Hi, I have been trying to figure out what exactly makes the $100 Houdini Apprentice HD different from the $4500 full featured HoudiniFX package? On the website is says that Houdini Apprentice HD has everything HoudiniFX has except it does not have 3rd party rendering.
What exactly is 3rd party rendering and is that the feature that is making Houdini very expensive? Are there other features in Apprentice HD that are missing from full featured Houdini?
Thanks
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1009&Itemid=320
Q. What is the difference between Houdini Apprentice and Houdini Apprentice HD?
A. Houdini Apprentice HD does not put the Houdini wordmark in your renders. Further, for still images, your render size is unlimited. For animations, you are restricted to HD 1080p resolution - 1920x1080. Both Houdini Apprentice and Houdini Apprentice HD use the non-commercial .hipnc file format. Also, third-party rendering (e.g., RenderMan) is unavailable in both Houdini Apprentice and Houdini Apprentice HD.
So, Houdini FX commercial, No render size limitation, a commercial input/output format along with being able to input AND output FBX, etc. versus HD only able to input FBX but Input/Output .obj for example and you can render to 3rd party renderers. You also get additional support other than their website forum. I think that’s about it.
3rd party rendering is rendering outside of a software package’s native (in-built) renderer. The example given is RenderMan. So, You can only use Houdini’s Mantra renderer, which is very good.
Expensive?
Maya or Max @ $3675 + Realflow @ $2500 = $6175
vs
Houdini FX @ $4,495
I say, give a little here and take a little there, all round it’s considerably less expensive in comparison.