I'm new to this area, but I've been enjoying my first foray into Houdini. Apprentice for now, but Indie is at the right price point, so all is good.

Truth is I'm pretty average in talent, and I kinda need this to be a good generalist product. Even though I know that isn't what Houdini excels at doing. I hope to eventually get further along with my skills, but upfront I'm hoping for some simple material and render settings to be polished with the upcoming version.

Glad we had the sneak peak back at Siggraph, but I'm super excited to see more and hope that more news and video is coming around the corner shortly!

I use C4D and modo at work, but looking for something more for a personal license. Here is to Houdini gaining some real ground in the generalist market! Either way, impressive software.

the fun part of each release is that the forums are always a swing between the excited folk and the whiners

Good observation! The C4D community was just silent leading up to releases, meanwhile, the modo community was accustomed to getting a large amount of teases as a release grew near. I'm still figuring out this group of users and the sidefx company.

For instance, the forum has already been quite helpful to me, but far more muted than I expected. When I browse the posts, there are a lot of really old ones, and even quite a few with only a single response, or no response at all.

Artye
the fun part of each release is that the forums are always a swing between the excited folk and the whiners

ohh boy what a statement :-) *haha*

Truth is I'm pretty average in talent, and I kinda need this to be a good generalist product. Even though I know that isn't what Houdini excels at doing. I hope to eventually get further along with my skills, but upfront I'm hoping for some simple material and render settings to be polished with the upcoming version.

The material and render settings are simple.

Do remember that if achieving creative goals is made so simple that anyone can do it ie > press button > make awesome explosion, your potential employer pay packet I am sure will reflect that fact.

Yeah, division is simple too, except to a school kid who is first experiencing the concept. It takes some time. I'm not suggesting the need to have a one button creation tool. As I noted, I'm a fairly average talent, but I do make my living from 3d animation.

Since rendering and materials are not my strong point, the more heavy lifting that Houdini can provide up front will let me focus on learning the other aspects first. I don't think it is a stretch to say that c4d gets the user to a decent level of render quicker than Houdini. It is also probably safe to say that c4d is more limiting.

Trust me, I don't want Houdini to become limiting. I'm so very impressed with the software so far.

A great shortcut to upgrading materials and rendering would be use a Substance Designer with the Houdini plug-in, and, Octane or Redshift. Then when they are too limiting you can move into Mantra

Im really looking forward to the new network view, the shapes are gonna make jumping back into a crazy rig a little easier on the brain. Also the material stuff… and the rigging stuff… everything really
Any chance of some more teasers!
P.

Hello,

this is my first post (if it gets approved).
I am also really looking forward to the new release! I always wanted to get into Houdini but just started really doing stuff each day starting a few weeks ago. You always hear people say that it has a steep learning curve and while there is no doubt about that i realized you can do cool stuff once you get your mindset into Houdini-Mode.

I am mainly interested in particle VFX stuff - i have no prior experience though. Ive been learning from a few Rohan Dalvi videos i bought - i started with the Modeling one, since i am familiar with modeling and then did the Motion Design course he had.

I hope the guys at SideFX also simplified the Particle solvers in Houdini 16 or maybe have a noob friendly first hand introduction to it when it releases! So yeah really looking forward to it!
Wasnt it supposed to be released around end of 2016/early 2017?

hey powerstroke3000 welcome,

well houdini is not simple and it takes time to learn but there is always for the particle system tutorials that helps and some shelf helpers.

in the roadmap video they say early 2017 release for the public, 2016 release for customers with the houdini license (not indie).

You can watch the SIGGRAPH ROADMAP VIDEO a couple of times, I know I have

Totally stoked for the new “landscape” sops!!!

Hey Guys,

thanks for your answers! I am sorry that it took me a while to answer but i had no idea how long it would take the mods to verify my account so when i was not verified after one day, i thought it might take a little longer

Anyway, i have been playing with Houdini since then and it keeps getting better. I am fairly confident about modeling (in Maya) so i thought it was a good start to follow along with Rohan Dalvis modeling training. It is really good and i am starting to think the way you probably should with houdini.

Another thing i am interested in is now building your custom shaders to later maybe drive some of your FX.

That would be one thing i am really looking forward to - the new shading network. If i got it correctly it was announced that it will have thumbnails, which would be huge!
Also hopefully there will able that you could view your procedural textures in scene view. Now i think you have to take a render or use that shader view (which i cant quite figure out at the moment xD). I saw some workarounds here in the forums - but i might as well just wait and see what sidefx has in store!

Sorry, i hope i am not derailing the thread with my answer!

@Dan

Yes, the roadmap was really great really cool vid that leaves curious and excited!

Something like landscapes seems like a perfect fit for Houdini. I used World Machine every now and then, but i would be very happy, if Houdini would also cover this!

I wonder if we will get any more previews soon. I'm very curious about the new terrain tools.

Yes! It is early 2017
I'm actually looking forward to the network view performance increases, I've found some of my larger node trees can get a little sluggish with plugging things in.

I just want that damn tab menu to not appear on top of other apps, when switched.

What's that??

The tab menu gets stuck on top of the foreground app when you switch apps on OsX.

FC'mon SESI! Give us some teasers or something. H16! - The DCC to rule them all.

Artye
The tab menu gets stuck on top of the foreground app when you switch apps on OsX

Ahh, that would get annoying! I went back to ElCap due to Wacom issues, mine seems okay.

I suspect that new surface tension model for flip included in 15.5.673 is a backport from 16's surface tension, so at least now we have something to play with until the real thing is out (: