Hello everyone,

For the past couple of years I've been using Maya for my projects (I don't do this commercially per say), however I have been working on some videos of my own that I may wish to make some money from, therefore need to abide by the correct licensing. The cost of a Maya subscription I'm finding hard to justify, and so I was doing some research into alternatives when I came across Houdini. From everything I have gathered it seems quite powerful, but I was wondering if anyone here has either made a switch away from Maya to Houdini, or integrated Houdini more into their workflow?

I am wanting to integrate my 3D work into live action footage, rather than create strictly animated works, and I have also been looking into Blender as well but I'm not sure if I should be using both programs, or just Houdini. For example I have a tank all modeled and rigged in Maya, and I know the workflow well enough to animate and render it to composite it in After Effects, and I am trying to find out how to achieve the same thing with Blender and/or Houdini. I am guessing I will need to re-rig my model and so forth so I'm happy to new programs and methods, I'm just trying to gather as much information as I can before I start buying new licenses and modifying my work flow.

Thank you in advance.

Hi Doug91 welcome to Houdini's world .
A lot of people here know Maya and other application.
To be honest Houdini is wonderful and very powerful but ever software have strength and weakness.
Before you take your decisions try to use Houdini Apprentice get more Knowledge and of course about Houdini's procedural think.
Maybe this video can help you to start:

About you thinking to use Blender and Houdini is a good choice, but both software can have their on method to do the things right.
Blender community is very friendly and here perhaps with a more direction question you will have a lot of help too ;-)
Start with Houdini's beginners tutorials and have a happy day ;-)
(sorry my terrible English)

Thank you Harry, and thank you for the video as well that was a good explanation of Houdini and clears a few things up for me. I wish I had have started with procedural modelling years ago, but no matter I'll get there.

It's always a good time to start learning houdini!


12++

I came from Cinema 4D and have never looked back. Of course, there are things that might be easier in Cinema, but you lose a lot of flexibility and with the procedural workflow, I often times find Houdini much faster to accomplish something, plus, I can change my mind (or my client can change their minds) and I can quickly make adjustments to models without having to reinvent something.

Love Houdini!

I also use Maya and 3ds for my projects but wanna learn Houdini (more professional)
Will glad to hear some information for newbies

reelinspirations
I came from Cinema 4D and have never looked back. Of course, there are things that might be easier in Cinema, but you lose a lot of flexibility and with the procedural workflow, I often times find Houdini much faster to accomplish something, plus, I can change my mind (or my client can change their minds) and I can quickly make adjustments to models without having to reinvent something.

Love Houdini!

Do you do a lot of modelling in Houdini, or do you work more on simulations and the like?