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Houdini is an incredibly cool tool: https://www.sidefx.com/products/houdini/ https://www.sidefx.com/products/houdini/ One of the things I most dislike about to
by _bxg1 6y ago
Houdini is an incredibly cool tool: https://www.sidefx.com/products/houdini/ https://www.sidefx.com/products/houdini/
One of the things I most dislike about tools like Blender is that it can be really hard to go back to earlier stages of the process and make adjustments. Most changes are destructive, even though they don't really need to be. I follow lots of digital artists on Twitter and some of them use Houdini, and the kind of stuff they can generate is just mindblowing.
I'd try it out myself if it weren't for the price; I've always been drawn to procedural creation as a bridge between what a person imagines and what they can get a computer to render.
- iamcreasy 6y ago>One of the things I most dislike about tools like Blender is that it can be really hard to go back to earlier stages of the process and make adjustments. I do not think it is a big drawback of Blender since other tools such as Maya and 3ds Max are also destructive.
- _bxg1 6y agoBy "tools like Blender" I meant the entire category.
- memexy 6y agoIs the price really the blocker? How much does it cost? I looked at the indie edition and it seemed affordable. They also have a free edition: https://www.sidefx.com/buy/#houdini-free https://www.sidefx.com/buy/#houdini-free.
- _bxg1 6y agoAffordable, but a little hard to justify as a casual user who just wants to mess around and doesn't really plan on building anything complete
- dtf 6y agoIt’s completely free for the casual user who just wants to mess around, as long as they don’t use it for commercial work. Almost all features supported, except external renderers and certain geometry exports. There are some great free tutorials here: https://entagma.com/ https://entagma.com/
- ur-whale 6y agoIt's not the price that's the problem. It's that it is closed source, and therefore any work you produce is on a guaranteed path to bitrot.
- memexy 6y agoIsn't the final rendered product portable? Also, I'd imagine you could always export the necessary assets into a format less prone to bitrot.
- ur-whale 6y agoI don't know of any format that supports full parametric modeling the way Houdini does. As the OP said, parametric modelling is what makes Houdini so nice. And if you want any chance to rework anything in a project - say - 10 years later, exporting to a "baked" format is a dead end.
- memexy 6y agoWhat's preventing the development of an open model/data format for parametric modelling?
- andybak 6y agoBecause every feature and parameter would have to be baked into the format and every editor would have to offer those same features and no more. There's always a trade-off between editability and fidelity with any format. Non-destructive stacks of modifiers bring that trade-off into sharp relief.
- uglycoyote 6y agoYes.. not only offer the exact same features but any software that tries to implement the format would have to agree on the exact algorithms for the transformations represented by each procedural step. Any error in any one of those algorithms would cascade into subsequent steps and could generate a completely different final product
- hartror 6y agoLinks to artists you recommend?
- emllnd 6y agoSome names + Twitter handles: Ben Watts (http://twitter.com/benwattsdesign http://twitter.com/benwattsdesign), Simon Holmedal (http://twitter.com/Sholmedal http://twitter.com/Sholmedal), Serjan Burlak (http://twitter.com/biogenicdesign http://twitter.com/biogenicdesign), Rohan Dalvi (http://twitter.com/RohanCreates http://twitter.com/RohanCreates), Tim van Helsdingen (http://twitter.com/TvanHelsdingen http://twitter.com/TvanHelsdingen)
- emllnd 6y agoAlso, I had this little side project a while back: http://twitter.com/tobyliad http://twitter.com/tobyliad (shameless plug :))
- _bxg1 6y agoHere's a pretty awesome one: https://twitter.com/qornflex/status/1195701316418490368 https://twitter.com/qornflex/status/1195701316418490368
- emllnd 6y agoFor messing around, Apprentice version is free and can do pretty much anything the full version (FX) can, except render in insane resolution. Also, Indie version is cheap (~$200/year).
- ur-whale 6y agoI agree, the lack of parametric modeling is one of the most frustrating thing about blender (that and the super weird multi-object select/deselect workflow) The modifier stack is, to a limited extent, a flaccid ersatz for full-blown parametric, but it's light-years away from what Houdini can do.
- ygra 6y agoSomeone in a recent discussion about randomly-generated spaceships in Blender linked this: https://github.com/aachman98/Sorcar https://github.com/aachman98/Sorcar Not terribly familiar with how things work in Houdini (and only dabbling in Blender a few times), but that's been compared to it.
- memexy 6y agoThat looks pretty cool.
- dorkwood 6y agoSome people do completely non-destructive modelling in Blender using its modifier stack. You can see an example of that here: https://youtu.be/Atw16f8wZ6Y https://youtu.be/Atw16f8wZ6Y I'm also a big fan of Houdini, though, and would recommend the free edition to anyone wanting to learn. It's the most fully featured piece of free software I've ever used. I almost can't believe that it's free, it's so good!
- thdrdt 6y agoI think Houdini is a different kind of beast. You have software like 3ds Max, Maya, C4D, Blender and others. And then you have Houdini. But you can use Blender more procedural with the modifier stack. And there are great add-ons like Boxcutter: https://blendermarket.com/products/hard-ops--boxcutter-ultimate-bundle https://blendermarket.com/products/hard-ops--boxcutter-ultim...