Hi all,

As a long time Max user for which there is a good range of books, bible dynamic guides etc. Maybe I'm wrong but the range of books for Houdini appears to be limited, is there a reason for this? and maybe ‘We the Community’ could put together a free ebook or something?

Well, there is The Magic of Houdini and Houdini on the Spot. Both of which are still useful, though the Magic book has sections that are somewhat obsolete (UI stuff in particular) but POPs, a lot of SOPs, CHOPs are all still the same. On the Spot has lots of tips that are still relevant as well.

Full disclosure: I participated in both

Andrew Lowell did a great e-book that he self-published that is also still very relevant. Google: Andrew Lowell houdini

To answer your question on why there aren't more books, that's easy: It's incredibly time consuming to do a book, and financially makes no sense. We're all super busy with work and/or families. Will Cunningham (author of Magic of Houdini) and I have talked about updating the book, and the publisher wants us to do it, but we both have kids and work. I'd love to do it, but I can't take 2 months off without pay from my workplace

Cheer,s

Peter B

Thanks Peter,

I'm now going to check out the link, I have the Magic of Houdini book, so thanks for the hard work ;-)

Do you think then is it easier and better value both for the maker and the buyer to make video tutorials now and upload them to Vimeo/youTube etc. ?

If you don't mind me asking what work are you doing at the moment is it Houdini related?

I do video tutorials too (cg-masters.com) but even that I find hard to find the time. Nick, the owner of cg-masters.com does the editing for me so that helps a lot, and I love to do them it's just all about the time However, much easier to find the time for videos than a book!!

I'm currently at Rhythm and Hues Vancouver, as a FX Development Supervisor. Though at the moment doing shot work

Cheers,

Peter B

Oh that's so cool I've just finished the procedural lightning field tutorial.

I've spent 4 years in the games industry and I'm now looking at moving into the film/tv vfx area, which is why I'm learning Houdini (normally a 3DS Max user)

Cool, glad to hear they're useful

Hey,

Is this book still relevant for CHOPs or is it outdated?
Please let me know..

Regards,
Mika

Yeah CHOPs hasn't changed much. Andrew has a deeper look at CHOPs here, too:

http://www.andrew-lowell-productions.com/andrew-lowell-productions/resources.html [andrew-lowell-productions.com]

Highly recommend that!

Hope this is useful.. it is free by the way.

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2711&Itemid=166 [sidefx.com]

Hello,
Any chance of still getting the Andrew Lowell book from somewhere? The site seems to be down.

Sometimes the pacing in video tutorials can be either way too fast or slow depending on what's going on.
These are really good if you prefer to an ebook to videos, the one with exercises is a good structure for learning instead of just following along with a tutorial: https://gumroad.com/jhorikawa [gumroad.com]

is there any update for free books please share the link if you guys have a free ebook.