sr

Hi there. Another architect/designer here…

I also want to say that the support for exploratory design is much more interesting, important and promising than visualizations for the architectural usage. This is going to be a very big area of growth with sustainable design requiring adjustable/adoptable buildings. I do not care for the physical lighting rendering (there are adequate existing tools for this) but would like to see better translation tools to move data between Houdini and CAD applications, better geometric precision and more drafting tools as mentioned before. Even more importantly, I would appreciate some attention from the developers to this area because I am sure interesting ideas could emerge that do not come to my mind. Actually, easy to use material presets would make a big difference for the students come to think of it…

I do use (and teach) Rhino/Grashopper, GC and Digital Project/CATIA (obviously useful precedents to have a look at maybe) but find that packages like MAX/Maya/Houdini are faster and more flexible for design development. Procedural approach in Houdini coupled with the nodal approach is very attractive in this regard. Of the similar ilk I also use/teach Fusion, MAX/MSP, Virtools. In our university there is lots of interest and hundreds of students. So there could be considerable uptake, especially with Houdini Apprentice available. I am hoping this thread might spur SideFX to consider adding some tools and developing some new ideas to make architectural utilizations easier (of course there is no need to make this into a CAD beast). If anything, the film world (whose architecture – even when supposedly futuristic - is pretty unimaginative by the way) would only benefit…

My next effort will look at what can be done with the procedural generation of geometry and simulations of usage/reconfiguration using Houdini and Python. Am yet to explore this side to the full…