Hello, this is my first post on the SideFX forum as I take my first steps into Houdini


I have recently started an Animation and VFX program at a game development school, and it has been apparent that most of our lectures and work will be taught in Maya. I have my heart set on learning Houdini, though, as I want to start my own game studio afterwards, and it's just obvious to me that Houdini is the most versatile DCC on offer. Our school has been given educational Houdini licenses also.

All of my DCC experience has been in Blender thus far, but I'm fairly sure Maya will be no problem to pick up for modelling and things. However, I just have a concern that for group animation projects, my KineFX rigs won't be really usable to give to my classmates' animation work in Maya even if I were to put them into a HDA.

Does anybody have any insight into how much I should invest into KineFX and animation in Houdini as opposed to Maya?

Unfortunately there is no interchange format that will bring over a rig completely intact. You can use FBX, but that will only bring over the bones, skinning data and some rudimentary controls/constraints. The effectiveness of this completely depends on how complicated your rigs are. So unfortunately my recommendation would be to build the rigs in whichever application the animators will be utilizing.