I wonder if there are any architects here?

I find houdini is very effecient for creative design. Hope there are some guys interested in it.

yes there are

and some more…

woo, ,great

hope there are chances for us to comunicate.

My msn is: syzmatrix@hotmail.com

architects, Please talk to me.

I've wondered about what it'd take to make Houdini effective for architectural visualization, especially with PBR rendering at the door.

Personally I'd hope that measured materials might help make this all work a lot more easily, similar to Indigo's or Maxwell Render's measured material databases. Is this of interest to you guys?

Also, IES Light Profile support in Houdini… in PBR too.
*/ http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?showtopic=8158&hl= [forums.odforce.net]

Sure, pm me if you have any questions / ideas….
Speaking of architecture are there any people working with generative components, grasshopper on this forum?
Thanks.
kuba

I tried to have fun with generative components in Microstation but houdini is easier and feels more intuitive, also way more felxible.

The IES lighting of Mario is nice to get started with Damn wanted to make it myself…well luckily i got a few other projects on the shelf so don't have to get bored.

A material library would really help I think. Modeling in houdini is easy and with digital assets you can really create blocks/cells that where the Autodesk and Microstation guys only could dream of. At work we do a lot with sketchup (yuk) but i think houdini could even beat the speed of sketchup with the use of DA's.

Unfortunately, a lot of architectural firms are very deep into maya and 3DMax. I guess what is more important is to get the model out of houdini and into a cad package to make final drawings. The 3D viz is only a part these packages do, they are also used for designing.

jason_iversen
I've wondered about what it'd take to make Houdini effective for architectural visualization, especially with PBR rendering at the door.

Efficient rendering of geometry light sources is one of those things IMO. Right now, the available lights in Houdini are rather limiting, and modeling realistic light sources with geometry is too noisy. I think vray can do this (mesh lights?).

post some of my works using houdini in procedual approach

two

three

four

this is I did yestoday to take fluid infomation mapping to a grid

As an architect, I think the rule based system in houdini can provide more than just visualization. 8)

other

other

Hi all,
I wouldn't narrow architecture only to the pure viz market, although producing nice pictures is a very important part of design. On top of that there is also a huge area of modeling such as form finding and data visualizing (in acoustics, lighting and structure engineering) where demand to produce comprehend output (nice images) constantly grows. Recently a huge interest for so called parametrically driven design tools such as (GC, Grasshopper, Catia etc.) can be observed as well. These tools drastically improve workflow and link the gap between traditional modeling and “very technical” and slow programming/scripting. For example we've been recently using houdni in facades development studies, where amount of openings of each facade panel was derived from the data supplied by light engineers. There were around 12 reviews of the design so luckily we saved some time on updates. The other areas I use houdini a lot is geometry optimisation and clean-up (especially where models are frequently sent back and forth), previz , and anywhere else where amount of data is too complex to handle it manually. At this stage I haven't been doing much visuals in houdini - although reintroducing IPR in H10 hopefully will change that…

In my opinion houdini has a great potential although not seen by many people in architectural industry. There are at least a few reasons but the two most important ones are peoples' habits prevent form adopting new workflows. The second one lays in houdini itself. It still misses very standard tools found in competitive applications such as:
- UI snappings and tracking capabilities
- 2D drawings/sections output
- Complex trims support

Cheers,
kuba

Hi kuba

thanks for your reply, it is very kind of you to discuss so deeply.

As a software mainly for VFX, Houdini is not strong as some CAD packages. I was just wondering if there are some ways to develop some tools in Houdini for speed up our workflow.

About you said, you open facade by light information. Could you give me more infomation. I am really interested in it.

Well Houdini will never and should never try to compete with things like Catia or even introduce things like BIM. It's just a different kind of tool. But if Houdini wants to become big in the Arch market, better support for dwg might be nice and even more important than IES lighting.

If you want to speed up your workflow syzmatrix then you could use DA's to make building components you regularly use. For eg. window frames, steel beams, precast floors. That way you could make your own library of components (and shading materials). Again you could use DA's to create walls, do offsets or fillets when drawing with curves…the possibilities are endless…….

hi Pagefan:

thanks very much for your reply. And what you said is very important for speeding up the production of architecture.
Maybe I will make my own library.