jamination wrote: ↑09 Oct 2018, 00:17
I do a lot of character animation which is why I am so reluctant to switch to anything. I would like to add some special effects stuff in addition, fire, smoke, basic collision type stuff, nothing too complicated. I am finding that I have more and more trouble keeping my Momentum license working. I thought Houdini "might" be good for those things, but to be truthful I don't want a HUGE learning curve, I just don't have the time, I am already too busy. I love to work with ICE and I am comfortable using it to my abilities, I do also a lot of motion graphics stuff which I find ICE perfect for. I have tried to use the mograph stuff in C4D, however I find it a bit limiting and I have much more control using ICE.
For character animation, Houdini isn't there yet imho, although in v17 there is another set of nice tools to be found. But compared to the vast amount of tools and plugins to be found for Maya, there's some work to be done.
e.g. MGear is just awesome, and easily combined with caching tools or ATOM, you can quickly set up rigs and start animation or swapping data.
As much as most of us like to hate AD and/or Maya, it IS the animation standard in the industry.
Looking at doing animation in C4D, especially character animation, is quite the pain.
Workflow isn't really optimized towards that kind of animation, and working with the animator curve editor and UI is just horribly painful...
Houdini, at least for the time being, will be something running next to the software most of us are already using. Great for the FX stuff, and or connecting HDA's via the Engine.
With all the new game tools coming out, I also see a great usage of Houdini related to realtime stuff and games.
I do like all the new stuff they're doing with modeling, animation tools etc., but for me it's still slower compared to 'old school' workflows.
With H17 around the corner for download I suggest start kicking the tires, and slowly move over some of the workflows, or at least test some stuff to see if it fits you and your studio.
As someone said, Houdini almost never crashes, and the procedural nature does comes in handy on larger projects, where the director wants to do 'last minute changes' without breaking the whole pipeline.