Houdini 6 Shipping

[BrandonD]

Ah yes, and a good day it is for particle/procedural folks ;)

[MCronin]

Good day for animators period. Houdini 6 has some purtty character tools in it. Apprtentice is free. Everyone take it out for a spin.

There's a huge contest going on with huge prizes. Plenty of time to get entries in still. Please enter so the guys and gals at Digital Domain don't sweep it. They are already cocky enough :p

http://www.sidefx.com/products/apprentice/challenge/index.html

[Emrys]

I don't know what you're talking about. The people at Digital Domain are the sweetest people you could ever hope to meet. ;).... hehe..

[xzevlin]

Those are just about the most valuable prizes you can win in an animation contest. :surprised

My fear with really getting into Houdini is that I'll get so used to its workflow that I'll only want to use it, but the pricetag is so incredibly high that there's very little way I'd be able to afford Master. I wish they'd list how much Escape is going to be. I'm assuming it'll be somewhere in between Halo's price and Master's, but that's a pretty big gap.

[MCronin]

Would only wanting to use Houdini be so bad?:p

It's a great piece of software, Apprentice is fantastic. If you give it a chance you probably will get over the 640x480 limitation real quickly for personal work. Win the contest you don't have to worry about how much it costs :p

Get good with it, take a job somewhere that you can use Houdini full time and all your problems are solved.

Even though the deadline is approaching, everyone who picks up Apprentice today can easily learn it well enough to at least get something done for the modeling category. If you are in just one of the categories, you have a shot at the big prize. A full on graphics workstation from HP and ATI worth about 2500 USD plus a node locked license of Houdini Master worth 17,000 USD. It's too sweet to pass up.

Go get Apprentice and get cracking.

[ThirdEye]

Time to give Houdini a try :arteest:

[schmu_20mol]

dling now ;9...time to try

[schmu_20mol]

from time to time i can't get loose of the feeling that when you have used lightwave for some time that it's really hard to get into other 3d apps easily....hell yeah.... i must admit i get somehow lost in the architecture/interface of houdini ;) ....but looks like some interesting soft if you know it better

[MCronin]

If you need help learning the software check the videos here:

http://www.vislab.usyd.edu.au/sidefx/houdini_video/index.html

Be sure to click through the category links on the left as there a whole ton of videos for each category, also note the little V6 Early access link on the top right. It has a bunch of videos especially for version 6. Go with the Divx videos, as some people have problems playing some of the Real videos,

Also www.3dbuzz.com has some Houdini training videos, VTM 1 which has 8 video lessons I think, is a really good primer for Houdini., there's also a head modeling video on there, a vtm about rigging, and a few videos that cover some of 6's new features. There's also a free online class at 3Dbuzz going if you'd like to join.

If you have questions:

www.odforce.net
http://www.sidefx.com/forum/
www.3dbuzz.com

all have active forums populated with friendly, smart people. Stick with it though, It takes some time to get aclimated to Houdini no matter what software you're coming from. Try to go through all the videos or at least a good chunk of them before deciding whether it's for you. I know that just after going through the Object States videos I was still thoroughly confused and felt like giving it up, but eventually it all becomes clear and you may really like Houdini once you are comfortable with it.

[wgreenlee1]

Where can you go o see the best of Houdini...you know gallerys and stuff?

[schmu_20mol]

thx MCronin......i'll check them out...i'm just havin' a look at other apps these days...btw i can't remind havin seen much done with houdini (not in terms of quality - i thought in terms of quantity)....is it actually used somewhere?

[MCronin]

Unfortunately, there's not much in the way of work done in Houdini floating around the net. Until last year, Houdini was pretty much unobtainable by hobbyist users and only really used in professional production. Sidefx's showreel is available via that link to Vislab posted above. Notable things you may have seen produced with Houdini:

The Time Machine. According to Jason from DD, the vast majority of the effects were done in Houdini, and 96 percent of what you see was rendered in Houdini's renderer Mantra.

X-2, a very large chunk of the effects work was completed including final composites, right in Houdini. NightCrawler's teleport effect, Storm's weather effects, etc.

The Water Horse's in Fellowship of the Ring, where the Ring Wraiths are drowned at the River.

Entire cities were built for Spiderman in Houdini

The Matrix, the liquid mirror, I think, and the Bug that gets implanted in Neo were done in Houdini.

Houdini is in use at alot of companies, Square, Namco, EA, WETA, Sony Pictures, Traveling Pictures, Digital Domain, Framestore, Rhythm and Hues, Core, Jim Henson's Creature Shop... mainly as an effects tool, but the character tools are great.

[schmu_20mol]

hush...nice one....tough i'm still confused how to get some fast workflow in this one....all about playing some with this nicey

[MCronin]

For you guys in the UK, you can double your chances of winning something. Techimage is sponsoring their own contest in conjunction with the Apprentice Challenge.

http://www.techimage.co.uk/tc/news/houdini_challenge.html

Here's Side FX's showreel from last year.

http://www.ip-dot-uk.com/apprentice/pages/demo_reel/index.html

[ThirdEye]

Originally posted by MCronin

Here's Side FX's showreel from last year.

http://www.ip-dot-uk.com/apprentice/pages/demo_reel/index.html

The mov version doesn't work :hmm:

[schmu_20mol]

yeah ...mov doesn't work ...and real player :banghead: ...beside that it's coming down with 3 kb/s at dsl (for a 13+mb file).....argghh :banghead:

[MCronin]

Try this one. It's Quicktime, and the server should be quicker

http://www.vislab.usyd.edu.au/sidefx/cd2_5.5.230/pages/demo_reel/movies/HOUDINIreelsmall.mov

[schmu_20mol]

yep this one is coming smoothly...thx again!:beer:

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