CGTalk - Houdini 10 Sneak Peek!

Cheesestraws

03-13-2009, 07:39 PM

Looks like there are some nice new features, the cloth solver definitely needed an update. I don't know enough about Houdini's previous volume shader to tell how this current one is an improvement but I am sure it is a good update.

Videos of how the cloth solver interacts with the other solvers in Houdini would be nice.

I am still not entirely convinced by wavelet turbulence though, I think it is something that will probably need to be used sparingly.

Good job Side Effects.

Mic_Ma

03-14-2009, 12:41 AM

Fantastic, amazing as always. I'm sure it renders those volume effects fast as hell as well. Now if stability issues can be addressed too, I am a happy chappy!

SoLiTuDe

03-14-2009, 01:53 AM

How about speed? I saw you guys mention multithreading in there... are the fluids multithreaded now? ...if not, do you plan on it? :D

mr Bob

03-14-2009, 02:22 AM

Now if stability issues can be addressed too what issues are these ?

JohnnyRandom

03-14-2009, 04:12 AM

Wow! That some sexy sh*t going on there :D

I am curious about the speed too.

Robert Magee

03-14-2009, 04:59 AM

The fluids are multi-threaded and work really well on 64-bit machines. The up-resing technique shown in one of the examples speeds up the development of an effect by letting you break down the sim into a lower res sim that can be used to plan out the effect then an up-resed one that piggy-backs on the low-res and is therefore much faster than if you tried to do a full sim at the same resolution.

Houdini 10 also has some other interesting tricks for speeding up fluids sims that we will be discussing publically later. In general making things faster is a big priority while making sure there is enough detail in the results to handle a wide range of smoke and fire situations.

Robert

PS - fluids do require some horsepower in your computer and systems with 2GB RAM running 32-bit will not be able to achieve great things and memory limits will get hit. System specs for working successfully with the fluids will be posted when we go gold.

Bucket

03-14-2009, 05:45 AM

Looking good as usual. Just having trouble finding the money to take the plunge. But my interest in houdini has grown considerably since the unfortunate purchase of Softimage.

Keep up the good work.

CgKumar

03-14-2009, 07:18 AM

Is that the curl nosie implementation there, if so cool,, a nice addition i would say. Besides the dynamics upgrades what else have you got under your sleeve... ??? I wonder.

Magnus3D

03-14-2009, 07:46 AM

Impressive looking update! i just hope the program itself is a bit easier to use now as i'm not a rocketscientist. And i would also like to eventually integrate Houdini into my workflow. Heard so much great things about it.

The cutting and the crumple examples are sweet as sugar, and ofcourse also the smoke stuff :)

/ Magnus

boomji

03-14-2009, 09:06 AM

i just hope the program itself is a bit easier to use now as i'm not a rocketscientist.

No problem with that.They have a bunch of those types on their support.
...Just in case you might need them. :scream:

Dive in.You know you want to ;)

b

Robert Magee

03-14-2009, 09:22 AM

i just hope the program itself is a bit easier to use now as i'm not a rocketscientist.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to use Houdini but you may actually become one once you start using it ;-)

Magnus3D

03-14-2009, 09:29 AM

Hehe, that might actually be a nice new careerchange from working with 3d :D well version 10 looks like it been keeping those rocketscientists at Side-Effects pretty busy. I wanna see what more goodies this has to offer and if i need to upgrade my brain to be able to start it up. But i'm definately interested! :)

/ Magnus

SYmek

03-14-2009, 10:42 AM

Besides the dynamics upgrades what else have you got under your sleeve... ??? I wonder.

Don't let SESI make you fools with these sneak peek. This is just the tip of the iceberg ;)

Kanga

03-14-2009, 02:22 PM

Looking good as usual. Just having trouble finding the money to take the plunge. But my interest in houdini has grown considerably since the unfortunate purchase of Softimage.

Keep up the good work.
Taking a plunge would be about the worst thing you could do. Have you tried apprentice? That will give you a chance to get up to speed before you try producing with Houdini. It's free! :)

hanskloss

03-14-2009, 06:03 PM

I'm not a Houdini user, but the new features REALLY do look impressive! Great job guys!!

frogspasm

03-14-2009, 08:21 PM

Taking a plunge would be about the worst thing you could do. Have you tried apprentice? That will give you a chance to get up to speed before you try producing with Houdini. It's free! :)

And don't forget the $100 Apprentice HD version (with no watermark) for non-commercial work!

Kanga

03-15-2009, 01:09 AM

And don't forget the $100 Apprentice HD version (with no watermark) for non-commercial work!
Hmmm I didn't know that. 100 buckos for no watermarks is not what I would exactly call a plunge. BTW I tried apprentice and was very impressed.

Mic_Ma

03-15-2009, 01:27 AM

what issues are these ?

Personally I find the 9.5 version completely unusable on my new setup. It freezes and has display issues left right and center on linux as well as XP. Browsing around their forum indicates that there's a bunch of people having the same probs. I love Houdini and rate it higher than any other 3d app but for the moment it's on the shelf.

Rhs_CG

03-15-2009, 07:05 AM

Since this is the second release since the Apprentice HD program began, are upgrades buying a completely new, $99 license, or will there be a lower price to upgrade?

BTW, the release looks awesome!

mr Bob

03-15-2009, 07:15 AM

digitallysane

03-15-2009, 08:15 AM

I use it on various Windows and Linuxes (64 bit mostly but some Win are 32 bit) and is very stable. Simulations or complex rendering can give you trouble on 32 bit Windows, it's true.
There have been some people complaining recently, and if you read the threads you'll see that the problems are mostly connected to the 180.XX drivers from nVidia, which are giving lots of problems to lots of people, not only Houdini users.

Dragos

fomal

03-15-2009, 06:26 PM

Hi There,

I've been working on the new fluid tools and at the moment they support curl, wavelet and constant noise regarding the up res sim. Next to that the set up has been simplified to create a better workflow and let you set up sims fast. The shader that comes with it is completely modular and let's you map whatever field to whatever input. It will support a lot of extra noise functions as well. But more on that later :)

It will also be possible to mix the output of various sims together. For example, smoke from the one, fire from the other. And paste that into your shader. Very convenient.

Regarding the learning curve of houdini, I used to be a maya user but can't live without Houdini any more. It does take some getting used to, but that's the same with learning any new package (don't put me infront of 3ds max for example) The procedural method might be confusing but is actually very user friendly and let's you trace your steps efficiently. Makes it more readable. So giving the apprentice a shot is time woth investing. Just to see if you like the workflow and possibiliets that come with it.

Anyway, looking forward to this release and what people are going to make of it!

Kanga

03-15-2009, 09:02 PM

,..The procedural method might be confusing but is actually very user friendly and let's you trace your steps efficiently. Makes it more readable. ....
The first thing that struck me,... a production line dream come true :)

FreakWizz

03-15-2009, 09:31 PM

Personally I find the 9.5 version completely unusable on my new setup. It freezes and has display issues left right and center on linux as well as XP. Browsing around their forum indicates that there's a bunch of people having the same probs. I love Houdini and rate it higher than any other 3d app but for the moment it's on the shelf.

So you have issues with Linux/Houdini that you have not submitted as a problem, but you expect them to work out the issues for you?

Sorry, but SESI are excellent with support, as mentioned on the preview page, not many other developers are good enough to have daily builds (outside of opensource) SESI listen to customers with bugs and often get them fixed in a daily build very quickly.

I have posted issues on the SESI forums, had developers reply send me personal messages, and upload a fixed daily build on the very same day as i reported the issue. If there are real issues, one should solve them rather than pretend it's SESI's fault for your own shortcomings.

I only wish other companies were so proactive and they all offered such features and support....

Mic_Ma

03-16-2009, 01:46 AM

So you have issues with Linux/Houdini that you have not submitted as a problem, but you expect them to work out the issues for you?

Look, I have posted them on the forums, and they have been recognized, and some of them were solved, and yes, their support is miles above Autodesk. But the fact is that some serious issues do remain and yes, I DO expect them to be solved by developers, and I am not part of their QA team. That's their job just as it's our job to make fun and stable games (we don't use Houdini though, that's just -still- a private thing ). Bugless software is impossible, I know that very well, and if I am the only one having probs with Houdini, then that's fine. In that case they can (and should) dismiss my experience.

Robert Magee

03-16-2009, 03:12 AM

Look, I have posted them on the forums, and they have been recognized, and some of them were solved, and yes, their support is miles above Autodesk. But the fact is that some serious issues do remain

Can you please send me a PM with a link to the posts which have not been addressed yet? I will check to see if this was something that we had to wait for H10 for and maybe there is a fix for you in the new release. While we generally put bug fixes into daily builds sometimes a fix is too risky and we save it for the next release so that it can be more rigorously tested during alpha/beta.

Robert

fomal

03-16-2009, 03:36 AM

The first thing that struck me,... a production line dream come true :)

absolutely :)

3DThies

03-16-2009, 08:53 AM

Hi there,

in the past i never touched houdini because of it's very known "technical" nature. In other major 3D applications things where more artist friendly.

So than i started with houdini 9.5 and was very impressed of the logical structure even with the procidural way of modeling. But the most difficult thing for me is the shading language.

As I saw for the first time the nodes for the glas material I was very affraid. It seems very complicated even if you take a material as a starting point and want to tweak something in the node structure. As an artist standpoint, this is quit overwhelming and 1000 times easier in other 3d packages.

But I look forward to the 10 release :-)

boomji

03-16-2009, 11:16 AM

unchikun

03-16-2009, 03:46 PM

multi
threading
multi
threading
multi
threading
multi
threading

dops, pops everything! We needed it yesterday.

Robert Magee

03-16-2009, 07:06 PM

VOPS, Mantra, Compositing, Wire Dynamics, Fluid dynamics and various low-level math functions are multi-threaded already - we are currently working on architecture changes that will let us expand this to the rest of Houdini. This work is extensive and will be in a future release.

Robert

DaJuice

03-16-2009, 08:25 PM

As I saw for the first time the nodes for the glas material I was very affraid. It seems very complicated even if you take a material as a starting point and want to tweak something in the node structure. As an artist standpoint, this is quit overwhelming and 1000 times easier in other 3d packages.

But I look forward to the 10 release :-)

Yeah, it can look bewildering but keep in mind, the vast majority of those nodes are for the extra "fluff" of a general purpose shader, and the core functionality can be replicated with very few nodes. It doesn't take hundreds of nodes to have a working shader. :)

frogspasm

03-16-2009, 09:23 PM

I love Houdini, but training for shaders and materials seems to be a weak link. You almost have to become a shader writer to be able to use Houdini effectively, and the training materials just aren't there for it. There are two VEX training video's on cmiVFX, but neither cover shaders. People say to learn RSL because it's very similar, but I don't use Renderman, so there's less incentive for me to learn it.

I really hope there is some more in depth VEX shader training in the works!

(And thanks to Side Effects for continuing to be awesome!)

Cheesestraws

03-16-2009, 09:43 PM

Lone Deranger

03-16-2009, 10:26 PM

Mic_Ma

03-17-2009, 01:35 AM

When I was starting to learn Houdini and going through the tutorials available on the sidefx website I could not help but notice how many of them seem to be all about transferring colours between points. I do think a wider range of freely available tutorials would be a positive thing.

Color is just an example of an attribute. Colors are (of course) easy to visualize and they have 3 components (RGB) so they make very good didactic material. The principles can easily be transferred to a wider range of other problems that may be more abstract in nature.

Cheesestraws

03-17-2009, 08:08 AM

Color is just an example of an attribute. Colors are (of course) easy to visualize and they have 3 components (RGB) so they make very good didactic material. The principles can easily be transferred to a wider range of other problems that may be more abstract in nature.

That is part of the problem, I understood that and yet they did not ever really expand on it. They also spent the same amount of time explaining the attribtransfer yet none of the examples really built upon it. One example they group the points on the surface by the transfer and emit from them, another they just transfer and do nothing with it, a third time they assign random colours and then replace it with a ramp. It is just that they spend so ong in the build up and then only show one thing new, they could have condensed the three tutorials into one, emitting particles from collisions based on colour intensities on the ramps would have been much more interesting.

Don't get me wrong there are some good tutorials there, just some of them seem to spend half their time repeating information. Perhaps I just wanted tutorials above connecting a couple of the simple nodes together and below creating your own fluid/gas solver.

constantine1

03-17-2009, 04:37 PM

Houdini is becoming more and more interesting with every release. AutoDesk's latest antics with the SoftImage 7.5 release has me seriously considering switching.
Houdini's entry price is great and it even has an OSX version.
Speaking of which, how is the OSX port regarded? Is it a good solid/stable so far?

actually the entry price sucks (for the commercial versions). Escape is just that.. and escape from what Houdini really has to offer. The meaty Houdini is still $8k. That's where Houdini really shines, but it still out of reach from a lot of professionals and studios who can't afford such a price.

What they need to do is drop the pricing below Maya Unlimited, Softimage and Max and start a price war. Bring Houdini to the masses (who use it commercially). v10 will be great but how many more customers will it pull in if it's still priced at $8k? In this day and age there's no real reason to keep the pricing that high. Just a thought, SESI.

digitallysane

03-17-2009, 05:32 PM

Escape is excellent and offers very good features for its price (VEX/VOPs, unlimited Mantra rendering, CHOPs, integrated compositing). None of those are found in a competing software at that price level.
You get what you pay for. Of course I'd like everything to be cheap, but high-end development requires money. Good support requires money. You don't get anywhere the level of support offered by SESI. At Maya prices, you get Autodesk support. I'd rather not.
Not only that, but you get *more* even as "quantity" for the higher price: unlimited render licenses (for a very good rendering), fluids, compositing.
I find hilarious sometimes the level of "higher-knowledge" in these forums. Everybody seems to be knowing "what xxxx company needs to do in order to be succesful". Supposedly all these gurus have an intimate knowledge of what software development at that level means as a business. I'm sure the secret lies right here but SESI are dumb enough not to see it.
As far as I know, this kind of price war was practiced at some moment by some companies. They are mostly defunct or dying.

Dragos

constantine1

03-17-2009, 05:43 PM

I find hilarious sometimes the level of "higher-knowledge" in these forums. Everybody seems to be knowing "what xxxx company needs to do in order to be succesful". Supposedly all these gurus have an intimate knowledge of what software development at that level means as a business.

Dragos

Yes.. I'm sure your condescending passive agressive self tries not to look in the mirror too often or else you'd choke on your own words. It's an opinion in which I disagree with yours.. no need to be an ass about it. Don't assume you know what's right for a company or their software either, as you tried to tell me what not to do in a passive aggressive tone. And don't assume you know what other people are using in their pipeline, for example compositing.

spurcell

03-17-2009, 06:06 PM

actually the entry price sucks (for the commercial versions). Escape is just that.. and escape from what Houdini really has to offer. The meaty Houdini is still $8k. That's where Houdini really shines, but it still out of reach from a lot of professionals and studios who can't afford such a price.

What they need to do is drop the pricing below Maya Unlimited, Softimage and Max and start a price war. Bring Houdini to the masses (who use it commercially). v10 will be great but how many more customers will it pull in if it's still priced at $8k? In this day and age there's no real reason to keep the pricing that high. Just a thought, SESI.

Price war? You do know they're all owned by the same company now right?

mr Bob

03-17-2009, 07:09 PM

actually the entry price sucks (for the commercial versions). Escape is just that.. and escape from what Houdini really has to offer. The meaty Houdini is still $8k. That's where Houdini really shines, but it still out of reach from a lot of professionals and studios who can't afford such a price.

What they need to do is drop the pricing below Maya Unlimited, Softimage and Max and start a price war. Bring Houdini to the masses (who use it commercially). v10 will be great but how many more customers will it pull in if it's still priced at $8k? In this day and age there's no real reason to keep the pricing that high. Just a thought, SESI.

I really do think your missing the point , for 8k plus. I get amazing support.In production I find a show stopping bug , it gets fixed !.In fact new builds are released every day with fixes. Do you get that with any other 3d product ? .
Sure Houdini is expensive how else do you expect to pay the top talent to keep developing so Autodesk can keep following.

fomal

03-17-2009, 07:49 PM

Don't get me wrong there are some good tutorials there, just some of them seem to spend half their time repeating information. Perhaps I just wanted tutorials above connecting a couple of the simple nodes together and below creating your own fluid/gas solver.

There is masterclass material that shows you how to build a basic fluid solver from the ground up. (http://www.sidefx.com/masterclasses/2007/advfluid07.tar.gz) It's available in slides and if you're willing to invest time, doable. But understanding Houdini comes largely with understanding it's general data flow. And this does involve the creation / manipulation of attributes. Flowing through all it's different layers (although DOPS get processed in a slightly different way).

Next to that, there is great amount of training material out there, ranging from fundamentals (procedural modeling, basic pops / dops, animation, rigging) to more advanced topics (python integration, custom tool building, low level fluids etc, advanced rigging, vex). All of this next to the training material on the SESI site.

Also, the help cards and examples help a lot when trying to understand a certain node. I agree that this isn't really available for all the microsolvers in DOPS but that's a list of more than a 100 nodes doing basic to really advanced operations. In that case, looking into the already existing solvers helps a lot :)

Mic_Ma

03-18-2009, 01:04 AM

I do think the price-tag keeps small shops away. But perhaps the high cost combined with the small customer base/dev-team is the very thing that keeps them nimble and cutting edge. I'm sure the Autodesk developers are every bit as good as those of SESI but they have to deal with zillions of complaints/wishes/demands from users/marketeers/accountants/shareholders.

The daily builds are genius by the way. Every software should be offered like that.