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Houdini Tests and Impressions


Guest Igor

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Nice thread. If I wasn't swamped on work projects I'd possibly jump in.

 

Something closer to my professional goals is interactive code driven 3d...for the web. Perhaps I'll start a similar learning adventure for that here in a month or two.

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1 hour ago, Icecaveman said:

Nice thread. If I wasn't swamped on work projects I'd possibly jump in.

 

Something closer to my professional goals is interactive code driven 3d...for the web. Perhaps I'll start a similar learning adventure for that here in a month or two.

Well that sounds interesting, feel free to join us whenever you can. :cowboypistol:

 

@DasFrodo thank you, lets see how much I can push this. 

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6 minutes ago, Mike A said:

Guys, I'm trying to learn a little Houdini myself.

There is lots of good training material available, but one I can recommend is the 'Hipflask' 'Houdini made easy' intro course. Very comprehensive intro to many of the fundamentals.

https://www.sidefx.com/learn/getting_started/

Yea I would say one of the best out there. Really really helpful with tons of useful info. 🙂
 

Good luck with your journey. Don’t forget to share your progress. :cowboypistol:

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Interesting discussion.  I went to "Getting started" page at the SideFX site and reviewed their "Core Essentials" course outline.  As expected, there is a lot of content on the interface, viewport navigation, snapping, etc.  But what I was hoping to see are short mini classes into the basic functions of modeling: beveling, sub-division surfaces, extruding, etc.  As a 5 hour "core essentials" course, I was a little disappointed.

 

One other question: is EVERYTHING procedural in Houdini?  I looked at Igor's node list for his golden ball (or golden snitch from Harry Potter), and there are over 70 nodes to create that object.  I then wondered if modeling that in C4D would require over 70 modeling and texturing steps?  I am thinking probably not.  Now, as it is procedural, you are in fact creating a platform for multiple variations of that golden ball.  As an analogy, the closet equivalent to C4D (pre-nodes) would be that you are creating a "golden snitch" plugin.  But imagine if your only approaching to modeling anything in C4D was to create full plugin for creating that finished object! 

 

If you agree with that analogy, then as you get more involved with Houdini do you think that at some point you will be asking yourself: "Is the procedural approach really worth all this effort?"

 

Or another way to look at is this: "How long do you think it will take you to get as proficient and as fast at modeling with Houdini as you are in C4D?"

 

Dave

Sorry...but I simply do not have enough faith to be an atheist.

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46 minutes ago, 3D-Pangel said:

Interesting discussion.  I went to "Getting started" page at the SideFX site and reviewed their "Core Essentials" course outline.  As expected, there is a lot of content on the interface, viewport navigation, snapping, etc.  But what I was hoping to see are short mini classes into the basic functions of modeling: beveling, sub-division surfaces, extruding, etc.  As a 5 hour "core essentials" course, I was a little disappointed.

 

One other question: is EVERYTHING procedural in Houdini?  I looked at Igor's node list for his golden ball (or golden snitch from Harry Potter), and there are over 70 nodes to create that object.  I then wondered if modeling that in C4D would require over 70 modeling and texturing steps?  I am thinking probably not.  Now, as it is procedural, you are in fact creating a platform for multiple variations of that golden ball.  As an analogy, the closet equivalent to C4D (pre-nodes) would be that you are creating a "golden snitch" plugin.  But imagine if your only approaching to modeling anything in C4D was to create full plugin for creating that finished object! 

 

If you agree with that analogy, then as you get more involved with Houdini do you think that at some point you will be asking yourself: "Is the procedural approach really worth all this effort?"

 

Or another way to look at is this: "How long do you think it will take you to get as proficient and as fast at modeling with Houdini as you are in C4D?"

 

Dave

For this sphere I made it would take you a lot of time in any software if you are trying to be precise and triangles free. That little sphere has 4 circular cuts and to have a proper topology you need to use some tricks and bend the possibilities of nodes. How long would it take me in C4D I dont know, hard to tell, depending on the approach I would say. Also I must say that I didn't use any external 3rd party plugins to create this sphere, not even Labs scripts. It was pure exercise and it was very good one, I have learn a lot. This type of object might seem to be easy to model, but its actually hard, you can try and see how hard it is.

 

Now to say something about 70 nodes I have used. What happens after every operation is that Houdini simply creates a node, some interactively in viewport, some needed to be created from the Node Network, e.g. Merge Node that merges all the object into one object in that one Geometry network.  So if I interactively create a Bevel on the edge of the object in the VP that means new node will be automatically placed in the stream of nodes. So if I need to create 5 bevel operations or 10 cuts all of a sudden I will have 15 nodes in the stream. Luckly Node Network can be easily and nicely organized. You can change color of the each node or shape you can add comments and so on. 

To understand this better, you can see nodes as some kind of history of your operations. The nice thing about all f that, is that each node contains the data which can then be reused at any given moment for something else in the same geometry network or somewhere outside that geometry network, so you dont have to always use last step as your output in case you want specific step to be translated to somewhere else. So if you have e.g. Sphere as your starting point on the top of hierarchy, you can always use that sphere for whatever you like and create something totally different from it in the same Geometry Network. For example:

 

image.png

 

So for the eye I have used one Sphere node, then I have transformed the rotation, which I then separated into two streams. Left one is edited as I flattened one part of the mesh, while 2nd stream was used for deleting part of the same object and used as Iris. Then I used Null nodes to have better readability outside of the Network in case I need those for something else and simply in the end I applied different materials to them and merged with the rest of the model. So I would say that every node can be treated as a new unique object which can be reused at any given time, anywhere. To be most efficient you need time to know all the benefits and vice versa which I am slowly starting to actually understand. 

 

Hopefully that was explained okeish, I am not really a teacher. :129fs238648:

 

and well done @DasFrodo, welcome to the club (Frodo is now proud owner of Houdini Indie licence):cowboypistol:

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