http://www.data-tribe.net/wework4her/ [data-tribe.net]
these guys develop a lot of tools in Maya, maybe it is a reference for us to do the same thing in Houdini :shock:

Hi there. Another architect/designer here…

I also want to say that the support for exploratory design is much more interesting, important and promising than visualizations for the architectural usage. This is going to be a very big area of growth with sustainable design requiring adjustable/adoptable buildings. I do not care for the physical lighting rendering (there are adequate existing tools for this) but would like to see better translation tools to move data between Houdini and CAD applications, better geometric precision and more drafting tools as mentioned before. Even more importantly, I would appreciate some attention from the developers to this area because I am sure interesting ideas could emerge that do not come to my mind. Actually, easy to use material presets would make a big difference for the students come to think of it…

I do use (and teach) Rhino/Grashopper, GC and Digital Project/CATIA (obviously useful precedents to have a look at maybe) but find that packages like MAX/Maya/Houdini are faster and more flexible for design development. Procedural approach in Houdini coupled with the nodal approach is very attractive in this regard. Of the similar ilk I also use/teach Fusion, MAX/MSP, Virtools. In our university there is lots of interest and hundreds of students. So there could be considerable uptake, especially with Houdini Apprentice available. I am hoping this thread might spur SideFX to consider adding some tools and developing some new ideas to make architectural utilizations easier (of course there is no need to make this into a CAD beast). If anything, the film world (whose architecture – even when supposedly futuristic - is pretty unimaginative by the way) would only benefit…

My next effort will look at what can be done with the procedural generation of geometry and simulations of usage/reconfiguration using Houdini and Python. Am yet to explore this side to the full…

it might be an interesting point of discussion what the impact of procedural software like houdini in contemporary design and architecture could be but to be honest i think this forum it´s the wrong place. i agree that it can be fun playing around with this tools and thats why more and more people feel attracted by such stuff but in my opinion its also a bit dangerous. i don´t want sound rude but if something like the deformed surfaces above is architecture i tend to say that every vfx-artist or technical director would be a really great architect!!!
i can see the potential offered by houdini for such stuff but don´t think it would be a good idea for sesi to jump on that waggon. houdini was and still is a really great piece of software for vfx and not for construction planning or architectural design and therefor its not necessary to turn it into something like a cad program. i mean, catia can also handle fluids and rbd simulations but have you ever thought about using it for visual effects?
i can imagine that you can use houdini and its procedural approach for design development but all in all this will mostly be done by students as long as they are at university. students normaly won´t by software for thousands of dollar and if you are professional its a matter of fact that you wouldn´t use houdini for construction-planning of a 200 mio dollar building, at least i would not!
to cut a long story short, i´m a bit sceptic if this would be the best target market for sesi.

thanks guys, the talking is getting more and more hot.

what sr and petzibaerr said are both valuable. Honestly, I do not think side effect will develop CAD function in houdini. So maybe it is a little bit trouble in real project.
But what houdini really interested me is its fast and powerful data transfoming structure, which means we can do a lot of design discovery without programming. In fact, I did some fluid transforming object in Maya, but it seems not so easy in Houdini.
Houdini can help us to discover the interesting things, I think it is the spririt of design.

I was wondering if there was a good database of free 3d models and textures that you guys use?

3dwarehouse is quite good. Apart from native skp file format support you have an option to download collada files too.

have u guys established a working pipeline between autocad arhitecture and houdini?

i know of houdini's ability to import dxf, but until now i haven't had good results translating solids.

Acad-Rhino-Houdini here. dxf if far from being perfect but issues lay on both sides - Houdini could support dwg, autocad at least iges or other popular format as obj or ply.
Personally I prefer Bricscad to ACad since it has more export options and the price is acceptable. If you explore dxf import export between Houdin i and ACad be aware of a bug on acad side. It simply refuses to load some dxfs exported from houdini due to some headers incompatibility. That said you can easily workaround this problem by importing a file first to Rhino or Bricscad and export it again as dwg or dxf.

So as I said Rhino is a solid hub in our pipline but in the end we do most of 3D in it. Autocad is used for 2d only and houdini helps to overcome limits of both

hope it helps a little.
cheers

kuba

thank you for your input.

i did not know about bricscad, but i'll be using acad at school and still have to insert it in the pipeline somewhere.

until now i've been using rhino with acad for some procedural modeling (using grasshopper) and with maya(mentalray) or blender(luxrender) to do the visualization.

i was hoping on moving to houdini(apprentice hd) for both procedural modeling and vis. it's a shame that although the native format is supported i can't get solids in or out.

from what i've been googling acad supported iges at a certain time. now only the one shipped with inventor still has this exporter.

i doubt it that autodesk will add support for more formats or fix the headers bug, if we are to see improvements on a direct pipeline we are more likely to see it coming from sidefx.

I'd like to keep this thread going because I think it is a great topic. I use Acad, sketchup, rhino+vray+grasshopper, and modo. Documentation has been in autodesk architecture up through the 2008 edition and now transitioning to revit.

I agree that the value i see in houdini relates to form-finding and analysis and not construction document production or even visualization, although I realize that it can do the latter. But honestly, while I may produce conceptual visualizations that are okay to quickly explore a concept with a collaborator or client, if highend visualization is required for marketing materials or as final documentation, it is cheaper and the quality is better to outsource the production of such materials to an archviz professional.

I found houdini because even though I use and love rhino plus the addons noted, I am a bit leary of it. Rhino is a wonderful program and easy to learn if you have a cad background. But it is older technology, older interface and there are some limitations to what it can handle. Taking the development of bongo, flamingo, penguin, and some of the labs projects as a guide, it seems the development team has a sense of what to develop for rhino to take the next step and be a dominant product but they never quite get there. This has been the case for a long time. So it is relegated to universities and a smaller segment of the world of architectural practice. Grasshopper seems to be an exception, in part because there is so much community enthusiasm and participation in its development. Still, as powerful and wonderful as it is, it is kind of wonky and sprawling and still a bit limited, though as people are beginning to find ways to have it speak to other analysis software, it is getting more powerful. The point is, I wonder, given McNeel's past history with refining development and integrated other products, if it will continue to be a compelling work in progress that some use because they don't know anything else is out there but that isn't what it could be.

So with this in mind, I searched widely across the CAD/animation/modeling spectrum this summer and discovered houdini – actually, i knew about houdini for a while but had not looked closely and did not realize it had such a robust node-based system. I immediately thought, this is what grasshopper is trying to do – and here it is already fully integrated into something like a max or maya. this makes it, in my opinion, have the characteristics of (for now) my ideal form-finding application because it accommodates both modeling for design (the artistic side of architectural practice) and modeling to understand and refine program and systems analysis (the analytical drawing and model making that architects do as part of the design process).

So at the moment, my focus is grasshopper, in particular because right now i need the support community very much. But I am slowly picking up houdini in my spare time and think it may or may not be a preferred way to accomplish the same in the future. Of course, because it can already handle animation, dynamics, simulation and visualization as well, it has the potential to be one of the best architectural design tools. It is all integrated and as importantly, it is scriptable in python.

One last thing – I would like to know further thoughts from someone who uses catia or digital project. I realize that this is probably the most appropriate tool for architects who want to engage in this sort of design and analysis. But I've only known one person who worked in an office where they use it and was told that, in addition to the very large procurement cost, also it requires an exceptionally large time commitment to develop proficiency (when compared to other packages) and so as of then, they had some highly trained draftsmen using it to decompose the designs and create construction documents but that the designers themselves were still working in rhino+grasshopper.

A product like Catia isn't a design tool, in the sense that you are discussing. It is more a project management tool for manufacturing. Yes, it has modeling capabilities (it's a solid modeler as apposed to a surface modeler), but it is best used to coordinate with a full manufacturing process. So, it makes great sense to use it for manufacturing airplanes where you need to test and track thousands of parts from many sub-contractors; but is completely inappropriate for prototyping and single purpose designs.

syzmatrix
thanks guys, the talking is getting more and more hot.

I'm not reaching for the baby oil just yet. Please continue.

another architect here!
I used many softwares for my 3D : autocad, revit, archicad, sketchup, modo, maya. But now there is only houdini for me! I'm very greatfull for software like this. Many my schoolmates work in Grasshopper in Rhino , but I have Mac and there is no rhino in that level of develop like on Windows platform. But I'm glad. Because I had to find another alternative for my design. And houdini isn't for me weaker alternative or sth like that. Vice versa! It's so creative tool that it's move my porjects forward! It's let me go with my projects to another dimension . I think people who design their designs in Houdini , don't do “classical” architecture but maybe they looking for some experimental form and way for this “art”. And ofcourse on the beggining is it little idea on paper and later…..

Hi,
I am not an architect but I love using houdini for parametric shapes. Some can be seen here http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=17034 [sidefx.com]

syzmatrix
four

Hi, syzmatrix, I've saw the same images u post on Chinavfx.net. I've post a question to ask you the working process.

So, can you explain the node structure to create this model?

thank you!

aquarel
another architect here!
I used many softwares for my 3D : autocad, revit, archicad, sketchup, modo, maya. But now there is only houdini for me! I'm very greatfull for software like this. Many my schoolmates work in Grasshopper in Rhino , but I have Mac and there is no rhino in that level of develop like on Windows platform. But I'm glad. Because I had to find another alternative for my design. And houdini isn't for me weaker alternative or sth like that. Vice versa! It's so creative tool that it's move my porjects forward! It's let me go with my projects to another dimension . I think people who design their designs in Houdini , don't do “classical” architecture but maybe they looking for some experimental form and way for this “art”. And ofcourse on the beggining is it little idea on paper and later…..

Hi, aquarel,

Very impressive design!

Can you explain the working process in Houdini to create the form as you did?

How do you create the scale bar located on the lower left corner of your image?

BTW, I'm quite interested in how Houdini works in Mac OS system. Is it more efficient than in Windows system?

Thank you!

Hi guys,,

I'm not an architect, but use Houdini to bring rather dull CAD drawings to live.
I use “Polytrans” from Okino as interface between Solidworks and Houdini.
Polytrans does a great job in keeping the part assembly structure amongst different file formats.

Cheers

Anders

hi AndersBP:

it is great for your reply, Now I want is not only to design, but also want to use it for some construction design, or at least to communicate with some building infomation design software.

could you give me some information that what you use solidwork and houdini for, can they develop production for design jobs?