I've always wanted to learn a 3D software (mainly for VFX) that is for personal projects (short movie on youtube etc.) or for maybe one day become a professional freelance artist.

So i did a lot of research before chosing the software i want to learn (starting soon, i am busy at work for now ).

I don't know if one day i could (would like) make it my job (doing VFX for movies)
I don't know if i'll succeed/could handle the amount of knowledge i'd have to acquire to start doing some nice stuffs like in movies
I don't know if i could buy myself a non apprentice licence if i become a freelance pro (7995$ it's ok for a complete package but still a bunch of money, especially nowadays.
I don't know i f i could become a professionnal (escpeially that i'm in France and everybody use cinema 4d, max or maya here…even if french cinema is not for me, it's too bad generally, i love US movies almost exclusively)

….but for me, after my research, Houdini came as an evidence.


Through my long research here's what i understood.

MAYA
Incomplete software. You can do amazing CGI and VFX (what i am interested in) but most of the time to achieve that, you need to write your own plugins and tools (!!) and/or buy new ones (like DMM for fracture) because maya sometiems is not good at X or Y sstuff or even don't have it implemented.
It's Unstable and crashes easily.
Lot of customers complaints that autodesk don't care about them and don't listen to them.
Learning curve: Steep for maya + you have to learn each plugin you buy so steep + steep + steep ….

3DS MAX
Even more incomplete software. You can do amazing CGI and VFX like in maya but for that, you'll need bunch of plugins (amzing ones like thinking particles, rayfire, fumeFX, afterburn etc.)
Lot of customers complaints that autodesk don't care about them and don't listen to them.
Learning curve: steep for max + you have to learn even more plugins than maya (again, ifyou want to reach a certain level of visuals). So steep + steep + steep + steep…

LIGHTWAVE
Quite a complete software but in my opinion, you can't come near the level of max and maya for CGI and VFX, it's look more “cheap”. It's more a “i can do all i can do it quick the quality is ok but not amazing” software. I rarely see VFX made in lightwave that impressed me (vfx from walking dead are good and well integrated but it comes quite as an exception) nor that can come near the quality of what we can do with max and maya and houdini for example.
Lot of customers complaints that newtek don't care about them and don't listen to them.
I myself been treated like shit on the offical lightwave forums by lightwave “seniors” that didn't like i ask some noobs questions. They watch you from above like if you were nothing and talk to you like if you are a nobody. The deleted my 2 threads and blocked my account (true story) because i said i didn't like the mean way they were answering to me.
Learning curve: much less steep than max and maya and houdini (but the visuals are not at the same levels in my opinion)


HOUDINI
No need of additional plugins. Everything is inside. Complete package. Even a water simulation like a mini realflow (!). Best software for VFX and CGI to what i've read. Quite good for animation if i need it too.
I've read sideffects listen its customers.
I just created an account here and asked 3 noobs questions, that people answered me very nicely, very quickly etc. I feel welcome, and that's important IMHO
Learning curve: very steep as i read, but much less since 12 (right?). BUT you learn 1 (just 1) COMPLETE software. With it you'll do anything imaginable and best VFX and CGI possible (if the talent is here obviously) over any 3D software.

So for me, after this long research, the choice for the 3D software i'll learn is simple: HOUDINI !

Very steep learning curve but just 1 single complete software to learn VS steep learning curve + plugins with same steep learning curve to learn) VS “easier” learnign curve (but “cheaper” visuals for cgi and VFX >>>> Houdini wins It seems logical

No customers care (maya, max and ligthwave) and mean community (lightwave) VS customer care and people who answer me friendly wheras i am a noob (houdini) >>> Houdini wins


A very comlpete package with all an artist could need (houdini) VS softwares with the need of plugins and/or custom tools to achieve what houdini do in a single package (maya, max and lightwave) >>> Houdini wins


My noob question now is: why Houdini is not leader of the market yet and massively use in big studios (and freelance)? Why it's “all about” “maya/max for movies and lightwave for TV”? I know houdini is used on big productions but maya is the leader and i don't understand why it's like that, it's not like if Houdini was a recent software. Maybe it's the learning curve that afraid them? It would be non logical, it's better to learn a very hard software that would do everything like Houdini than learn a hard software and tons of hard plugins like max and maya, it appears to me as more difficult to achieve, but maybe i am weird.

Anyway.
Thanks for the answers and sorry for my english, hope you can understand my post.

I had never even heard of houdini before I decided to crash Rachael Campbell's Visual FX class at Santa Monica College… I had just started learning Maya before that, but i wasn't super into it…

I am pretty sure that most people have just never heard of Houdini… most people have seen it (if they watch movies), but they just never think too much past that…

Also, Houdini is a very special software. I feel like you have to use both hemispheres of your brain at the same time to use houdini. It's like logic and imagination had sex and birthed particles

and those particles went
POP POP POP POP
POP CHOP DOP SOP
COP
POP
SHOP
ROP

Maybe if more people heard of it, it would be used more. maybe not.

I think that video games are the next big thing for Houdini. Procedural design just makes sooooo much sense for creating game design tools.


12++

Houdini is the best, the reason Maya owns is because a lot of ‘Artists’ use it for artist like things: Hand animation etc, Houdini is fantastic and if the industry was made up of technical/artistic kinds than it would be the be all and end all. As SESI make Houdini both easier whilst maintaining the raw power I think it will grow, the proof this kind of thing can be done? Well look at developing for iPhone or Mac, can be incredibly easy for a lot of things, yet also incredibly low level and complicated, SESI will achieve this with Houdini I hope. Simple for stuff like rigging characters and Texturing, yet low level for custom effects and procedural modelling tools. Of course the rigging and texturing will be based of the low level stuff so one can control it very much so.

the ‘best tool’ isn't something that can be said about any of the applications used for animation/VFX…
most studios chose an application for a variety of reasons - price, available artists, compatibility with current tools/pipeline, the person who make the choice might already know the app etc etc etc…the actual feature set is often pretty low on the list.

certainly not an objective viewpoint. but as sidefx continues to innovate in rendering, mantra's performance continues to improve, and the price point of mantra/hescape remains so reasonable, i foresee houdini commanding a steadily increasing amount of the market share in lighting/rendering in the future.

at least i hope so anyway… 8)

Some people like oranges, others like apples…

All of the major packages are more or less of equal capability, it's just a question of how difficult it is to get to the end result you want.

IMO Houdini is simply the most flexible, transparent and non ‘black box’ of the major packages, thus making it the best choice for creating anything specifically bespoke, which inevitably all film vfx ends up being due to the relentless client requests for very specific changes and tweaks.

Most things in Houdini are like the ‘bottom up’ approach in programming, you get less for free than a lot of other packages because Houdini gives you easier access to the lower-level building blocks of creating computer graphics. For example something like Fume FX produces great results, but is infinitely less bespoke than a dops sim created from scratch out of microsolvers.

Also, what you want to do in VFX should take a big role in what package you choose to specialise in. In film, Houdini is generally only used specifically by the FX department, with all other 3D departments (with some exceptions of course) usually being dominated by Maya.

All of the major packages are more or less of equal capability, it's just a question of how difficult it is to get to the end result you want.

IMO Houdini is simply the most flexible, transparent and non ‘black box’ of the major packages, thus making it the best choice for creating anything specifically bespoke, which inevitably all film vfx ends up being due to the relentless client requests for very specific changes and tweaks.

Most things in Houdini are like the ‘bottom up’ approach in programming, you get less for free than a lot of other packages because Houdini gives you easier access to the lower-level building blocks of creating computer graphics. For example something like Fume FX produces great results, but is infinitely less bespoke than a dops sim created from scratch out of microsolvers.

Also, what you want to do in VFX should take a big role in what package you choose to specialise in. In film, Houdini is generally only used specifically by the FX department, with all other 3D departments (with some exceptions of course) usually being dominated by Maya.

coming from Maya/XSi background I can tell you the following: Houdini its in its own league. I always say that you can compare max/maya/xsi as they are different versions of the same thing. Houdini, on the other hand, I perceive more as “3d compositing” or a “data processor”. yes, you can do Maya like things in Houdini, but is not what it is strong for. Its true strength lies in its ability to process data in an arbitrary fashion and produce any output

I have been somewhat successful at getting Houdini adoption at my work, when I DO NOT compare it to Maya or Max I always say that Houdini is to Maya, like Fusion is to Photoshop (and that immediately gets nods of understanding from artists!)

My biggest challenge actually has been technical people who do NOT know Houdini. They have come to rely so much on their programming and scripting skills that they see visual programming as a limitation without really getting a good feel for it. But at that point is not an argument of software, but of philosophy.

Any who, I will tell you though, that if you are setting up a pipeline (which the main purpose generally is to process data), you would be crazy of using anything OTHER than Houdini

I don't see the point here. Houdini is a leader. But from a choices have been made other the years by SESI, one can clearly read that it never meant to be the most popular leader. Just a leader.

You forgot to mention Softimage. Much better than Maya and 3ds in my opinion . but of course , not like that much power that only Houdini holds!

I can animate characters in softimage , thing i think i would never would be able to do in houdini.

But in general, houdini excedees all!

I will have to disagree with you, I would say Houdini is an incomplete software than Maya, I am converting to Houdini by the way but thats because I am an FX TD.

I personally beleive Maya is a more complete package than Houdini.
Much better modelling and rigging.
Houdini cloth is a lot slower compared to Ncloth
Maya does not need any plugins to make CG, you have your fluids, you have your bullet solver, cloth solver.

Like I said, I am an FX TD , Houdini Volumetrics, mantra, rigid bodies are amazing compared to Maya rigid bodies or Mental Delay, so i decided to switch to Houdini, But some studios cannot afford every software.

If I had small studio and if i had limited money, I would go for an autodesk suite. I f i was a studio with money I would go with H12 and Zbrush

Coming from Maya\C4D background, I'd say that maya isn't incomplete at all. C4D on the other hand is, if you want to do everything in 1 program, It lacks fluids, but tbh I like C4D for my 3D general software, and I'm trying to learn Houdini for more fluids\FX. I plan to always keep my C4D for 3D general work, and Houdini for FX, as modeling in C4D is much quicker imo than Houdini.

i dear you to change one icon in the photoshop pallete!!!!… just one….
and you will see billions of artist that will complain, some of them they will even sweat that the tool behave diferent because of that. and thats just 1 icon,

go ahead and tell the rest of the world that you are not just changing 1 icon, you are switching all the package they use….!!! MAYHEM!!! will happen, people will start breaking monitors, like in a jungle….

I've been Houdini since it was prisms action 1.0 - it has it's short-comings, I'm constantly finding bevels and cookie problems, which should be pretty basic by now, and although there is a plethora of new SOPs, unless you know how to string them together… but I remember the days when Greg Hermanovic would come and install a new version and be writing code at my desk to make sure it did what we needed. You don't get many CEO's doing that.

What's made other 3d software vendors leaders is not the quality of the software but the clever way they have marketed the product, at institutions of higher learning, ie. AutoDesk University etc. I think Side Effects Software has finally realized that in order to get future sales you have to give something back, that makes it easy for someone to even start to take the time to learn something new, and at very little cost. Having said that Houdini is anything but intuitive, regardless of how many excellent tutorials, I watch.

So many people use other software,especially like 3ds max and maya,really widely used in CG industry.Maybe just because of their long history,or publicity?

Personally i find applications that have an almost equal balance of both artistic and technical backgrounds are the most successful in securing the largest possible userbase. Modo for example has a strong artistic side with a technical backup where as Houdini has a strong technical side with an artistic sidekick.

With users of Maya you can be an artistic user or a technical one, this is the type of goal i think it would be good for SESI to achieve without compromising what they have achieved so far.

I feel that if Houdini would improve such things like its UI customization (by that i am talking about custom UI's for rigs like persistent sliders in the current version of Houdini but better) and its animation tools we would would see an even wider adoption to compliment its other artistic tools.

To me it is also that houdini is a different type of product as maya and 3ds max. I feel you can be very sucessful using both. Houdini biggest problem from what I have seen at my work is that people Di perceive it as another Maya. However, once people understood what it was for, they came to love it for what it was: a means to process dataregardless of where it came from (and in a much less expensive way than other packages)

if I would recommend anything to sidefx, it would be to get their software in schools similar to how it has been done in NATV, to educate people about what it is really about and the mindset behind procedural content creation. we have been looking a lot at their students because of how they leverage both Houdini and Maya and Unreal very successfully

tricecold
I personally beleive Maya is a more complete package than Houdini.
Much better modelling and rigging.
Houdini cloth is a lot slower compared to Ncloth
Maya does not need any plugins to make CG, you have your fluids, you have your bullet solver, cloth solver.

Like I said, I am an FX TD , Houdini Volumetrics, mantra, rigid bodies are amazing compared to Maya rigid bodies or Mental Delay, so i decided to switch to Houdini, But some studios cannot afford every software.

If I had small studio and if i had limited money, I would go for an autodesk suite. I f i was a studio with money I would go with H12 and Zbrush

I strongly disagree (and I used Maya since 1.0, and heavily.)

You might need a modeling app alongside Houdini, that's true. Other than that, Houdini is several orders of magnitude more reliable than Maya (apart from its other strengths). Even for doing short commercials.

Maya became so unreliable that it's a constant pain to work with. I did a lot of character rigging in Maya (and other technical stuff, too – MEL/API, pipeline tools, etc), and for me it's an incoherent mess. (They can't even get geometry caching right for years now.) You need lots of “housekeeping” scripts to compensate the various shortcomings of the software.

Even if you don't use Houdini to its procedural limits, there's digital assets which are quite powerful, you can set up render passes properly, etc. It saves you a lot of time. (Even the old H11 viewport beats Maya's viewport implementations, even the newer ones I daresay )

This is all personal opinion, of course, but there's definitely a big difference in software quality.

Houdini is more expensive, but it's money well spent, IMHO. It is an application you can actually rely on. (And I didn't even mention daily builds, the excellent support, etc.)