I am new to this community and haven't found a place to properly introduce myself, so I'll make this part short: German born, Germany based and German (i.e. brick-head) minded, I come from a different background to 3d and Houdini than propably most of you (text read: I don't know what I'm talking about most of the time, but being German can camouflage this fact over with lots of words). Though most people I personally know in the 3d biz consider Houdini “offensively artists-unfriendly and user-killing complex”, I find myself playing around with a lot of fun, a few glitches (reported) and only a handful of crashes (reported).
My personal approach to learning a new tool is to create tutorials along the way. I find this very helpful to get some focus and force myself into really understanding how things work.
Surely most of you would find my experiences boring, because I am only just starting - but maybe sharing my stuff may help others to “dare to enter the pit”. So here we go, part one of the dummies' guide to Houdini:
My goal is, over the next couple of months, to create a full zero-to-hero pipline tutorial that covers everything from retopo sculpted geometry in Houdini, rigging characters, animating and preparing for external rendering and comping.
The storyboard is done, I do have some knowledge both in rigging and animation - all I need is to find the time and, very likely, some help with grasping how Houdini does it.
Marc Albrecht
