It's a nice offer to give opportunity for independent artist to work with Houdini.
But today freelancer do not only create visual for TV or web.
Projection mapping, fulldome theater, VR oculus/vive… expand and explode resolution and we need to follow the movement.

I understand the limitation of budget and third party renderers but not the resolution for independent artist.

Come one every week one thread about why no 3rdparty renders, now why resolution limitations.

They need to protect themselves somehow. If you need everything just purchase full version. This is Indie release.

if you don't like it just use Maya LT or Modo Indie it's in the same price range. :-)

H Indie is one of the greatest packages on the market! I came from Cinema 4D where just a working particle plugin (the build in system is crapy) costs over 400€, Realflow for fluids costs about 2000€, Turbulencefd for fire and smoke 400€ and so on. On top of all that of comes of course the C4D Premium package for 3600€.

So getting full functionality with a great renderer and fx tools for 200€ (remember: Realflow alone 2000€) is really a nobrainer. The only downside is destructive modeling….but that you can get for free in blender…
If the resolution is not enough export your stuff (Alembic for example) to other packages and render there; or purchase the engine.
Nowadays I barely leave Houdini any more

If your project calls for higher than full HD resolution rendering, your budget is most likely large enough to afford a full commercial license of Houdini FX.

it's most the term that i don't like, don't say it's for “independent”, people who work alone at home, and give resolution limitation (only for animation).
I Don't know if somebody work for evenementiel, but it's a job for a freelancer it pay less that 100k/year. Most of the time it's only 1 night event so they don't have so much money like VFX company and they give everything for big projectors. I have to make video mapping for a stage/theater and the resolution is huge(or strange).
Now i make video for Dome 2k*2k resolution it's a VJing stuff, and i get a couple of hundred $. That not pay a full version of Houdini. I paid 600$ for not limitation resolution for Touch Designer and it was a good price for me.

i say resolution limitation it's made for free money software, for try.

Still….we are talking about 200€….don't complain…

Times are changing. HD today is yesterday's 640 by 480.

Fusion has a free version, goes to 4K. That is what you call a limitation these days.

HD is already inadequate for even an indie today. For my personal project, I am not planing on rendering in HD. Are you kidding? That was hip 10 years ago. This is 2015. And I have no budget for this project.

It is not at all an unreasonable request to expect 4K. Beyond that, yeah that'd be excessive.

Even though I too would love to get the best for cheap, I tend to disagree about the “less than 4K is limited” statement. I see a lot of big budget films are still being made on 2K.

RichardCulver
Times are changing. HD today is yesterday's 640 by 480.

Fusion has a free version, goes to 4K. That is what you call a limitation these days.

HD is already inadequate for even an indie today. For my personal project, I am not planing on rendering in HD. Are you kidding? That was hip 10 years ago. This is 2015. And I have no budget for this project.

It is not at all an unreasonable request to expect 4K. Beyond that, yeah that'd be excessive.

lol I am saying less than 8K is a limitation these days.

2K is not even on the charts.

If you are rendering for screen or modern TV and for budget concerns you want to stay 2K, hey, no complaints here. I have screened a film in old DV widscreen resolution. On a good projector you can get a way with a lot.

The thing is indies these days are not just sending stuff to internet release or mobil devices. There is still a very thriving film festival circuit and digital projectors have started to become the norm rather than the exception.

If we are talking about using Houdini as an individual for a show reel 2K is more than enough.

But we aren't when we are saying the budget has to be less than 100K per year. That is assuming more.

And indie filmmakers are in another class. Usually they are investing in a project with money out of pocket and volunteering time.

And to put all that work into powerful effects and not be able to render in 4K is kind of a waste.

This is 20 years experience as an indie filmmaker talking here.

I do agree that is sounds kind of “winy” to “complain” about 2K. But in reality considering technical specs by today's standards 2K is about 5 years behind the times.

That is really all that you are hearing.

if you are going to use crazy resolutions, the price of using the full version of Houdini should be part of the budget of the project.

4K is not crazy. It may have been years ago. But not now. And this is why Fusion free version supports 4K as a limit. That alone is enough with the other limitations to keep out a larger production house, that does have to deal with crazy images, out of the market for Indie. 8K is crazy. 4K is a becoming a base standard for TV and not high enough for film.

4 and 8K is becoming a standard for image resolution for textures. In fact it has already gotten to the point that if a 3D painting app does not support 8K then there is something amiss.

And this is just the resolution for assets.

We are talking the final output resolution of the entire image here.,

Assets are usually calculated to be a fraction at any given time of the final output image.

These days it is a very competitive market.

Feedback about 4K needs to be looked at as to what it is. A representation of higher demands on even indie teams and individuals.

I do predict it is really only a matter of time before Side Effects sees the light and ups the limit to 4K.

It is inevitable. Things do not stay constant in this market.

you can contact them,
maybe a direct email or as a RFE?

Not a bad idea.

I have contacted them before and found them quite attentive. I am fairly sure they are listening to this kind of feedback.

And I agree contacting them directly is a good idea.

Re: limited output limits quality, I think not. You need better producers and production qualities tbh. The last indie project I rendered scenes at HD and it pulled in $2mil and counting. Your other skills are limiting you, not the output resolution…

http://www.merufilm.com [merufilm.com]

This is not really about that. And it is a bit of a red herring to toss out the “artist or the tool” argument.

That has nothing to do with an offering of software that is keeping with the times of what is considered a technical standard, what is below that technical standard and what is expected of an artist.

4K, limited seats, not usable with full version of software. no 3P rendering is plenty of limitation by today's standards.

That is all this is about. Anything else in my opinion is a red herring.

And the “artist or the tool argument” is not even worth getting into.

Since when has that argument solved anything?

Your producer has a job to produce a budget for the expenses. If they can't budget for the tools then you need a better producer. In today's world of crowd funding, easy credit, free open source software you work with what you have got.

Your argument is for the incapable producer tbh.

what I find more of a problem is that the viewport render is downscaled a lot on retina screens.

MartybNz
Your producer has a job to produce a budget for the expenses. If they can't budget for the tools then you need a better producer. In today's world of crowd funding, easy credit, free open source software you work with what you have got.

Your argument is for the incapable producer tbh.

You are getting another thing completely mixed up in this that does not belong the argument in my opinion.

What does a producer or any individual production have to do with this?

Nothing. Really. That is in fact absurd to assume that the answer to a feature request for an indie version of a software is to not use the indie version.

This is only to do with a software offering. Where it sits in the general landscape of current 2015 technology. Not technology of 5-10 years ago which is where HD is today. HD has long past. So has SD.

If we were talking 8K, I would agree with you.

But that agreement would only last about 5 years tops. Then we'd have to consider the landscape at that time.

If Autodesk and The Foundry took this strict attitude, we would not have benefited from added features to both Maya Lite and to Modo Indie. Both apps with added features now, solely based on the feedback from the community.

And the same negative posts came out with a vengeance to try and nullify this feedback. Luckily, these companies listened to everyone.

This industry is extremely competitive. It does not stand still. We are priced out of jobs every day by people who will do it cheaper and faster. And we are required to do more, faster and cheaper every day.

There is nothing anyone can say that will stop this.

In order to compete as an indie using indie software you need a competitive edge. It does not have to be the same software that a large studio uses.

It just needs to be relevant to the market.

4K would be a limit for a large studio. But not so for an indie. Especially when indies are also the producers. That is the entire point.

Making an argument for “getting a better producer” is all by itself negating a large portion of the indie market to which this would not even apply.

Producers also need to get paid. Most indies can not even afford a “better producer”.

RichardCulver
This industry is extremely competitive. It does not stand still. We are priced out of jobs every day by people who will do it cheaper and faster. And we are required to do more, faster and cheaper every day.

You are making the same simplistic arguments that hold so-called Indies back. Your skill-set trumps any competitive offering by far. The race to the bottom is not the race you can win, even moving to the BRICS won't help much.

How are your math, art, technology, story telling, collaboration, business et al skills? Have you got engineering skills and can program - you are then in the top 5% of candidates in the world etc. With little skills, no amount of 4k this and that can help you.