Congrats and thanks to Will, Jason, Peter and Dave for this first ever houdini Book.
I have my number reserved from December
It will be a great resource for people like me, that are preparing a Houdini course, so thanks again.

must say…lots of good material in this book. Once I pick it up its hard to put down man!

just wanted to thank everyone that helped make it happen… 8)

You're welcome, at least for my 10% ) I still haven't gotten my copies yet, so I have no idea if it's good or not )

Mr. C has sent them though, hopefully arriving soon!

Whoa, I just had a Happy Days flashback…

Cheers,

Peter B

yh I agreed ,. very good read..
I have learned quite alot of useful tips.
A must have for everyone!!! :wink:

I just received my copy this morning. Hoping to do alot of reading and learning over the next few weeks.

Thanks to the author and all contributors

Hey All,

This book is a very wonderful thing!
I'm a little over half way through it,
and while I am not a newbie…
(much of the info I was aware of already… or once was but had forgotten about)
it has already helped me immensely.
Allow me to explain why.

I'm an intuitive artist and although I am familiar with the concepts of synthesis,
I still often found myself at odds with Houdini.
I would have a certain amount of knowledge that allowed me to get what I often felt was most of the way to my goal,
but then something would not work as expected, or I would be lost in “Houdini Speak”.
Then thing got painful.
You see I work out of my home,
and am not surrounded by large amounts of fellow Houdini users.
The forum, help, and tutorials have been my only means of direct problem solving and education.

Speaking of help, I can't get my “help” to properly perform a “search” without freezing up…
but that's another story.

I have indeed taken Houdini classes before in the past,
but mostly found that I was left holding a bunch of real-cool puzzle pieces that I had to figure out how they fit together on my own later.
The “Bootcamp” was an exception to this…
but rather intensive, and unfortunately (due to time constraints) not really any time for personal exploration of newly acquired info.
The classes (all of them) are amazing, and of course I will take more…
but due to their very nature, re-referencing the material is not nearly as simple as a real “book”.

When working with the video tutorials I kept having to hit pause, rewind
and I couldn't write notes on them.
I love them and am thankful for them,
but hate having to give up half my screen space to them.
I had pretty good luck with this (sometimes slow) process of putting together these pieces,
but I would often forget one element and have to open up the video, consult my notes, and locate the nugget of knowledge that I had forgotten.
This was very time consuming.
Then along came this book.


I am only on page 200 something,
but already I feel as this book has been indispensable in putting together many of the puzzle pieces.
I think this is primarily due to the fact that the book was designed to work as self-contained unit.
This step by step overview is precisely what was desperately need for so long for people trying to learn Houdini.
I found myself saying out loud “Dogs of the 7th moon be praised, that is why that never worked for me”.
The fact that I was able to get information on how to clean up “cookies” was worth the price of the book alone…
where would I have found that info if not in this book!

The book is also a nice area for me to transfer my notes within a pre-existing structure.
An example might be the “cookie” operation.
I've written everything bit of info/problems I've run into (over time) while performing this operation on the pages surrounding the “cookie” tutorial.
I've highlighted this book, and quickly peruse the info when I need a refresher.
This is not something I could do with the video tutorials…
even though I have transferred knowledge to this book that I received from the video tutorials.
So what I'm saying is it is now not only a book of tutorials,
it is truly the organized sum of my Houdini notes/knowledge.

The book format also allowed me to casually go about self-exploration,
something that is unfortunately not really possible in intense group classes,
and a bit of a pain with the videos.

“I knew that already, but I didn't know that. What if I apply with this thing, that thing that I know that is not in the book… yeah yeah!”

Another note made on that book.
More puzzle pieces fit together.
Since I can remember these tutorials and have the images as a quick means to reference my memory,
I can find info right away.
I believe this opens up the package to the more casual user as well.
If part of that Houdini info falls away due to infrequent use,
this is a great resource for review.

To all involved in the creation of this book THANK YOU!!!!!!
I think it's the best move to date in the area of Houdini education.
I sincerely hope that there are more in the works.

As a side note of sorts.
At once point fairly recently I was feeling the need to get into Houdini and make some art.
Really felt inspired and emotional.
I could have “jammed” on my Hand Drum, or Sax, but I chose Houdini to work with.
I was trying to get everything working in a truly controled Houdini procedural fashion.
I kept running into barriers that were cramping my artistic inspiration.
My friend said to me “one thing to remember about Houdini, is it always tries to make you it's bitch”.
I then went back to work and just worked in a more traditional (non-houdiniesk) way.
I made some work and cured my headache.
That said, I always want to be Houdini's bitch,
I love the control and power that I have by being subservient to it's methods.
Now I feel I am one step closer to “jamming” in a truly procedural fashion.

A suggestion for a future book might be one that actually takes one through maybe 3 longer finished-production-quality projects.
That way people can really learn how to make something happen from start to finish.
This would also help with such items as “why did my normals turn into sparks that shoot out of keyboard when I did this modeling operation?”
Just a thought.
I would be interesting in consulting if anyone would be interested in further input.

Also, I love the section for “user comments” on the online help!
Very good idea!!!

Thanks to all the contributors of this fine book.

all my best

Jim Ellis

Hey Jim,
Thank _you_ for the detailed analysis of what works and doesn't work for you. As the original proponent of the videos, and also a small contributor to the book, I am very interested in people's ways of learning.
When I was first asking around (mainly to customers) about moving from the printed PDF tutorials to videos, the idea of being able to use the videos as a reference came up several times. That's why I tried to index them based on certain times in the video covering certain topics. I don't know that people actually use that though, as it's not that convenient.
However, the general consensus at the time was that having more information faster was more important than having a small number of “printed” (PDF, HTML or otherwise) tutorials. I personally still believe this to be the case, but I don't disagree at all with your comments on the value of a reference and being able to write things down in a quick-to-access hardcopy.
The book took an insane amount of time for Will, I'll let him comment further on that if he likes. For me, it was 2 months of 6-8am plus various weekends, for only a few chapters of material. I enjoyed it, but in the same amount of time I was writing, I could have covered most of the book's contents (in my own, less entertaining way of course) in video form.
I'd love to hear people's comments on video vs. printed materials. Things to consider

Printed material is a reference, a video generally is not.

You can cover 4-8 times as much material (from a time-to-create standpoint) in a video as in printed materials.

Video tends to be less prone to “what button do I push/what is supposed to be wired to what” type problems than printed materials, unless those printed materials contain inordinate amounts of imagery, which slows down the creation process even more.

Printed material is sometimes easier to maintain after the fact when a software version changes.

A book is more “satisfying” in that you own something “substantial” and it is taken more seriously. Probably because people understand it is a much larger amount of work than a video.

——————

I invite discussion only for myself, and all opinions are my own. Jim, you mentioned about a future book covering a complete project. In fact, I am formulating some plans along those lines myself. I'm doing my Master's degree which is basically just a year-long project. It's all Houdini (except possibly some fluid dynamics in Realflow) and would lend itself to becoming training material.

One of the things I ponder is this If I do it as a book, I have to take many months unpaid leave (essentially) to write it, which no profits from a book will recover. However, I could do a series of Gnomon-type videos that cover the entire project, in depth, without having to be unemployed.

For my own ego, I'd rather do a book. From a practical standpoint, videos seem the only way to get the training materials out there.

Cheers,

Peter B

Hi Peter,

pretty tired here so if I don't appropriately self-edit please forgive.

let me start of by saying I hope I didn't seem too critical of other learning methods in my praise of the new book.
I think the more methods available the better.
The videos passed on some very crucial info,
and yes I got the feeling that there was a sequential order to them.

When I teach people Maya,
I explain that the program is absolutely huge,
and that attempting to truly master the whole program is almost impossible.
The one thing Maya has going for it is a flood of info and educational materials available…
in fact it's almost overkill.
Houdini is even more complex.

It's funny when attending the recent Houdini “Boot-Camp” (which was great),
many of the instructors where taking notes (learning) from the other instructors.
Some of the students even taught the instructors a thing or two.
I don't mention that to somehow cast a negative light on their skills.
I bring it up because it shows how much there is to learn,
and how nobody ever really seems to stop learning in Houdini.
That and we all have our interests and areas of expertise.

The new book is something that I wish I had when I was starting!
Getting more than basic tutorials back in the day was only possible by taking classes at SideFX.
Glad that's changed.
It appears to provide a solid foundation (as I've progressed in it thus far),
in which research and learning in other areas can be built off of.

As for the old PDF approach.
It's cool, but they didn't really give a comprehensive enough scope of how to “put it all together”.
They were great, and I still reference them to this day.
Very tiny puzzle pieces, but how to put them together.
The videos were more in-depth,
but at the end one needs something to attach notes to (I believe).
So I think that ideally a hybrid might be the way to go.
It would take a bit more time than a video alone,
but far less than an entire book.
Here's what I'm thinking:

A printed hardcopy of a “skeleton” of the video tutorials.

These hardcopies would contain a small amount of reference pictures.

These would consist of complex parameter settings.
These are hard to see on a screen, and often said too fast (you could even say “pause video here”).
That and some basic shot's of what the scene looks like so you can always reference the information with easy visual recognition.
“Where was it that I added the vortex again… oh there's the picture… and there's the info I need”.

Then just have the basic do-this-do-that steps without theory or any explanation of any kind.
Leave the explanation/theory for the video.
Have room on the hardcopy for people to write extensive notes on.

Maybe a list of basic expressions,
and constructing/deconstructing a vex script would be nice.
A few basic pointers that are key to how to work in Houdini.
How to find the hotkeys, how to RMB on your node to get info, export, reference, add parameters, copy stamp, that sort of thing.
Almost like really nicely organized notes provided for the user, along with the basic step by step.
Again let the video explain in depth.

This cuts the book down to 1/15th the size.
The video has the actions and concepts,
and if you've watched it once, you don't need to watch it again because you have the hardcopy that shows you how to do things and where to locate certain key procedures.

I recently played around with learning Zbrush.
They have these automated scripts for learning the package.
Start the script and it builds things before your eyes.
I didn't really get much from them though.
They moved pretty fast, and (again) I just wanted the pages to dwell over at my own pace,
and to write on.
Perhaps others had a better experience with these.
Just thought I'd mention it.

I really hate to be so long winded about this,
but I guess I feel it's pretty crucial,
and I really appreciate yours (and everyone else's) efforts to provide educational info on Houdini.

all my best

Jim Ellis

by the way Peter…
I did (and do) love those training videos!

Hey Jim,
No offense taken, I agree that in the best of all worlds, there would be many ways of delivering (even the same) informational content. My interest is, given limited time and resources, what is the most effective way to get the maximum amount of (useful) information out there.
I like your idea of writing down concepts and doing the nitty gritty as video, certainly more work, and more time, than doing straight videos but as you say, gives you some hardcopy reference to work from too.
We'll see how much time I end up having to work with later in the year )

Cheers,

Peter B

I'm on page 41 of this book, feel that I will learn a lot from finishing all
the tasks in this book, can someone let me know where to find more
training material for Houdini? I am interested in learning more lighting
and rendering/shader techniques with Houdini.

This book feels like an extraordinary well written book!

Cheers to Will C for his great 1st Houdini book, let there be more!
I'd buy them all

Gnomon's Houdini 101 and Sidefx Vislab site(which I downloaded to a DVD) was very helpful in my case.

sundstedt
I'm on page 41 of this book, feel that I will learn a lot from finishing all
the tasks in this book, can someone let me know where to find more
training material for Houdini? I am interested in learning more lighting
and rendering/shader techniques with Houdini.

This book feels like an extraordinary well written book!

Cheers to Will C for his great 1st Houdini book, let there be more!
I'd buy them all

This may be obvious but there's also tutorials on this website. From the top of this page, choose Learning > Tutorials.

here is a link that has loads of version 5 and 6 tutorials on video.
Peter Bowmar had a lot to do with these, and contributed to the book as well.
I think these all still work just fine in Houdini 8.

http://sidefx.vislab.usyd.edu.au/houdini_video/index.htm [sidefx.vislab.usyd.edu.au]

Also if you poke around the site, there are some old PDF's from Houdini training courses that go back to Houdini 3 or so.
Some of these don't work anymore, but some do.

Also there is Odforce.
Loads of Houdini related items here.
Sometimes users post tutorials as well.

http://www.odforce.net/ [odforce.net]

Happy learning

Jim

For the older videos, anything to do with POPs, VOPs, CHOPs and mostly SOPs still work in Houdini 8 just fine. Avoid any older tutorials that deal with Character (bones, capturing) as a lot of that has changed (for the better) in Houdini 7 and 8.

There are interface differences, but not big enough ones to worry about.

Cheers,

Peter B

But why are they so few in number?Can't they make some more, expecially/atleast for dynamics?

edward
This may be obvious but there's also tutorials on this website. From the top of this page, choose Learning > Tutorials.

Dops is still relatively new.
Give SideFX some more time and I'm sure the quantity will increase.

A Dynamics DVD is in the works… stay tuned.

WOW this is awesome finally some really great stuff coming from SESI and Houdini and company….. When i tried to learn houdini 1 there was nothing besides the tutorial guide that came with it and pdf's … Now some yrs later there is books dvd's Now i know why I wanted to come back to houdini… But I wish those Boot camp classes can be put into a dvd by SESI or the Dynamics class into a dvd… I would love to see this… I know that would be so helpful to alot of people who are interested in this aspect of houdini… Thank you guys for making this all happen….




George

More training videos at:
www.3dbuzz.com