Blender user tries Houdini for the FIRST time! 

Anyone got plans to test it out as well?

It's called Houdini because a good magician never reveals how his software works

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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 !

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...

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.

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.

It's really nice to see someone so skilled struggling when they first learn something too. Great vid!

Your title reeled me in. Your sense of humor wins my subscription. Good work young sir!

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 :-)

Man, your production quality is improving massively! Awesome stuff. 👍

Been really enjoying your videos, keep it up!

make a "Blender user tries Maya for the FIRST time".. i know its sounds easy but it's really hard lol... (great video btw)

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.

I love your positive approach! thank you for the video )

I love your channel... nicely edited + fun / positive vibes, ...please keep it up!

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

heck yeah! I've been wanting to try houdini, I'm excited to see how much transfers from Blender

Love your channel man! Super inspiring!

I've never been so entertained in my life this is so fun to watch 😆

They didn't call the Program Houdini because of the surreal results, they called it Houdini because nobody knows how it works

Love your editing ;D

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 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

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

Been using it for years. When you get into the workflow its way more logic than any other package

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)

As a blender user that UI is so hard to look at. Houdini looks nuts lol

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.

Great video brother 👍👍

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 enjoyed watching this video and the way u talked! 🥰❤

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

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

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.

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. ✌

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).

First video of yours I’ve seen. Dude I was rolling.

great video had a great time

love ur vids!

You are hilarious 😆. Love this video

Really nice and helpful... Thanks!

Haha,😁, Love how the sun sets whilst following my tutorial. Very funny. You got a sub brother.

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.

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.

Installed, everything works, thanks!

Lol made me laugh with the sound design at 4:40. Nice video - Thanks for the insight.

3:48 🤣🤣 the Sound of fans was so funny 🤣 hahahahahahahah . Thanks for your Humor sense ! Love it!!! 👍🏻👍🏻💪🏻

More Houdini videos! Absolutely fun in Blender-artists clear see vision))) :D

i feel like im learning more from this video than an actual tutorial.

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 .

amazing, informative and funny! :-D

This is exactly what I felt like when using Houdini first

ROP - Rendering Operators POP - Particle Operator VOP - Vector Op SOP - Surface Op SHOP - Shading Op DOP - Dynamic Op COP - Composite Op Basically Operators...

Houdini makes easy things hard, and hard things possible.

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.

Your friend is really a professional Houdini artist 💀

I laughed so hard at CHOT, TOP, etc 😂😂😂

Had me laughing with the rops crops trops lol

Hahaha! Funny watching this as a Houdini user. Maybe I should make the opposite video

Speechless💥✨

You make some of the best 3D software and design vids on RU-vid. Seriously good content

looks like a very cool program, that i’ll probably never use

When that cube fell for the first time, i nearly lost it. hahahah

Woah, didn't realize my channel featured here. Awesome, thanks dude.

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

I'm way to lazy to try anything new, so thank you for doing this so I don't have to.

This is how i feel opening blender

It has a place in our pipeline since its initial release in 1996. We don't know what we would do without it. 😉

Thanks for sharing your experience with Houdini ! I find it unreasonable to complain so much of it since you're expected to look up a tutorial before making a simulation in the most complex CG software in the world ;)

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.

Love the humor

Funny video, good stuff

Excellent

Houdini you have the added bonus of being highly sort after in multiple industries = rarer skillsets = higher demand = more money

It was fun! :)

i love u so much bro, thanks very much

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.

This sounds hilariously like me when I look in to Houdini every other year.

He had to explode that screaming emoji, that goes AAAAAAAAAAHH

thanks so much man

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.

always favourite software blender

Interesting subject, as best I can determine just what that subject is. I find this fellow completely incomprehensible.

TY brother

Could you do more of Houdini tutorials for Blender User? i think that could be a very good niche for you

HQ ultra pro Max level work

Houdini just announced native Metal support.

All I ever see from Houdini users is premade assets and premade effects posted as if they created something.

Yeah. Lest get through this amazing forest of Houdini. More like big dark and scary jungle with monster node hierarchies.

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'd like to see more Houdini stuff ʘ‿ʘ

Thanks!

You are funny, man!🤣😂😅. Yeh, I tried Houdini several times ... almost giving up on it if it wasnt for they fantastic marketing campaign with that incredible eye candy!!!!

I started using houdini about 1 year ago. Finally i can transform cube into another cube.