Erik Ws
do anyone know at least some average date for presentation of some kind? or it will be posted like daily build with changelog text file inside

This year is so weird. I'm surprised it's even still called 18.5 and not 19 since it's effectively been a year since 18 was released. I'm assuming the pandemic affected operations at SideFX pretty substantially, either that or 18 needed so much work that they've been playing catch up since last year.

I would expect at least a proper intro video with sequences showing the cool new features put to an awesome Olivier Orand music track and splashed all over the front page.

As to the date? Nobody knows for sure except SideFX…and they ain't talking!

Midphase

Erik Ws
do anyone know at least some average date for presentation of some kind? or it will be posted like daily build with changelog text file inside

This year is so weird. I'm surprised it's even still called 18.5 and not 19 since it's effectively been a year since 18 was released. I'm assuming the pandemic affected operations at SideFX pretty substantially, either that or 18 needed so much work that they've been playing catch up since last year.

I would expect at least a proper intro video with sequences showing the cool new features put to an awesome Olivier Orand music track and splashed all over the front page.

As to the date? Nobody knows for sure except SideFX…and they ain't talking!

they have good taste of musics, yes. I thought opposite, like “stay home” regime would speedup things a little bit
of course considering every dev is in good health. I didn't notice how it was before. ok anyway , at least know name of 3 new tools

I believe they already gave a hint about KineFX in the previous release 18 talk.
When discussing the automatically (FX) placement of objects in LOPS they said
We will implement similar technologies in other areas of Houdini as well. Character related areas.

It's coming soon. 3Delight has a version for 18.5 and there are numerous mentions of 18.5 in the online documentation now.

n2e
Just look at the Adobe/Affinity case. It took very little for a small company with a good product (and without stock investors) to initiate mass migration. They offer nothing really revolutionary, just solid software for reasonably priced perpetual license. And Adobe is literally bleeding users.

This is inaccurate. Adobe’s subscription pricing has been a huge success for them. They are very far from bleeding users. The small trickle of defects to Affinity is a rounding error for them. If Affinity ever became a real threat, you’d know it, because Adobe would buy them and take the software off the market (see: Macromedia). Don’t underestimate the power of people’s mental (not monetary) investment in software. Learning new software is often not worth the cost professionally, certainly not if the only value is getting to thumb your nose at a corporation.

joenyc

n2e
Just look at the Adobe/Affinity case. It took very little for a small company with a good product (and without stock investors) to initiate mass migration. They offer nothing really revolutionary, just solid software for reasonably priced perpetual license. And Adobe is literally bleeding users.

This is inaccurate. Adobe’s subscription pricing has been a huge success for them. They are very far from bleeding users. The small trickle of defects to Affinity is a rounding error for them. If Affinity ever became a real threat, you’d know it, because Adobe would buy them and take the software off the market (see: Macromedia). Don’t underestimate the power of people’s mental (not monetary) investment in software. Learning new software is often not worth the cost professionally, certainly not if the only value is getting to thumb your nose at a corporation.

Unfortunately this is true. I'm a subscriber of Adobe CC even though I'm completely against it and against Adobe. They're the “best” example of what publicly traded software companies do, when they run 100% subscription: they do nothing. There's almost no progress for many years in most of their softwares but they're earning more than ever before. I also own all three Affinity apps and love using them, it's way more fun to use them in vast areas of the software than their counterparts from Adobe. But on the one hand I get PSD files from clients all the time and on the other hand all three are missing too many features that I need regularly.

I remember an Adobe rep spoke about turning to the subscription model. Basically they were caught in the cycle of always trying to come up with some new feature to sell a new version. The subscription model would allow them to slow down and focus more on quality code and fixing issues that had been lingering for years. To me this was a great selling point and actually made sense. Unfortunately Lightroom is still one of the biggest pieces of garbage and it continues to get slower and buggier.

When you get a moment…look at October 28th!

https://www.sidefx.com/events/calendar/?fbclid=IwAR0JBetS4c7s2zCsSihXGzM3ycgphUiERTE1yn9oSlqukdFQ8tdWLe-JgnY [www.sidefx.com]

That means soon a lot of new updates and maybe karma production ready. 2 days hive crazy. Could be a virtual event?

Houdini 18.5 Sneak Peak. Enjoy!



This sneak peek video reveals some upcoming features of Houdini 18.5.

There are various areas of software development update, including both game engine plugins, PDG, SOPs, pyro, FLIP fluids, rendering, and much more.

Get a taste of what is to come in the next release of Houdini.

Awesome. I super excited to see how KineFX works! I was already working on a character rig but i'll wait until this release

JalexM
Awesome. I super excited to see how KineFX works! I was already working on a character rig but i'll wait until this release

I had downloaded Cascaduer, but had put off learning it, because I didnt want to learn something new, and then figure out how to integrate it into my pipeline - so, I'm also very excited about KineFX as well, especially (hopefully) if it can be used with Crowds.

I'm very excited about KineFX. I have been teaching motionbuilder in my mocap class for a few years now, but seems out of reach for many of my students to use with the subscription price set WAY too high for mere mortals. I like Blender's tools, but “blending” is not their strong suit. The machine learning foot placement tools they showed were absolutely astounding. And, being able to use nodes to do the work, I will miss the story tools in Motionbuilder and the great “bake to control rig” and back to skeletons, layering, etc., but I'm looking forward to seeing how Houdini might replace my current workflow.