretty self-contained. More over as it's usual for BIG companies many of their software development decisions come from politics: AVID-focused not purly “develop for better features”. I suppose many of this holes in sdk you mentioned corespond to such decisions.

I've read you work on about 20PC for 3d. Are they Linux or Win based? Are you developing your own tools for exchanging asserts or want to rely on standards? What kind of work is to be reserved for Houdini?

thanks for any comments!
cheers,
SY.

SYmek
I've read you work on about 20PC for 3d. Are they Linux or Win based?

Dual boot.

SYmek
Are you developing your own tools for exchanging asserts or want to rely on standards?

Own tools.

SYmek
What kind of work is to be reserved for Houdini?

Nothing is “reserved” for Houdini, however Particles is one of the obvious areas where Houdini will certainly be our “prefered” tool, as well as for dynamic and simulation, and procedural work in general.

Another important area for us, is 2D/3D integration. In XSI, you can't talk about the FXTree “integration” inside the 3D environment. We have yet to explore COPs but from what I've seen so far and how it is “integrated”, this seems to be exactly what I was expecting for.

thanks for your time and comments!

cheers,
Symek.

thanks all for the answers ,i wasnt thinking about so much answers ..
lisux>> i know about your courses , perhaps i will take a look at it more seriously , since in france it difficult to find something about houdini
Have you got courses on houdini dynamics espcially .or only a general courses on houdini?

grabiller>>thanks for the link , i email him

And for all>> if you have info about the use of houdini in french studios, continue the post please

see you,
sylvain

psilo
thanks all for the answers ,i wasnt thinking about so much answers ..
lisux>> i know about your courses , perhaps i will take a look at it more seriously , since in france it difficult to find something about houdini
Have you got courses on houdini dynamics espcially .or only a general courses on houdini?

The actual course is an introduction to Houdini, so is a general course.
Anyway in the effects chapter we cover dynamics.
Here is a PDF with all the info about the course and how to get more info:
http://personales.ya.com/lisux/InfoHoudiniCourse.pdf [personales.ya.com]

i saw on the pdf that there is only 5 students per class ,if there are more than 5 students , how do you choose between them?
and , if i well understand :housing and eating are included on the price?
see you
sylvain

psilo
i saw on the pdf that there is only 5 students per class ,if there are more than 5 students , how do you choose between them?
and , if i well understand :housing and eating are included on the price?
see you
sylvain

Yes we have only 5 students per class because the course is very intensive and control the work of more that 5-6 students is not so easy.
In other courses which are not so intensive there are no problems to have 8-10 students but with this course we realized that is better to have only 5 students.
If the student have at least one year experience using some 3D program he/she is welcome, this is the only prerequesite.
Yes housing and meal are included, the school have some agreemetns with residences and apartments as well as with some restaurants to solve the residence period of the students.
I think that is better to continue this conversation in my work email, so for more doubts or anything else you need please send me an email to: pablo@aulatek.com
Thanks to be interested in our courses.
Hope to see you soon!