TLDR; How stable is Houdini, and how well does it work in conjunction with 3DS Max + Vray + Houdini for Motion Graphics / Advertising?

Good day to everyone.

I have a couple of very important questions and I would appreciate it if you could answer them for me.

Background

I have previously worked with 3DS Max and Vray for almost 10 years. Due to circumstances, I then had to work as a JavaScript developer (Vanilla) for 5 years. I have experience in both programming and 3D. People in the Motion Design business recommended Houdini to me because client edits are easier to handle in this program, compared to starting from scratch or halfway through in any other 3D software.

Questions

1. Can all the work done in Houdini be exported to 3DS Max to render with Vray? Which Houdini license allows this?

2. Is it possible to synchronize between 3DS Max and Houdini? For example, if I save a model in 3DS Max, it automatically updates in Houdini and vice versa.

3. Is there an equivalent of Maxon for SideFx where different people share their problem-solving techniques? For example, the channel https://www.youtube.com/@MaxonVFX has many videos from various people showing how they solved a particular task using Cinema4D. Is there something similar for Houdini? So my team can spend 1 hour everyday to learn something valuable for business.

4. What renderers are available for Houdini and how do they compare to Vray in terms of photorealism?

5. If I hire a person who knows nothing about Houdini, how much time (on average) does it take for them to start producing commercial, professional work? For instance, a junior web developer who just completed a year-long intensive course typically needs one to three months to integrate into a team and perform as well as the others. What about Houdini?

Thank you for your time and assistance.

Best regards,
Eugene

Hi,

I'm a Houdini FXTD and I run a small team of C4D, Max and Houdini artists. Before moving to Houdini I used Max for 16-17 years.
I'll try to answer the most direct questions from my perspective, but I think a lot of what you're asking "depends" and there might be other workflows I just haven't tested.


1. Move all types of work from Houdini to 3dsMax, it's tricky. There are plenty of things you can export from Houdini that Max does not support. You can export regular geometry and animations via Alembic, but you won't get things like textures or more specific data like points/particles, curves etc. Max has the new USD plugin that's still in Alpha or Beta. In my experience it works fairly well for exporting out of Max, and lacking a lot when it comes to import. So Max to Houdini works well, Houdini to Max is way more limited. If you're looking at this, I suggest you just go for a USD pipeline right away, which is the only one that seems to be in active development from Autodesks side.

2. Houdini have live sync options, not sure if it works with Max though. Someone else can probably answer that one.

3. Plenty of options all over, free and paid. Start by looking at the learning section on the SideFX front page.

4. Most render engines are available for Houdini, including V-Ray. Also the build in Karma render engine is really solid and probably the best choice if you're not just going to use V-Ray. If you do V-RAy for Max and Houdini, you do get the option to export data via V-Ray proxies and scene files. Although you usually cannot edit the data once exported.

5. Depends on person and what you need. It took me at least 1 year to move from Max to Houdini and comfortably be able to re-create what I could do in Max at similar quality levels.

Thank you very much, Trond Hille, for your exquisite response.

So, as I understand it, Houdini and 3DS Max are not the best combination.

Now, I will provide a video that seems to reflect the quality we aim for or what our clients request in their orders:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw_HMka5TxQ [www.youtube.com]

Naturally, all of this can be done in 3DS Max using tyFlow, Vray, and post-production. However, for business purposes, using software developed by a single person (tyFlow) is a bad and risky practice. This is precisely why corporations in web development use React/Angular instead of Vue/Svelte. This is just an example. The same applies to the 3D business: it is essential to use reliable tools backed by a team of dedicated developers who work tirelessly to support their product. If something happens to the developer of tyFlow or if he abandons his project, it would be a significant loss of both time and resources for us, as we would need to find a quality alternative. In our case, I believe that alternative is Houdini. It is positioned as an ideal 3D program for orders because it is very easy to make client changes. As you know, Trond, clients can sometimes be very demanding, and their changes can turn out poorly if everything is not well-planned from the start.

Do you think Houdini is well-suited for these purposes such as Motion Design / Advertising?

There's nothing wrong with Max and Houdini together, but you'll probably have less challenges moving data from Max to Houdini than vice versa. Houdini is completely fine to take on any type of project, and the one in your example all by itself. So I'd sit down and think about if you need Max at all?

Thank you very much, Trond, for your answer.

It is a good question, but ultimately the team needs to model things from CAD files or transform 2D illustrations into 3D. This is where 3DS Max shines, as far as I know. However, I believe it will take some time to master Houdini, but people say they never regret learning it.

I wish you all the best and hope that we will cross paths on this forum again.

Jack3DM
the team needs to model things from CAD files or transform 2D illustrations into 3D.

Is it that you are given a drawing and need to model it or are you drawing + modeling etc.?

Houdini is parametric and non-destructive so better that 3DSMax for CAD (Computer Aided Design) from a technical standpoint. This is a key distingishing difference. It allows for a lot of iteration and "what if" questions for the parameter space.

You can look up "hard-surface modeling houdini" and find a lot of examples.

Houdini is a shift in the Computational Design process from destructive modeling that 3DSMax uses.

You can also reuse the "Design Systems" you created and it turns into a tool-making process as opposed to one-off "design" artifacts.

CAD also has a lot of limitations and "field-driven" design is the next generation of design for manufacturing. Houdini has all these capabilities with VDB and fields like this NTop but I will use NTop as an example because they describe the benifits of fields vs CAD for hardsurface modeling:

Field Optimization A Modular Design Tool for Advanced Manufacturing Justin Hattendorf - nTop - CDFAM [www.youtube.com]

With the new COP tools, hardsurface textures are really accessible:

https://www.youtube.com/@cgside/videos

Displacement maps in cops | Houdini 20.5 [www.youtube.com]


Direct and Procedural Modeling in Houdini
[www.youtube.com]

Houdini work can be exported to 3DS Max for Vray using the Houdini Engine license.

Direct synchronization isn’t available, but Houdini Engine can facilitate workflow integration.