@@0.Andi.0 Depends on what you make and what license you have, with Houdini apprentice which is the free version you can export regular geometry and volumes pretty easily, so you can import those back into Blender and render them there
14 years of Houdini here, its all about the mindset. Houdini is a visual programming software. When you stop thinking pure 3d and start thinking object oriented , you will have a AHA moment
Houdini is what happens when a bunch of super-insider industry folks, spending every waking hour together, decide the string of inside jokes they've replaced their entire spoken language with is an acceptable way to identify the features in their software.
Well the big reveal is that the op, in sop, vop etc stands for operator... sop is surface operator, and that works on the mesh, ie a box, its points, faces etc or model operations like to help scatter on a surface, transform etc... chop is a channel operator, dop is dynamics operator, shop is shader operator etc etc so say a pop solver is particle operator solver. So when you see a dop network it holds your node network that applies a specific forces, solves and dynamics that will be applied to the objects fed into it.
Nice. I hung out in the same building as the guys who developed Houdini in Toronto. Would see what they were up to occasionally. At the time it was 100% command line. It was so much fun to see hundreds of walking people as individual particles. After the rendering, of course.
This was enjoyable! I hope you continue on your journey. The acronyms do seem confusing at first, but here is the truth. A Houdini session/hip file is actually just a collection of folders and files on disk, it's actually an archive like a zip file. So OBJ, MAT, OUT, etc contexts are actually folders, and when you are in those folders the types of nodes/operations you can do are limited to the function of that folder. That's why certain nodes won't be available depending on the context you are in. The true power of houdini isn't that it's procedural/non-destructive, or that no solver or tool is blackboxed hidden away from you. It's real power comes from the fact that all geometry is just points, primitives, and volumes. And that houdini doesn't care what tool you use to manipulate the geometry. If there's a cool terrain deformer you can use that on your particles, if there's a tool that operates on particles you can use that on your normal geometry. So there's never a corner you are painted into, and if you are curious or want to change how a solver actually works you can dive in and see/change it. Nothing is abstracted away from you. But the learning wall is called the wall for a reason, it is the hardest piece of software to use, but that can be reduced if you focus on learning the contexts, the SOP = surface operators context (where most modeling and deforming geometry happens), and learning how attributes flow through the program.
You are making me want to give Houdini a second try. I know a guy who works in the industry. He told me that Houdini artists are rare so if I figure it out, I'll be able to land a good job easily. I'm not really looking for a job but being able to make stuff in Houdini has a very high rank in my bucket list.
I started to study houdini as my first contact with 3d software ever. I would watch tutorials to demistify this maze of a software. I almos given up a few times, i am glad i didnt. Houdini is the most amazing software i have ever seen. The only limitations are your machine, your creativity and your knowledge. If houdini doesnt offer you a tool to do something you can call a wrangle node and vex-code it to create a custom tool. Because of that, before i knew i was trying codes. Failing miserably at first but now i have a 30% success rate in vex and going up. After you learn houdini you will integrate with other softwares like Unreal or Gaea, but i really can'T see a way you would ever want to switch to other software unless you are sculpting or rigging.
I actually worked on one of the shots in your intro so cheers! Yeah Houdini is super hard when you’re going in blind. If your goal is to really go for it and learn it, definitely look up some people who have created amazing tutorials on how everything works (my recommendations are usually Rebelway and Applied Houdini for the FX stuff). Your crops joke got me too 🤣 Those networks are operator networks, so they basically contain different types of nodes for different parts of the process. So by default you’re in an object network, but as a cheat sheet here’s what they all mean! ROP - Render Operators - Basically anything to do with caching out some data from your setup. Rendering images, caching files, that kind of thing. SHOP - Shading Operators - If you’re working with most renderers you’ll be here. Houdini does have a MAT context for it’s Mantra shaders (Houdini’s default renderer) but both do largely the same things just for different renderers. COP2 - Compositing Operators - Nuke is a WAY better option for doing comp work, however you can use Houdini’s COPs to do some procedural texture work and throw a slap comp together for a supervisor! TOP - Task Operators - this was a context really built for people who wanted to run the same setup with slightly varied results. So let’s say you modelled a house and needed 50 variations for a video game. That kind of thing. There are ways of doing it in your standard object network, but it’s a different toolset for a different industry. CHOP - Channel Operators - Basically a way of driving a parameter with some other data. It could be noise, time, a game controller input or a combination of all sorts. LOPs (or Stage) - Lighting Operators - the industry is rapidly moving towards using USD (Universal Scene Description) for lighting and finishing shots. This is where that will be available in Houdini (and is in 19.0 and above, I believe) Look forward to the next video you do with Houdini! Keep pushing - it’s all doable!
My teacher at TAFE where i learnt 3d modeling basically told me that houdini has the steepest learning curve, but once you get to the top of it, there's nothing in 3d you can't do. You see most people approach learning houdini the wrong way, traditionally people manipulate faces, edges and vertices when making a 3d model, however in houdini, your manipulating, filtering and apply processes to data. The best way to get started in houdini is learn some basic programming principles like logic, mathematics, how to write pseudo code. Hell you don't ever have to write a line of code, just understand the basics, from there you can use that logic to basically build your models in ways that offer so much versatility and variance its mind blowing. Houdini also has decades of common nodes/tools already built by the community and included in houdini, this is what makes it so powerful, because most of the hard work has been done for you in most cases. It will take other software like blender YEARS to catch up to the houdini community in terms of proceduralism. And that's not to nock blender at all, blender is still one of my favorite software for general modelling. TLDR, get past the learning curve, and not only will you be ridiculously efficiat when it comes to modeling, but you will also be in a great position for a high paying career as a technical 3d artist.
After Softimage was discontinued I really struggled to find a 3D package I felt comfortable in until trying Houdini. Blender felt unintuitive and C4D was too expensive on an individual basis. Houdini really changed everything for me and re-inspired my love of working in 3D.
Hey! Can you please tell me what’s the best way to start learning Houdini? Or maybe recommend any tutorials/channels that might be worth watching? Thanks! ❤️
@@hayasoufi8359 I haven't touched houdini in a while as I kinda lost my passion for 3d in general. I remember their tutorial series on their website were really good at teaching the basics. The best tip I could give is houdini is a program for making tools, not models, If your going into houdini with a specific vision in mind, your going to struggle achieving it(use sculpting or traditional 3d tools for that). Your not modelling a tree, your making tools to model a tree for you. Also i imagine ChatGPT could answer any question you have regarding it, I imagine you could also get started by asking ChatGPT to generate code to achieve more complex tasks.
I use Houdini every day now. When I first started out my head hurt for a week. But it is worth it. No other software comes close to the power you have in Houdini.
The magic with houdini is that you can do so many things by different ways It seems very difficult at first but when you got the logic of the soft it’s very pleasant
Great video, really enjoyed seeing a fresh perspective on how cryptic houdini is to new beginners. I’d still call myself a beginner even after 1.5 years learning it. Stick in there !
Great video. I laughed so hard at your text messages. Very good Very cool. Music and slow downs 100% awesome. lol Cant wait to check out the rest of your channel.
As soon as he changes the fringe, somehow the fringe is distracting to the point that I can't follow along and there's no chance I'm the only overly pedantic asshole
You cannot really compare Houdini to Blender, its a different game for different use cases. The more complex the job gets, the easier Houdini, and the harder Blender will be. If you just love to create in a direct manner, Blender is better suited. I use both and I like both, although Houdini is my favorite :-)
I just start learning houdini, to me blender is fun to learn basic and discover a bit what is going on... but I believe that houdini help pushing to next level..
If houdini would leave really acces for free and be able to render without marks i guess , It would be more interesting to learn... You can learn anything as long as motivated.
@@kodidelasanjayreddy3427 nah it’s not that hard. Now that depends if you have worked in node based flow. It’s geometry nodes on steroids but the same process of working with nodes applies
This was very entertaining :) Sums up pretty well how most of us feel when we open the software for the first time. Been there too a couple of years ago. But to anyone hesitating. I promise you it is worth learning. Houdini is very unique and can get you out of very tricky situations. Don't get scared by the supercomplicated, technical stuff. It is not as bad as it looks. And there are a lot of artist friendly approaches that you can use that go a long way.
Hey! Can you please tell me what’s the best way to start learning Houdini? Or maybe recommend any tutorials/channels that might be worth watching? Thanks! ❤️
I fell in love with Blender at very first use back in 2.8 and it remains my favorite, ever-improving 3D suite. But (maybe for being programmatically-oriented) I felt the exact same love when I first opened Houdini. I’m still a bit confused by its rendering features but the procedural and simulation aspects blew my mind.
Houdini is the most efficient 3D software in the market. It's procedural nature is unmatched and a lot of people think it's only for simulations, but that's so not true...
Houdini is definitely NOT a program a new user can generally jump into right away and make sense of it, but to be fair, neither is Blender (especially versions before 2.5). It eventually _does_ make sense but it can take time. This is true for most complex software. There is no doubt that Houdini is super powerful though because every major special effects company uses it with only a few exceptions (Pixar probably has their own in-house simulation system).
yeah, but it is the software that should be started with first. It teaches you so much on a fundamental level most software can't To my knowledge Pixar also use Houdini (they also use Maya)
@@FlashPaperGrind is that inside knowledge? Otherwise i doubt that Autodesk allows to customize their software that much. You sure that they don't just use many plugins? If the latter, well almost any company uses much plugins.
I knew a guy who employed a Houdini guy for six months at a name animation house in London. He said "His stuff was always amazing, incredible stuff. He never *actually* finished a shot though." LOL Love Houdini but I'm married to 'Blendini' now :o)
If you want a good understanding of how everything works I cannot reccomend Steven Knipping's tutorials enough. He works for ILM and made some crazy effects for marvel and star wars. He has tutorials on pyro sims, particles, and rigid bodies
@@BadNormals I’m glad you checked it out! He is so good at explaining how things work too, so you get a really good understanding of what’s going on under the hood for your own future projects too
Houdini artist here, good first try. If anyone wants to try Houdini the thing that you need to know is that there is a lot of tutorials and documentation in the sidefx webside
You should be careful. BlenderGuru might see you exploding a doughnut and take it as an act of war 👀 Would be a shame if an all out Blender civil war would take place
FX artist (Houdini) here, I would have given double the points to blender for launching a lot faster, just because, as an FX, there is always that moment where it just crashed again and again Jones aside, Houdini may be the toughest to learn, by there is a huge community always ready to help, either of différents forums, tutorials or more advanced masterclass. It will take time to learn Houdini, but it is so worth it
@@avatr7109 blender is a nice piece of software, but few compagnies actually use it as it's not part of their pipeline You can learn Houdini by yourself or in college, but you will need to be disciplined and really passionate about it
Hey! Can you please tell me what’s the best way to start learning Houdini? Or maybe recommend any tutorials/channels that might be worth watching? Thanks! ❤️
UI elements look more user-friendly at a glance for a new user, blender is just grey empty space with maybe some grey icons, unless you already know what you're looking for and where it is - you'll be clueless
Really nice video! I've switched a lot of softwares in the past 15 years (never went deep with Blender)and from my point of view, Houdini is the most intimidating one at a first glance. It has a reaaaaaaly steep learning curve, and it's very different from other 3d Packages. It might be more familiar for a Touch Designer user than a Maya/Blender one. But it is really powerful, and honestly, I couldn't work without seeing all my data flow of attributes and all anymore.
Houdini has the steepest learning curve I have come across. But it's also the most feature packed and versatile tool I have. No other tool has the power that HDA's provide .
As everyone says, Houdini has a steeper learning curve, but once you get the basic principles right, it's easier to search for the right answers online and in time you just remember the most important nodes and attributes. After a while it's super satisfying to get desired results. Plus it goes great with blender.
After 3rd year??😢😢 I'm a blender artist and just wanted to learn Houdini it's been just 4 days started on houdini isn't scary playlist and I can't do any shit yet 😭😭😭😭
5:00 "Why there is no like, explode an object" - "explode an object" literally popping in screen that second. Thanks for the video, i also use Blender and wanted to try Houdini
Man you got lucky that you found a relatively easy "explode" tutorial. There's one on here that I was watching - the dude had over 30yrs experience and was demoing "explode" as a keynote speaker at some function. Well I guess the explode wasn't working and he was getting frustrated. Bro... this dude went into the coding screen and started typing like The Flash!! He went TOTALLY OFF SCRIPT and wasn't even talking to the people anymore about the little baby shyt he was showing them lol... He shifted into HARDCORE G.O.A.T. MODE and went off into his own little world... mumbling as he hammered out code on a level Bill Gates couldn't touch. It was like he wrote a whole new gottdamn script in 1 minute, then plugged it into his "explode" routine and NOW it blew up properly and was quite impressive. But what this showed me is that - all those flying dragons, flaming meteors and glowing eyes LOOKS AMAZING, but you need to be a HIGH LEVEL PYTHON CODER to reach the full potential of Houdini. If you're not a MASTER PYTHON CODER, then it seems you will only get about 75% of the power out of Houdini just using the basic point & click interface. NONE of those cool effects you showed were done just using point & click. There's another demo on here of a guy turning that pig-head into smoke. It's really cool, but in the end he couldn't get it to look right, so he had to plug in a series of nodes someone else compiled, and THEN it looked amazing. So yeah Houdini is the best of the best, but you have to put some SERIOUS time, effort and money into reaching those highest levels. If you're not interested in mastering Python, then I think a Blender-Pro or C4D-Pro would be able to do comparable or better work than a mid-level Houdini user who can't use the coding abilities. Personally, I'm not a coder and I don't enjoy writing code. I started getting rather familiar with "Adobe Flash" years ago which used (AS3) code.I couldn't write AS3 from scratch, but AS3 snippets were all over the web and I became an expert at scrounging & utilizing the code snippets I needed to make cool things happen in my projects. Then BAM - after a few years Flash was shelved, killed & banned by Microsoft. all that AS3 code - USELESS, and every webpage written with it was now INACCESSIBLE. Python reminds me of that fiasco. 🙄.. An artist shouldn't have to write code to do the cool stuff you showed in your intro-clip. Personally, I'm going to still try and learn Houdini on the side just because they have a free version. But my focus is going to be Blender, which is quickly becoming the hottest & most advanced 3D program out there. At this rate, it will surpass Houdini one day soon because it's got too much love & 3rd party support, it's much easier to learn, and it's growing wayyy too fast - while Houdini remains stagnant "Kryptonite" because of it's bank-busting perpetual pricing & Rubiks Cube difficulty level. ✌
What a novel! I'm sure Blender could catch up if it was specialized into one field but since it's a do it all software it needs much much more developers to achieve that. But let's subscribe to Blender Cloud and we'll get there one day :)
@@BadNormals - Ha! Sorry about the encyclopedia, I like to write and I type fast on this computer... so sometimes I forget people really only wanna see a few sentences at most - my bad! 😇 I'll keep this one short and just say... Blender is only on 3.1 right now and has already made Lightwave obsolete and made many 3D Studio users already converted over. Maya users are starting to convert now also and it's currently neck & neck with Cinema 4D but pulling ahead because of "Grease Pencil". So I'd say by version 5 or 6 it will be a Houdini killer🔥💀🔥but without the ultra-complexity and it doesn't mandate Python to get it's top abilities; nor does it cost $3,000... That's pretty bad ass! 🤗
I am trying to learn myself Houdini, but as like you, the LOP COP SOP things are not understandable. Please share what you will learn in near future not just tutorial. I bet you can get the principles and logic of Houdini much faster. :) Peace.
SOP = Surface operators, it's for modifying static geometries(This is the most important context as everything starts from SOP) DOP = Dynamic operators, it's where simulation can happen COP = Composit operators, it's like Nuke in Houdini. (It's very old and outdated though) CHOP = Channel operators, it's for animating parameters procedurally ROP = Render operators, it's where you can set up render nodes and render LOP = Lighting operators, this is kinda new but it's basically USD authoring context.
Houdini is a great name for the software because once you learn it you feel like a magician. Just the learning curve is effing extreme. As game artist with 20 years of maya experience, going to Blender is interesting but the interface is extremely difficult for me... so many shortcut you need to know (something about photoshop I hated until I happily cut it out of my workflow), but it also hasnt been widely adopted by the industry yet. Which I think will change in the next few years since Autodesk doesnt add significant features to Maya or Max anymore. But by far the biggest win for Houdini is Houdini Engine. To be able to edit or even simulate Houdini assets within the UE4/5 editor is next level.
@@BadNormals :) I stumbled upon this video when looking for some stuff in Blender as I am in the process of creating realistic smoke tutorial :). I guess, I should also thank google for bringing up my video. :) Keep up the good work brother.
ROP - Rendering Operators POP - Particle Operator VOP - Vector Op SOP - Surface Op SHOP - Shading Op DOP - Dynamic Op COP - Composite Op Basically Operators...
Thanks for pointing me to Houdini. I am totally done with Blender. It is hopeless off the bat. Both tools are free (with the apprentice version of Houdini). I came from 3ds max to Blender which is a hopeless mission
hi i saw the chocolate at 0:23 - 0:28 seemingly using geometry nodes? Do you have a video tutorial of how to do exactly that in blender? i hv seen tutorials of blender geometry nodes scattering objects around an object but that looks a bit different.
I have a video on my channel, yes, but it's using the old geometry nodes so you have to enable legacy geometry nodes and developer extras to follow. Or figure out how to do this in 3.0.
Houdini is not that hard, this program is rather just deep. But there are reasons for all this, and as soon as you get to the task in which Houdini is useful to you - you understand why everything is arranged this way and not otherwise. Suddenly things begin to make sense.
Kids these days think that everything is fine easily and quickly. The don’t seem toename to take the time to actually read through the basics. Houdini documentation is actually pretty good and you need that basic foundation in order to understand how to do stuff. And when you’ve read it, it actually makes tons of sense.
Sooo... I searched hudini explosion object tutorial.. Clicked this video.. And he searched hudini explosion object tutorials and now i am watch a tutorial of the host watching a tutorial... And its 2am... 🙂 I don't if this is a dream... 🙂
Video quality is getting better mate! Love Houdini. Super beginner, but still avoiding the DOPs. Just slowly struggling through SOPs right now. I had no idea you were a 5 year blender user. Makes a lot of sense since you're really good.
As a vfx student using houdini. No, definetly not usable in a reel. The effect doesn’t work with the concept, because there is no concept. If you want to destroy something you got to tell what material is this thing made of. Here its just a torus with no indications of what make it explode,what is the intention of the sim / purpose. To be clear. For a real demo reel, you would need to make it fall from a certain point or make something interact with the object to get the understanding that there is something creating the sim. Also for indication of what material you use, make dust, smoke, debris, how light or hard it falls off and etc. 9but that isi9f you are seriously making a demo reel, for the purpose of that video, it is good.
But also yea, I don’t think any professional software can ever be so intuitive that you can just open it for the first time with no knowledge of the concepts and start making cool stuff - even in blender you can’t do that. So I don’t really see the point of a “first impression” of a software I know nothing about.
Once you get into it it’s quite simple the only DCC that is close to blender is Houdini but blender wins as always in $$ love the blender community Respect
Houdini isn't hard, it just isn't for everyone, I was using Maya and I thought it was super messy and unorganized, Houdini made much more sense to me and I've been using it for years since. Than again if you expect to open a software and using it without studying than yeah that's not gonna happen.
Cool video, though it took me days just to get used to the viewport in Houdini after Blender, and to be able to do just some rigid body sims that were half decent. Beats me how there are people out there that can learn so much in just a couple of hours, and I'm quite dedicated.
Anyone got plans to test it out as well?
@@yokarra2 Yeah, maybe in 10 years. I'm not anti, it's just not a priority. If I were 20 years ago and had tons of free time...yeah, I'd try it out.
esimesel võimalusel
Funny thing is I just started learning Houdini like a week ago, 4:31 sums up my experience so far pretty well
Is it possible to render the things you make in houdini on blender cycles
@@0.Andi.0 Depends on what you make and what license you have, with Houdini apprentice which is the free version you can export regular geometry and volumes pretty easily, so you can import those back into Blender and render them there
It's called Houdini because a good magician never reveals how his software works
😄 This made me laugh.
So true
I knew about the magician but now i get it why they named the software after him.
There is a two hours long tutorial about how to learn to learn Houdini
@@CMak3r please send the link
14 years of Houdini here, its all about the mindset. Houdini is a visual programming software. When you stop thinking pure 3d and start thinking object oriented , you will have a AHA moment
Houdini is what happens when a bunch of super-insider industry folks, spending every waking hour together, decide the string of inside jokes they've replaced their entire spoken language with is an acceptable way to identify the features in their software.
Houdini cult is alive!
That is the single best description of Houdini I've come across in 20 years - bravo sir!
I can't stop laughing xD
Well the big reveal is that the op, in sop, vop etc stands for operator... sop is surface operator, and that works on the mesh, ie a box, its points, faces etc or model operations like to help scatter on a surface, transform etc... chop is a channel operator, dop is dynamics operator, shop is shader operator etc etc so say a pop solver is particle operator solver. So when you see a dop network it holds your node network that applies a specific forces, solves and dynamics that will be applied to the objects fed into it.
@@MortalVildhjart what of point vop please?
Nice. I hung out in the same building as the guys who developed Houdini in Toronto. Would see what they were up to occasionally. At the time it was 100% command line. It was so much fun to see hundreds of walking people as individual particles. After the rendering, of course.
The most OG commenter here
I met the creator 2 months ago. He's awesome.
This was enjoyable!
I hope you continue on your journey. The acronyms do seem confusing at first, but here is the truth.
A Houdini session/hip file is actually just a collection of folders and files on disk, it's actually an archive like a zip file.
So OBJ, MAT, OUT, etc contexts are actually folders, and when you are in those folders the types of nodes/operations you can do are limited to
the function of that folder. That's why certain nodes won't be available depending on the context you are in.
The true power of houdini isn't that it's procedural/non-destructive, or that no solver or tool is blackboxed hidden away from you.
It's real power comes from the fact that all geometry is just points, primitives, and volumes. And that houdini doesn't care what tool you use
to manipulate the geometry. If there's a cool terrain deformer you can use that on your particles, if there's a tool that operates on particles you can
use that on your normal geometry. So there's never a corner you are painted into, and if you are curious or want to change how a solver actually works
you can dive in and see/change it. Nothing is abstracted away from you.
But the learning wall is called the wall for a reason, it is the hardest piece of software to use, but that can be reduced if you focus on learning the contexts, the
SOP = surface operators context (where most modeling and deforming geometry happens), and learning how attributes flow through the program.
Listen to this dude! Lewis is a Houdini Master!
You are making me want to give Houdini a second try. I know a guy who works in the industry. He told me that Houdini artists are rare so if I figure it out, I'll be able to land a good job easily. I'm not really looking for a job but being able to make stuff in Houdini has a very high rank in my bucket list.
@@UncleBurrito15 It's really fun! give it another try
I started to study houdini as my first contact with 3d software ever. I would watch tutorials to demistify this maze of a software. I almos given up a few times, i am glad i didnt. Houdini is the most amazing software i have ever seen. The only limitations are your machine, your creativity and your knowledge. If houdini doesnt offer you a tool to do something you can call a wrangle node and vex-code it to create a custom tool. Because of that, before i knew i was trying codes. Failing miserably at first but now i have a 30% success rate in vex and going up. After you learn houdini you will integrate with other softwares like Unreal or Gaea, but i really can'T see a way you would ever want to switch to other software unless you are sculpting or rigging.
I actually worked on one of the shots in your intro so cheers!
Yeah Houdini is super hard when you’re going in blind. If your goal is to really go for it and learn it, definitely look up some people who have created amazing tutorials on how everything works (my recommendations are usually Rebelway and Applied Houdini for the FX stuff).
Your crops joke got me too 🤣 Those networks are operator networks, so they basically contain different types of nodes for different parts of the process. So by default you’re in an object network, but as a cheat sheet here’s what they all mean!
ROP - Render Operators - Basically anything to do with caching out some data from your setup. Rendering images, caching files, that kind of thing.
SHOP - Shading Operators - If you’re working with most renderers you’ll be here. Houdini does have a MAT context for it’s Mantra shaders (Houdini’s default renderer) but both do largely the same things just for different renderers.
COP2 - Compositing Operators - Nuke is a WAY better option for doing comp work, however you can use Houdini’s COPs to do some procedural texture work and throw a slap comp together for a supervisor!
TOP - Task Operators - this was a context really built for people who wanted to run the same setup with slightly varied results. So let’s say you modelled a house and needed 50 variations for a video game. That kind of thing. There are ways of doing it in your standard object network, but it’s a different toolset for a different industry.
CHOP - Channel Operators - Basically a way of driving a parameter with some other data. It could be noise, time, a game controller input or a combination of all sorts.
LOPs (or Stage) - Lighting Operators - the industry is rapidly moving towards using USD (Universal Scene Description) for lighting and finishing shots. This is where that will be available in Houdini (and is in 19.0 and above, I believe)
Look forward to the next video you do with Houdini! Keep pushing - it’s all doable!
thank you magic man
thanks dude
My teacher at TAFE where i learnt 3d modeling basically told me that houdini has the steepest learning curve, but once you get to the top of it, there's nothing in 3d you can't do. You see most people approach learning houdini the wrong way, traditionally people manipulate faces, edges and vertices when making a 3d model, however in houdini, your manipulating, filtering and apply processes to data. The best way to get started in houdini is learn some basic programming principles like logic, mathematics, how to write pseudo code. Hell you don't ever have to write a line of code, just understand the basics, from there you can use that logic to basically build your models in ways that offer so much versatility and variance its mind blowing.
Houdini also has decades of common nodes/tools already built by the community and included in houdini, this is what makes it so powerful, because most of the hard work has been done for you in most cases. It will take other software like blender YEARS to catch up to the houdini community in terms of proceduralism. And that's not to nock blender at all, blender is still one of my favorite software for general modelling.
TLDR, get past the learning curve, and not only will you be ridiculously efficiat when it comes to modeling, but you will also be in a great position for a high paying career as a technical 3d artist.
After Softimage was discontinued I really struggled to find a 3D package I felt comfortable in until trying Houdini. Blender felt unintuitive and C4D was too expensive on an individual basis. Houdini really changed everything for me and re-inspired my love of working in 3D.
Hey! Can you please tell me what’s the best way to start learning Houdini? Or maybe recommend any tutorials/channels that might be worth watching? Thanks! ❤️
@@hayasoufi8359 I haven't touched houdini in a while as I kinda lost my passion for 3d in general.
I remember their tutorial series on their website were really good at teaching the basics.
The best tip I could give is houdini is a program for making tools, not models, If your going into houdini with a specific vision in mind, your going to struggle achieving it(use sculpting or traditional 3d tools for that).
Your not modelling a tree, your making tools to model a tree for you.
Also i imagine ChatGPT could answer any question you have regarding it, I imagine you could also get started by asking ChatGPT to generate code to achieve more complex tasks.
I use Houdini every day now. When I first started out my head hurt for a week. But it is worth it. No other software comes close to the power you have in Houdini.
The magic with houdini is that you can do so many things by different ways
It seems very difficult at first but when you got the logic of the soft it’s very pleasant
You are making me feel hopeful after I've spend days attemping to learn the most simple concepts in Houdini.
@@AdorandoconlaIA-fg6tg Just got it myself. My Blender knowledge translates to some things, but not at all to others. Did you get it figured out?
Great video, really enjoyed seeing a fresh perspective on how cryptic houdini is to new beginners. I’d still call myself a beginner even after 1.5 years learning it. Stick in there !
I will!
Great video. I laughed so hard at your text messages. Very good Very cool. Music and slow downs 100% awesome. lol Cant wait to check out the rest of your channel.
You're going to be a big name in the blender community in no time. Your content is so engaging and your video quality is top notch.
Thank you! It's very motivating to hear that!
As soon as he changes the fringe, somehow the fringe is distracting to the point that I can't follow along and there's no chance I'm the only overly pedantic asshole
You cannot really compare Houdini to Blender, its a different game for different use cases. The more complex the job gets, the easier Houdini, and the harder Blender will be.
If you just love to create in a direct manner, Blender is better suited. I use both and I like both, although Houdini is my favorite :-)
I just start learning houdini, to me blender is fun to learn basic and discover a bit what is going on... but I believe that houdini help pushing to next level..
did you buy houdini? does one require to go to vfx college if one wants to make a career out of it?
If houdini would leave really acces for free and be able to render without marks i guess , It would be more interesting to learn...
You can learn anything as long as motivated.
@@samduss4193 Houdini apprentice is free
heck yeah! I've been wanting to try houdini, I'm excited to see how much transfers from Blender
It's like a torture learning this software 😂
@@kodidelasanjayreddy3427 nah it’s not that hard. Now that depends if you have worked in node based flow. It’s geometry nodes on steroids but the same process of working with nodes applies
@@educate3dWhat if im compelty new in 3d and programming at all? I want to create 3d VFX effect.
@@hans3437 vfx is a broad umbrella. Depending on what you want to do would dictate what you should use and where you should start.
make a "Blender user tries Maya for the FIRST time"..
i know its sounds easy but it's really hard lol...
(great video btw)
I'm gonna have to use Maya at uni next semester. As a Blender user, I am scared lmao. Never touched Maya before.
@@matyasletacek4099 modeling is not that hard, but uv mapping is a whole different convoluted mess
Yeah I might make that with Sir Wade Neystadt. He's a Maya guru.
@@mihailoveselinovic7151 I mean, I was using 3Ds Max for a bit on highschool and yeah, same story there.. UV unwrapping was.. ugh.
@@matyasletacek4099 Don't get me started on 3Ds Max
It's really nice to see someone so skilled struggling when they first learn something too. Great vid!
Love your editing ;D
Thanks! I did spend some days on it 🙂
This was very entertaining :) Sums up pretty well how most of us feel when we open the software for the first time. Been there too a couple of years ago. But to anyone hesitating. I promise you it is worth learning. Houdini is very unique and can get you out of very tricky situations. Don't get scared by the supercomplicated, technical stuff. It is not as bad as it looks. And there are a lot of artist friendly approaches that you can use that go a long way.
What can be more scary then pressing "G, Shift+Z" each time you need to move object in XY? - that is in Blender.
@@SuperSuperka What, who uses G for their transform keybind lol
@@JustAGooseman every Blender artist use G to move
Hey! Can you please tell me what’s the best way to start learning Houdini? Or maybe recommend any tutorials/channels that might be worth watching? Thanks! ❤️
I fell in love with Blender at very first use back in 2.8 and it remains my favorite, ever-improving 3D suite. But (maybe for being programmatically-oriented) I felt the exact same love when I first opened Houdini. I’m still a bit confused by its rendering features but the procedural and simulation aspects blew my mind.
As a Houdini user seeing you lose your mind over the names (SOPs, CHOPs, LOPs, etc...) is so funny and I was the exact same too at the start
Houdini is the most efficient 3D software in the market. It's procedural nature is unmatched and a lot of people think it's only for simulations, but that's so not true...
It's definitely very capable, and all the parts work together efficiently which sets it apart in my opinion
Efficiency is dependant on the user
Blender is more evident for people that are familiar and comfortable with Blender
@@spydergs07 I think he may have meant the programming of the software. but I could be wrong.
Its a program not 'a software' as much as a hammer isn't 'a hardware'.
@@PrinceWesterburg ...But hammer is hardware? You buy hammers from the "hardware store".
Been using it for years. When you get into the workflow its way more logic than any other package
Houdini is definitely NOT a program a new user can generally jump into right away and make sense of it, but to be fair, neither is Blender (especially versions before 2.5). It eventually _does_ make sense but it can take time. This is true for most complex software. There is no doubt that Houdini is super powerful though because every major special effects company uses it with only a few exceptions (Pixar probably has their own in-house simulation system).
yeah, but it is the software that should be started with first. It teaches you so much on a fundamental level most software can't
To my knowledge Pixar also use Houdini (they also use Maya)
@@3dbob891 Yup. They do use it.
@@3dbob891 Pixar use a HEAVILY customised version of Maya(all in-house and nearly entirely different from the Maya we have access to).
@@FlashPaperGrind is that inside knowledge? Otherwise i doubt that Autodesk allows to customize their software that much. You sure that they don't just use many plugins?
If the latter, well almost any company uses much plugins.
@@3dbob891 They probably allow to modify the source code if you pays them . Unreal engine also does that.
I've never been so entertained in my life this is so fun to watch 😆
Never? You grew up in Afghanistan?
Have you ever seen like, a movie?
I knew a guy who employed a Houdini guy for six months at a name animation house in London. He said "His stuff was always amazing, incredible stuff. He never *actually* finished a shot though." LOL
Love Houdini but I'm married to 'Blendini' now :o)
I opened Houdini for the first time, started mashing Shift+A and gave up immediately.
If you want a good understanding of how everything works I cannot reccomend Steven Knipping's tutorials enough. He works for ILM and made some crazy effects for marvel and star wars. He has tutorials on pyro sims, particles, and rigid bodies
Why have I never found his channel, it has some great stuff!
@@BadNormals I’m glad you checked it out! He is so good at explaining how things work too, so you get a really good understanding of what’s going on under the hood for your own future projects too
Knipping is the best, I took most of his courses and each one was a delight
Houdini artist here, good first try. If anyone wants to try Houdini the thing that you need to know is that there is a lot of tutorials and documentation in the sidefx webside
I'll check them out, thanks!
ya Sidefx has the best support for it's software hands down.
You should be careful. BlenderGuru might see you exploding a doughnut and take it as an act of war 👀 Would be a shame if an all out Blender civil war would take place
This would be Ragnarök^2
FX artist (Houdini) here, I would have given double the points to blender for launching a lot faster, just because, as an FX, there is always that moment where it just crashed again and again
Jones aside, Houdini may be the toughest to learn, by there is a huge community always ready to help, either of différents forums, tutorials or more advanced masterclass. It will take time to learn Houdini, but it is so worth it
Can we get a job if we learn Houdini ? do we need to go to vfx college?
i mean no one mentions blender in job descriptions, its Maya 3DS max etc
@@avatr7109 blender is a nice piece of software, but few compagnies actually use it as it's not part of their pipeline
You can learn Houdini by yourself or in college, but you will need to be disciplined and really passionate about it
Hey! Can you please tell me what’s the best way to start learning Houdini? Or maybe recommend any tutorials/channels that might be worth watching? Thanks! ❤️
They didn't call the Program Houdini because of the surreal results, they called it Houdini because nobody knows how it works
As a blender user that UI is so hard to look at. Houdini looks nuts lol
Yeah, I'd say Blender has a very nice UI after the 2.8 update
UI elements look more user-friendly at a glance for a new user, blender is just grey empty space with maybe some grey icons, unless you already know what you're looking for and where it is - you'll be clueless
As a blender user, one thing about houdini is that what you can do in an hour in blender can be done in a second in houdini.
Wtf
This is exactly what I felt like when using Houdini first
Good I'm not the only one
Your title reeled me in. Your sense of humor wins my subscription. Good work young sir!
Really nice video! I've switched a lot of softwares in the past 15 years (never went deep with Blender)and from my point of view, Houdini is the most intimidating one at a first glance. It has a reaaaaaaly steep learning curve, and it's very different from other 3d Packages. It might be more familiar for a Touch Designer user than a Maya/Blender one. But it is really powerful, and honestly, I couldn't work without seeing all my data flow of attributes and all anymore.
I'm excited to learn it!
Your friend is really a professional Houdini artist 💀
Man, your production quality is improving massively!
Awesome stuff. 👍
Yeah, I've been investing a lot of ressources there! Thanks!
3:48 🤣🤣 the Sound of fans was so funny 🤣 hahahahahahahah . Thanks for your Humor sense ! Love it!!! 👍🏻👍🏻💪🏻
Haha,😁, Love how the sun sets whilst following my tutorial. Very funny. You got a sub brother.
Houdini has the steepest learning curve I have come across. But it's also the most feature packed and versatile tool I have. No other tool has the power that HDA's provide .
As everyone says, Houdini has a steeper learning curve, but once you get the basic principles right, it's easier to search for the right answers online and in time you just remember the most important nodes and attributes. After a while it's super satisfying to get desired results. Plus it goes great with blender.
I love your positive approach! thank you for the video )
I love your channel... nicely edited + fun / positive vibes, ...please keep it up!
Motivating to hear that!
Been really enjoying your videos, keep it up!
He had to explode that screaming emoji, that goes AAAAAAAAAAHH
Senior houdini artist Here Great video,laug a lot with the lop top sop part,keep learning,it becomes easier after the 3th year
After 3rd year??😢😢 I'm a blender artist and just wanted to learn Houdini it's been just 4 days started on houdini isn't scary playlist and I can't do any shit yet 😭😭😭😭
5:00 "Why there is no like, explode an object" - "explode an object" literally popping in screen that second. Thanks for the video, i also use Blender and wanted to try Houdini
Love your channel man! Super inspiring!
Lol made me laugh with the sound design at 4:40. Nice video - Thanks for the insight.
Man you got lucky that you found a relatively easy "explode" tutorial. There's one on here that I was watching - the dude had over 30yrs experience and was demoing "explode" as a keynote speaker at some function. Well I guess the explode wasn't working and he was getting frustrated. Bro... this dude went into the coding screen and started typing like The Flash!!
He went TOTALLY OFF SCRIPT and wasn't even talking to the people anymore about the little baby shyt he was showing them lol... He shifted into HARDCORE G.O.A.T. MODE and went off into his own little world... mumbling as he hammered out code on a level Bill Gates couldn't touch. It was like he wrote a whole new gottdamn script in 1 minute, then plugged it into his "explode" routine and NOW it blew up properly and was quite impressive.
But what this showed me is that - all those flying dragons, flaming meteors and glowing eyes LOOKS AMAZING, but you need to be a HIGH LEVEL PYTHON CODER to reach the full potential of Houdini. If you're not a MASTER PYTHON CODER, then it seems you will only get about 75% of the power out of Houdini just using the basic point & click interface. NONE of those cool effects you showed were done just using point & click.
There's another demo on here of a guy turning that pig-head into smoke. It's really cool, but in the end he couldn't get it to look right, so he had to plug in a series of nodes someone else compiled, and THEN it looked amazing.
So yeah Houdini is the best of the best, but you have to put some SERIOUS time, effort and money into reaching those highest levels. If you're not interested in mastering Python, then I think a Blender-Pro or C4D-Pro would be able to do comparable or better work than a mid-level Houdini user who can't use the coding abilities.
Personally, I'm not a coder and I don't enjoy writing code. I started getting rather familiar with "Adobe Flash" years ago which used (AS3) code.I couldn't write AS3 from scratch, but AS3 snippets were all over the web and I became an expert at scrounging & utilizing the code snippets I needed to make cool things happen in my projects. Then BAM - after a few years Flash was shelved, killed & banned by Microsoft. all that AS3 code - USELESS, and every webpage written with it was now INACCESSIBLE. Python reminds me of that fiasco. 🙄.. An artist shouldn't have to write code to do the cool stuff you showed in your intro-clip.
Personally, I'm going to still try and learn Houdini on the side just because they have a free version. But my focus is going to be Blender, which is quickly becoming the hottest & most advanced 3D program out there. At this rate, it will surpass Houdini one day soon because it's got too much love & 3rd party support, it's much easier to learn, and it's growing wayyy too fast - while Houdini remains stagnant "Kryptonite" because of it's bank-busting perpetual pricing & Rubiks Cube difficulty level. ✌
What a novel! I'm sure Blender could catch up if it was specialized into one field but since it's a do it all software it needs much much more developers to achieve that. But let's subscribe to Blender Cloud and we'll get there one day :)
@@BadNormals - Ha! Sorry about the encyclopedia, I like to write and I type fast on this computer... so sometimes I forget people really only wanna see a few sentences at most - my bad! 😇 I'll keep this one short and just say... Blender is only on 3.1 right now and has already made Lightwave obsolete and made many 3D Studio users already converted over. Maya users are starting to convert now also and it's currently neck & neck with Cinema 4D but pulling ahead because of "Grease Pencil".
So I'd say by version 5 or 6 it will be a Houdini killer🔥💀🔥but without the ultra-complexity and it doesn't mandate Python to get it's top abilities; nor does it cost $3,000... That's pretty bad ass! 🤗
First video of yours I’ve seen. Dude I was rolling.
I am trying to learn myself Houdini, but as like you, the LOP COP SOP things are not understandable. Please share what you will learn in near future not just tutorial. I bet you can get the principles and logic of Houdini much faster. :) Peace.
SOP = Surface operators, it's for modifying static geometries(This is the most important context as everything starts from SOP)
DOP = Dynamic operators, it's where simulation can happen
COP = Composit operators, it's like Nuke in Houdini. (It's very old and outdated though)
CHOP = Channel operators, it's for animating parameters procedurally
ROP = Render operators, it's where you can set up render nodes and render
LOP = Lighting operators, this is kinda new but it's basically USD authoring context.
Thanks for the insight!
They are just different contexts.. comparable to the different areas in blender.
When that cube fell for the first time, i nearly lost it. hahahah
Houdini is a great name for the software because once you learn it you feel like a magician. Just the learning curve is effing extreme.
As game artist with 20 years of maya experience, going to Blender is interesting but the interface is extremely difficult for me... so many shortcut you need to know (something about photoshop I hated until I happily cut it out of my workflow), but it also hasnt been widely adopted by the industry yet. Which I think will change in the next few years since Autodesk doesnt add significant features to Maya or Max anymore.
But by far the biggest win for Houdini is Houdini Engine. To be able to edit or even simulate Houdini assets within the UE4/5 editor is next level.
It has a place in our pipeline since its initial release in 1996. We don't know what we would do without it. 😉
What's great about Houdini is you don't really need to be an add on jockey. You can't make whatever you need inside the program.
Woah, didn't realize my channel featured here. Awesome, thanks dude.
What a pleasant surprise to see you here!
@@BadNormals :) I stumbled upon this video when looking for some stuff in Blender as I am in the process of creating realistic smoke tutorial :). I guess, I should also thank google for bringing up my video. :) Keep up the good work brother.
4:21 The "-op" stands for "operator" (for example DOP is dynamic operator and SOP is surface operator)
Thanks for the information!
Hahaha! Funny watching this as a Houdini user. Maybe I should make the opposite video
Houdini makes easy things hard, and hard things possible.
Installed, everything works, thanks!
ROP - Rendering Operators
POP - Particle Operator
VOP - Vector Op
SOP - Surface Op
SHOP - Shading Op
DOP - Dynamic Op
COP - Composite Op
Basically Operators...
I laughed so hard at CHOT, TOP, etc 😂😂😂
Houdini you have the added bonus of being highly sort after in multiple industries = rarer skillsets = higher demand = more money
You are hilarious 😆. Love this video
Thanks for pointing me to Houdini. I am totally done with Blender. It is hopeless off the bat. Both tools are free (with the apprentice version of Houdini). I came from 3ds max to Blender which is a hopeless mission
hi i saw the chocolate at 0:23 - 0:28 seemingly using geometry nodes? Do you have a video tutorial of how to do exactly that in blender? i hv seen tutorials of blender geometry nodes scattering objects around an object but that looks a bit different.
I have a video on my channel, yes, but it's using the old geometry nodes so you have to enable legacy geometry nodes and developer extras to follow. Or figure out how to do this in 3.0.
What if im compelty new in 3d and programming at all? I want to create 3d VFX effect.
wow what macbook specs are you using? I thought you'd be on windows machine with a 3090-4090
Houdini is not that hard, this program is rather just deep. But there are reasons for all this, and as soon as you get to the task in which Houdini is useful to you - you understand why everything is arranged this way and not otherwise. Suddenly things begin to make sense.
Kids these days think that everything is fine easily and quickly. The don’t seem toename to take the time to actually read through the basics.
Houdini documentation is actually pretty good and you need that basic foundation in order to understand how to do stuff. And when you’ve read it, it actually makes tons of sense.
Checkout the axiom gas solver. It is an addon thing and it makes gas simulations a lot more readable and faster since it can use GPU
I will!
More Houdini videos! Absolutely fun in Blender-artists clear see vision))) :D
I started using houdini about 1 year ago. Finally i can transform cube into another cube.
Morphing at it's finest
looks like a very cool program, that i’ll probably never use
I'm way to lazy to try anything new, so thank you for doing this so I don't have to.
Houdini looks confusing. I have never tried it because it's way to expensive for someone like me who does this stuff as a hobby.
It's apprentice version is free.
@@bluedonkeyattack But don't you need to be a student in school or college to get it?
Sooo... I searched hudini explosion object tutorial.. Clicked this video.. And he searched hudini explosion object tutorials and now i am watch a tutorial of the host watching a tutorial... And its 2am... 🙂 I don't if this is a dream... 🙂
I enjoyed watching this video and the way u talked! 🥰❤
Interesting subject, as best I can determine just what that subject is. I find this fellow completely incomprehensible.
Video quality is getting better mate! Love Houdini. Super beginner, but still avoiding the DOPs. Just slowly struggling through SOPs right now. I had no idea you were a 5 year blender user. Makes a lot of sense since you're really good.
Good to hear that! I started using Blender in 8th grade. Started with the tutor4u coffee cup tutorial.
As a vfx student using houdini. No, definetly not usable in a reel. The effect doesn’t work with the concept, because there is no concept. If you want to destroy something you got to tell what material is this thing made of. Here its just a torus with no indications of what make it explode,what is the intention of the sim / purpose. To be clear. For a real demo reel, you would need to make it fall from a certain point or make something interact with the object to get the understanding that there is something creating the sim. Also for indication of what material you use, make dust, smoke, debris, how light or hard it falls off and etc. 9but that isi9f you are seriously making a demo reel, for the purpose of that video, it is good.
Do another comparison once the everything nodes update in blender releases
Sure.
Houdini is the only software that is just a king in its software
But also yea, I don’t think any professional software can ever be so intuitive that you can just open it for the first time with no knowledge of the concepts and start making cool stuff - even in blender you can’t do that. So I don’t really see the point of a “first impression” of a software I know nothing about.
i feel like im learning more from this video than an actual tutorial.
What I've learned from watching this video:
Chop, top, vop, cop, pop .. is a seizure from a Houdini user... ok
Well now i can swap 3d meshes as in this video in Blender with geometry nodes now.
how is it so far .. i've just started and im really overwheld
OMG this is SHOP TOP CHOP LOP ROP COP2 PRO NEXT LEVEL!!
This sounds hilariously like me when I look in to Houdini every other year.
Great video brother 👍👍
I do not know what does that nodes do but i only see company logo
Once you get into it it’s quite simple the only DCC that is close to blender is Houdini but blender wins as always in $$ love the blender community Respect
Houdini isn't hard, it just isn't for everyone, I was using Maya and I thought it was super messy and unorganized, Houdini made much more sense to me and I've been using it for years since. Than again if you expect to open a software and using it without studying than yeah that's not gonna happen.
Never used Houdini and Blender to model something although I want to know how to animate
Cool video, though it took me days just to get used to the viewport in Houdini after Blender, and to be able to do just some rigid body sims that were half decent. Beats me how there are people out there that can learn so much in just a couple of hours, and I'm quite dedicated.
0:51 well yeah for startup, BUT holy fuck is it fast for simulations and like any other computation.
Indeed, Blender will lose that advantage pretty quickly if you start simulating water in it.