I think the price point of Houdini is *very* competitive right now. For 2k you get output to RenderMan together with a shader-authoring medium, output to MentalRay, the best rendering-post processing compositing system on the market (not talking about general purpose compositing, but strictly about post manipulation of render passes), very powerful character tools and unlimited render tokens for a production proven renderer. I find all that a combination hard to beat, both for small and big studios.

and Houdini doesn't use a lot of other 3ds party renderers, so even though mantra might be better than Mental Ray / other stuff studios might stick with what is in their pipeline.

This is simply not true. There's no package on the market to offer out of the box, without any additional cost, production-ready output for both RenderMan and MentalRay (plus Mantra, of course). Yes, it does not output to the myriad of Max-only renderers like VRay, Brazil, FinalRender, but this is also true for any other package except Max. The RenderMan output on the other side is very important for many studios and also makes possible to use many renderers besides PRman, like 3Delight, AIR etc which are very competitively priced or even free.

Dragos

andrewlowell
looks like Houdini master is around $1,000 more than Maya unlimited, and around $4,000 more than Max. Also the Max/Maya prices are for unlimited rendering, the floating for Houdini is $3,000 more than Maya unlimited

haha, it looks more like you don't know what you're talking about. Maya unlimited floating licenses are $8k, not $7k. And add a cool $1,400 activation fee per license to that (not sure what sesi charges, if anything). And fyi, a maya complete floating license is also $3k (just like houdini). But with houdini you get native renderman output which would cost another cool $2k per station whether you're using mayaman or mtor. And add to that a node based compositor, which is worth something even if it rarely gets used and on top of all that add unlimited mantra rendering, which again, may not be used but it's definitely worth something. Saying that houdini is over-priced is just wrong, it was very competitive even years ago when they first introduced houdini select, but now it's actually one of the cheaper programs and definitely one of the most solid for the money. Yes, just in case you don't know, houdini can have it both ways, they can have a procedural program that studios use as their only tool, and sesi has been striving to do just that for years.

imo there's only one really outstanding 3D program as far as price and that's lightwave. All the others are relatively the same. For $800, you get unlimited rendering with a fully production ready renderer that's integrated into the program (no maya to mr or max to vray bs) plus high quality volumetric particle rendering (almost identical to afterburn but without the cost/hassle) as well as all the standard features of a given 3d program, modeling/animation etc… for a whopping 800 dollars, wtf.

andrewlowell
and Houdini doesn't use a lot of other 3ds party renderers

What? Did you mean to say "houdini doesn't use a lot of 3rd party renderers? If you meant 3rd party renders, that's way way off. If you meant 3ds renderers, as in renderers that work as plug-ins to max, then yea, no shit, because they're plug-ins to max. No other 3d program will plug into a “3ds” renderer. But that doesn't mean a god damn thing to studios because A) Very few 3d studios use max. B) There are only two useful “3ds” renderers (vray and brazil). and C) Both vray and brazil have been out for what 5 years, maybe 6, and useful for maybe 3 of those years? Wow, what a pipeline one could have in that time. Renderman's been around for what, 22 years now? And mental ray is roughly 10x-15x more used than both vray and brazil combined. So even if you meant “houdini doesn't plug into 3ds renderers” that's still a mute point. Sesi does not need to plug into 3ds renderers.

wow, no reason to get upset .. no one has to convince me Houdini is a good deal I wish more studios used it just like you do, and if I had my way I'd be using it exclusively instead of Max so I can stop staring at code

… convincing studios, studio owners and people working at studios that it's a good deal is another matter however … especially studios that don't use Renderman.

I've seen Mantra outperform or get better results than just about everything I've tried in VRay / Mental Ray but I've used Mantra .. I'm pointing to the fact that studios don't like to up and change renderers just because, especially if they already have experts in Mental Ray or a “Max” renderer.

I'm a Max owner but not Maya so looks like I needed to do some more research on the Maya pricing … my apologies

Also I don't agree with a lot of studios not using Max … where are you getting that figure? If you're talking about film than that's probably true compaired to Maya, but do more film studios really use Houdini than Max? I would be very pleasantly suprised.

bah, I'm not upset, I'm just saying, houdini's price is definitely not over-priced. It's actually quite a bit under-priced compared to others, especially considering how many mtor, mayaman, maxman and xsiman licenses there are out there when the price of one of those is equal to the price of all of houdini.

especially if they already have experts in Mental Ray or a “Max” renderer

Well houdini plugs into mental ray fairly well, so if they do have an expert in mental ray, that's good. lol! the thought of an expert of a “max” renderer is hillarious. I don't know if you've noticed but these max renderers are all new. If there is a supposed “expert” in say brazil, he could very easily convert to any other renderer and produce similar in a matter of months if that.

ok, this is too much of a software debate so I'm stepping out … try saying there aren't any experts on a Max, VRay or Final Render forum though … watch out.

More of the problem I would see is the fact that if you were to say, ok people I know we all use VRay or Brazil but Mantra is great too, let's use that instead, and by the way we all have to know Houdini .. I just don't see that as a good sell.

For me yes, when I have a studio I'll be basing it around Houdini, but for others not so interested in doing things outside of their normal scope of modeling / texturing / animation, no.

I know one of the Final Render's developers, and he is pretty much an expert in Renderman… so..

anyway, as an Houdini newbee I just want to say that 4 or 5 years ago when I first started up Maya I was copmletely puzzled with everything, and I thought I will never learn it… now I am so far from that point, so when I have that feeling in front of Houdini… :roll: oh I will never make anything.. I just remember the time when maya was “unbeatable”… so just more good video and written material will make Houdini more spreaded in future…. I really believe in that.

Respect


Djordje

I also think that a lot of Studios don't factor in the cost of TD's to do all the scripting necessary for Maya to do what you want it to do. Sure a lot of artists know Maya, but once you want to do anything somewhat complicated or make a decent pipeline you need to cough up a lot of money for scripters that you don't have to with Houdini.
And salaries cost WAY more than software.

-Craig

well well, this topic started with the title release date of h9 and ended in the old maya vs. houdini… hehe, but ok.

I think Houdini has a more professional workflow than maya, because nearly everything (nearly: fe. i3d is not) is procedural and node-based so you can work a lot more flexible (take halfway finished objects and produce something different ecc.)

But as said for normal purposes Maya is more diffused and Houdini used for very complicated vfx like tornados (tda tomorrow) and tidy waves.

But ok, back to topic:

Don't know, I hope it comes out this year, because i really wait for the aaaaahhh fluid simulator wooow…

Do you've seen the trailer? It can even simulate sand..

So…

greetings, alex

Hello,



when can we see some pictures of the new H9 interface, and maybe some demo video ?



thanks,



bern

Probably once Houdini 9 enters beta. Any time before that and things are likely to change.

some of the sidfx training courses state they will be using H9

“and gives attendees the opportunity to experiment with Houdini 9’s most recent character effects tools.”

may 22, 23 ,24 .

P

Hello,



Looking into the ‘Journals’ the latest build is 8.2.97…

How many builds till H9 comes out, or is there going to be a H 8.3 ?



many thanks and looking forward to H 9 beta,





bern

I wouldn't take much notice of that, there are different journals that not all users see. Even then the build numbers will suddenly jump to H9 once they are happy to release it to everyone.