I didn't visit the main Houdini product page for a long time, but I hope this was posted on 1st of April and someone forgot to remove it. Otherwise, I'd love if someone from SESI marketing would PM me - I have some bio-chemistry related questions. For a friend.

What's wrong with “Houdini is hard AF, but its power granted by proceduralism, makes it all worth it.”? Shelf-tools are a mere starting point, like a glorified “create>torus” found in any 3d program, irrelevant even for half-serious production, and is not worth even mentioning in any feature related context.
Promoting Houdini as intuitive, is akin to someone shouting “I didn't steal anything!” after walking out of a store without buying anything.

p.s. lets, 3rd person singular form of “to let” verb, to be used here. let's is a contraction of “let us”.

The main reason is marketing. As an example; Facebook/Google advertise that they store the least amount of data of people than ever before. Which might even be true, but they still store a shitton of data. But they rather not say that.

The text SideFX wrote is completely correct. They did not state that shelf-tools only will make for a great end-product. They do however create “artist-friendly viewport interactions” as well as "build up nodes and networks for you". So just like stated.

I don't think

“Houdini is hard AF, but its power granted by proceduralism, makes it all worth it.”?

is a good marketing stategy opposed to

"while nodes are what makes Houdini unique and give it power

, which hints at the same thing.


Aand:

pickled
irrelevant even for half-serious production, and is not worth even mentioning in any feature related context

Not sure why I'm having to explain that I was not proposing that phrasing “Houdini is hard AF…”. Of course you won't say on your product main page, but my main gripe was (got over it fast lol) with “intuitive” as the 2nd bullet-point. That word shouldn't even exist on that list of Houdini general strenghths. Not even talking about its procedural nature or vex, but about things that should and could be intuitive, things that are application agnostic.
It seems to me like SideFX is trying to make Houdini intuitive by promoting it so, denying a critique well known around here, instead of working at actually making it so and let people reach that conclusion, by themselves - no need for promoting a s/w is intuitive, unless you feel like some convincing is in order, as soon as you enter the door.
It's possible that I'm reading too much into it…

Marketing is *always* aspirational Hoping the increase in sales is funneled back into intuitive product development.

*NB the marketing has been very nice over the last few versions. Way, way more professional than the old days, though the old days were quirky-fun too!

I agree. It's so good, that their marketing videos sometimes go viral. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIcUW9QFMLE [www.youtube.com]
You could find clips of the lion and the horses on all kinds of social media accounts. No matter if CG related or not.

I don't mind if they sometimes put a little makeup over the truth, if it helps their popularity/sales and therefore their budget.

Putting something on the label/package of a product that doesn't fully or entirely reflect what's inside, is a sure way to alienate your clientele, after you caught their attention with this strategy.

I might appear self-contradictory here, in saying that I don't actually think “Houdini's intuitiveness” should be the tip of the development spear, I just commented on this issue because it struck me as jarring to put “intuitive” in caps on Houdini's main product page, even though the text under it tries to clarify what's being referred to as “intuitive”.

“Tries to”, but it's making actually a false, or at least half-true, statement with “there are lots of viewport and shelf tools that allow for artist-friendly viewport interactions”. I'm referring to the shelf-tools on the left, those on the right I rarely touch due to my interests. There are many tools that either don't work (“partition” groom node is the last discovery) or are non-intuitive/confusing (select a few polys and a knife node appears in the netview, disconnected, although drawing in the viewport works). Others just don't produce very good results (bevel, mirror, edge-divide, etc) or have been re-written with missing features (poly-split), as if they were done in a hurry to cross them off a list. Working with capture weights is a PITA, from assigning to mirroring to painting. Idem for blend-shapes. Not sure how's Houdini supposed to attract studios or individuals (which actually are the ones that drive decisions at studio level, regarding the direction about what s/w to be adopted in a pipeline) that are doing character animation, when these, along with animation as a whole, could use a lot of improvements, even compared to dead software (XSI). I guess, the current most widely used workflow is how - import animated skeletons or mesh sequences and do some sims (muscles, cloth, etc) and make use of the great hair system.

It's a shame that many don't find it optimal to use Houdini from start to finish, but it's the current state of affairs. Saying that it's to be expected to use many programs in a pipeline, while true, it doesn't mean that Houdini shouldn't undertake more of the tasks currently dealt with upstream the pipeline. Otherwise, what was even the point of developing rigging tools, recently a hair system and other character/creature animation related systems?

All these point to a few possible causes: not a lot of people are using these tools, otherwise they'd be fixed in the next day's build and in the developing stage, SESI doesn't engage with many people that are not TD/TAs or not working with sims and exclusively procedural workflows.
Hoping to be proven wrong with H18, at least in part, and to see some of these issues addressed. Holding my breath… don't let me turn blue in the face.

Just got to step back and assess things - if software is causeing this much grief, be street-smart and move on.

Realisticly, H25+ isn't going to fix all those things.

Will H25 support selecting/editing multiple points in Curve SOP or will the Curve SOP be more easy to use? I don't think so.

goat
if software is causeing this much grief, be street-smart and move on.

I have moved on - I'm not using Houdini for anything that I don't consider it be a good match for what I need. But I'd like to use it for more, as it's much easier to work in a single program than to deal with imports/exports.
So my point about having tools/systems that are character animation oriented (like the hair grooming system) and not having fully covered other aspects related to this type of work, being an issue that should be addressed, is a valid one IMO. Otherwise if we are to accept everything as is, there would be no point for having a RFE filing service.
Either way, it's a mere water-cooler discussion, in the light of what's been discussed about Houdini's intuitiveness, not expecting change overnight or being achieved in ways other than filing RFEs. I think thus far, with previous posts, I made sure to be clear what's my position on this.

Interested to know which software you moved to then.. What are comparing intuitive to?

I think I misread your statement. I didn't move onto other main DCC 3d package, although I'm considering giving Maya another chance, given that the industry I'm most interested in (character/creature creation/animation), be they freelance/permanent contract jobs, is brimming with Maya pipelines. Currently still using XSI for modeling and posing and of course other packages for sculpting and texturing. Houdini if there's hair grooming involved.
I moved on from hoping to see Houdini improved in these areas I'm interested in, any time soon, is what I was referring to.

You'll love Maya. It will do everything you want tbh

If I'll end-up doing that, I hope so. Last time I tried it, actually starting a project, not just orbiting around a cube, I hated it. Don't remember details, as it was probably 10 yrs ago. Maybe those things that put me off, whatever might've they been, are better now.
First step would probably be to try its Xgen hair system, after I finish the current hair grooming project in H. That'll be a fun comparison, although I have the feeling that it'll be no match to Houdini, is some respects.

Its great dropping the culture wars, no one package will do it all well, so you just need a garage full of tools.

hey, I just was testing Xgen and its really fast, then it crashed! boom, a win to Houdini

what culture war are you talking about?
btw, did Maya have the auto-save feature auto-enabled? ha ha!

I've had my fair share of crashes when working with Houdini's hair, so the benchmark would be which one crashes less…

I used to think the last major revision of Blender was intuitive, but then they changed the interface all around to make it more intuitive… unfortunately, i find the latest revision to be less intuitive.

The nice thing about Houdini, is they never do this type of thing. The whole program is logically structured… it's just super complex… the more time you spend working with it, the easier it becomes to work with.

Every comprehensive 3D package is complicated to fully understand… the difference is that most of them (especially maya) have a ton of books that you can use.

Houdini, you either need to take some classes, or you have to watch a ton of videos in order to learn the interface.

IMHO, what the (Houdini) world really needs to build people's intuition is a nice, glossy UK-style magazine devoted to the subject! (or at least a little Portland-style 'zine)

anybody gots a printing press lying around?

UX isn't just UI aesthetics. A common mistake for computery people. Sounds like Blender feel into that trap then

A UX designer asks ‘how can we make this software better for humans’. Their role is to increase satisfaction for users/humans.

Luckily SideFx get it. There are UX roles being advertised.

goat
There are UX roles being advertised.

Hmm, indeed. A Character Software Developer as well. Someone read my rant above and decided to open these positions, clearly. Ha ha!
Hopefully sooner than H25, eh?

In regards to the shelf toosl being marketed as ‘Intuitive’, if you think about its really more a User Experience enhancement than anything else. For example, instead of being buried in a tab menu, the torus shlef tool is front and center, discoverable and available with a big icon.