Houdini will change the character rigging & animation game

As we anticipate the major release of Houdini 20, here is what I think about what the kineFX toolset will do for the character rigging and animation landscape. I think it will turn it on its head! #houdini #rigging #preview #characteranimation #3dartist

[@beachchickensmedia]

I love how passionate and positive the houdini community is

[@FictionCautious]

Houdini deserves all the success it gets! It is probably among the smartest, most capable and powerful 3D software out there.

[@mohammedahmed4197]

I can't wait for Houdini 20 🔥

[@heytraile]

very excited about what’s to come!

[@pogo575]

h20 character animation tools and workflow confirmed to dominate the character animation industry :P

[@PowerfullUs]

A year ago I was crazy about feathers, NOW I'M CRAZY ABOUT EVERYTHING OMG OT'S COMING

[@heytraile]

can’t wait to see the new animation environment

[@TroubleShotVFX]

Houdini needs to become about 100x more intuitive that it currently is to take animation away form Maya. It requires way too much coding to achieve simple goals and that barrier is way too high for most people. 20 looks like a step in the right direction but we'll see. From where I'm standing Houdini has a uphill battle until they figure out how to simplify their workflows..

[@fastlearner292]

You aren't wrong about it being not good for animation, but the talk about it being not intuitive or "doing too much coding for simple tasks" isn't true at all. Houdini has different workflows for different stuff, it's just that the workflow for animation is very limited (good for mocap tho). I think eventually both Houdini and Blender animation will be better than Maya, because as a long term user of Maya the "updates" they do are absolutely nasty. Anything after Maya 2022 isn't even substantial enough and the "updates" looks like 1-3 Houdini hotfixes. Autodesk is a graveyard for 3d apps and it's obvious that they have simply stopped caring (other than milking out every penny out of people ofcourse)

[@gcharb2d]

APEX is an auto-rig, it takes about an hour to rig a character with it and KineFX, I never had to paint vertices since KineFX was introduced, you end-up with a fully rigged, production ready character with graph, and it's fully procedural and modular, and APEX come with an animation context that completely occludes Houdini and is superfast, even with several characters, APEX tutorials are popping up, look them up, it's well worth a look!

[@maxrose8845]

Glad somebody feels the same :D

[@heytraile]

once H20 is released, I can see most riggers and animators exploring the possibilities of using Houdini

[@HristoVelev]

We've been playing with it for a while. It's very powerful but when you think in a Houdini way - compositing and layering animation, adding features when you need them. It's very enabling to the Houdini generalist. The traditional animators don't have that mindset though, and they won't learn it :)

[@chr1st0pher]

Give it some time, let’s check back in in 5 years and see how things have or haven’t shifted. H20 is starting to add stuff targeting these animators specifically

[@HristoVelev]

@@chr1st0pher it's a tall order :) they are a very conservative bunch. My money is on empowering the generalist first, then fomo driven progress for the traditionalists :)

[@chr1st0pher]

@@HristoVelev its gonna take a lot of work, but i think the main thing on their side is that sidefx is much more invested in improving houdini and addressing that market than autodesk is interested in improving maya and keeping that market.

[@HristoVelev]

@@chr1st0pher hah yes that's not a high bar 😀

[@creeper20ps]

​ @chr1st0pher Naw. Too short, people and studios are too busy. Maybe within 10-15 years? ​ @HristoVelev I think animators are just too stubborn to change. And about Houdini taking over... Maybe? It was the same with Blender. Did it shake up the market... Kind of. Did it get adapted by professionals/studios and school. Very very little. The only way I can see how It can do it in 10-15 years. If more schools/courses online or offline made Houdini as the main app to learn. And have some Maya users retire, to make way for Houdini artist. This will also give everyone to readjust their pipeline/workflow, along the way.

[@gcharb2d]

Okay, I played a lot with APEX, and I am loving it, APEX tutorials are beginning to pop up, which is always a good sign!

[@johnli4006]

Man, you made me want to buy sidefx stocks 🚀🚀🚀

[@spaceexpireaudio666]

I`m always impressed with Houdini but there`s no way I`ll ever dive in this alien interface😄

[@heytraile]

lol, funnily, I think the interface is the easy thing. It’s literally just nodes that you connect together and each node has its parameters and then you keep track of your attributes in the geometry spreadsheet! That’s it! You should definitely give it a try.

[@spaceexpireaudio666]

@@heytraile I guess I`m just a lazy Blender user, a few years ago I thought I would try Houdini but realized that`s too much of work. No problems with nodes in particular. I do it in Blender, Davinci Fusion and trying UE5 as well

[@heytraile]

LOL yeah I get it; I'm more a VEX person than I am VOPS in Houdini, but since I started using Unreal where blueprints are more like VOPS (and I'm too lazy at the moment to learn the nuances of C++) I understand how challenging it can be at times. @@spaceexpireaudio666

[@ChrisKania]

🔥💪🏼

[@Geometrynode]

You could barely rig character faces with bones in houdini right now, most facerig that I have seen in houdini use blendshapes… rigify in blender can easily… i hope they really polich the rigging in houdini and make it more straight forward to set up , other than that kinefx is great

[@Cybored.]

I learned zero information of how or why Houdini will change the character rigging & animation game.

[@heytraile]

Hopefully after the presentations on october 26th, more insights will be clear, but SOPS in houdini is the most powerful geometry manipulation environment I know of right now and bringing rigging and animation into it, essentially making rigging almost like a bunch of modeling operations should be really powerful. Plus dynamics is now integrated into the animation workflow with ragdolls etc. But of course, SideFX must first deliver proper high level rigging and animation tools. Let’s hope they do in H20!

[@Cybored.]

@@heytraile Is it better than Cascadeur?

[@heytraile]

@@Cybored. never used cascadeur, so, really can’t say.

[@gcharb2d]

@@Cybored. Cascadeur isn't a DCC, it is an animation tool that is meant to be part of a pipeline, you still need a DCC like Houdini to rig the assets!

[@Cybored.]

@@gcharb2d I believe they mentioned that they're adding a rigging tool soon

[@Swdgame]

Not if you still have to write everything yourself. And you do have to write everything yourself. For example there is literally only 2 ik contraint nodes. To be fair, with a proper technical artist, you can write everything pretty fast. But now everything you write is yours' to maintain and update and to keep bug free.

[@heytraile]

There are quite a bit of high level nodes in Houdini now. A new constraint system coming in H20 so definitely check it out. Also, may I ask what kind of stuff you want to do that you where you see Houdini does not have a solution for?

[@Huguillon]

That´s an ad

[@gcharb2d]

What do you mean it's an ad?

[@Huguillon]

@@gcharb2d kzbin.info/www/bejne/sIXZmnuuqLili9U

[@ORTyOW]

Bruh what are you doing... I swear I had a panic attack watching your video. I'm not joking. Your mic, editing, video embeds, sound-design etc. Pls fix this. I'm not a hater, but this video harmed my heath no joke

[@ORTyOW]

Especially these gifs... Sorry

[@ladyville3]

Sensitive much?

[@heytraile]

feedback appreciated, hopefully the next one is to your liking! cheers.

[@sridharan5172]

Maya animation vs houdini animation which one is best ?

[@heytraile]

Wait until H20 release to see how good the new rigging and animation environments really are. But until then, definitely Maya.

[@gregorybennings8718]

@@heytraileand the verdict is?

[@heytraile]

@@gregorybennings8718 For sure it’s extremely powerful stuff! I’m extremely frustrated with the initial lack of documentation on APEX so I’m having to delve blindly and stumble through the pre built rig components networks. I’m waiting on a APEX masterclass sidefx says is coming soon! But initial thoughts is APEX and SOPS is definitely more powerful and flexible than anything I’ve used before for rigging(C4D and Maya). In terms of animation, it’s a no brainer IMO! definitely check out animation within APEX, it’s truly next level stuff the way you can animate and modify the rig graph on the fly. I think the main thing to keep in mind with APEX rigging is that the KineFX skeleton is completely a separate entity from the APEX graph! Even though you build the skeleton with KineFX, APEX just uses the joint positions for reference for its own transforms. It’s obviously wickedly flexible and powerful.

[@sridharan5172]

​@@heytraileHey bro now what is your answer the houdini 20 is released

[@sridharan5172]

​@@heytraileBro what do you think now? 😅

[@gregorybennings8718]

This guy sounds like he works for SideFX

[@heytraile]

lol, I don’t but I really believe the procedural workflow that houdini is bringing to rigging and animation will be a game changer! I’m a bit disappointed with the initial lack of info surrounding APEX but just by the time I’ve spent messing with it, it’s undoubtedly the most flexible way I’ve seen to rig and animate!

[@AdobadoFantastico]

These are cool rig features, but they're not the main bottleneck on the animation process. Playback speed is mega critical, the entire production is bottlenecked by the ability of animators to input changes and see feedback. Nothing alternative is close to maya's parallel rig evaluation. The maya core has a technological edge. The difference in license fees is laughable compared to the cost of an entire production being slowed down because everyone is waiting on preview renders due to a single digit fps viewport. Imagine being offered a new renderer that's 5x slower, it's a non-starter. No amount of cool functions will be enough until they can make it give results faster. I'm saying this as someone who would LOVE a serious alternative. But Autodesk bought Motionbuilder(which is actually faster than maya) the only peer in that realm and are slowly trying to ruin it enough to get the remainder off and onto Maya.

[@heytraile]

I think we should wait to see how the APEX graph and new viewport enhancements work in terms of playback speed. APEX looks like something totally brand new so I would find it surprising if SideFX didn’t make playback speed an absolute priority! But I fully agree, I’ve never used maya parallel evaluation but I’ve seen it in action and it’s cool! I truly hope sidefx has given a lot of thought to viewport interactions for animators.

[@cali-zior]

██ houdini is FREE ??? •

[@virtualmilkers1747]

No Houdini isn't free, so Blender will still be the go-to animation programme for hobbiest.

[@andreriv5119]

for learning yes its free

[@philipejem3614]

Maya is still best in rigging and animation. Houdini best in simulation

[@teekeshkumawat5764]

seems like the era of blender will be gone soon :D

[@heytraile]

I’m not a blender user but it’s obviously an amazing software and I think it will continue to grow; So will Houdini, and both will be relevant but I’m rooting for houdini to build the best animation environment.

[@gcharb2d]

Blender will remain the best choice for hobbyists, it has never been a thing in the Industry, and I doubt it will ever become one, not with Blender not supporting Industry standards!

[@lewistaylorFX]

I don't think so. H20 will introduce features that address some of the main complaints with kinefx(I can't say anymore), but you still have a ways to go in terns of the interface and performance of rigs in Maya. The future is bright for sure, but I don't agree it's going to turn Animation and rigging on it's head.

[@juhanikarlsson160]

Performance of rigs in Maya 😅 I remember seeing Disney talk of multi threading Maya by opening multiple instances and caching rig between them. Maya is horrible in terms of performance.

[@lewistaylorFX]

@@juhanikarlsson160 you’ve probably not used it in recent years.

[@hd-be7di]

@@juhanikarlsson160 Obviously lewis doesn't use Houdini and is hanging on to Maya due to all the time and emotions invested in it which is understandable. When something new and better comes along most people are reluctant to change. Anyone that will use Houdini for anything will never go back to Maya or any other of Autodesk's or Maxon's dinosaurs. I've been in the field since the 90's if that's worth 2 cents. Managing Maya's custom pipeline... ask the studios how they like it after having used digital assets in Houdini... :P

[@miriades]

@@hd-be7diyeah the more they invested in a tool, the more they are reluctant to a better new one. Maya has qualities but complex rig performance isn’t one of them. That alone could very much make Maya users curious enough to try Houdini and discover new ways and possibilities. Houdini will take Maya’s place the same way Maya did to Softimage decades ago.

[@pavinivfx]

The problem of Houdini is the lack of information and updated tutorials. Many are generic and outdated.

[@creeper20ps]

Not only that, It's always the same, basic simple tutorials. That everyone is teaching. The intermediate and advance courses that goes deep are few.

[@poly_xp]

Respectfully, that is not true at all. Almost everything there is to know about Houdini can be found online from tutorials, courses to the documentation. Furthermore, most of them are not outdated at all. There's lots of tut's for Houdini 18, 19 and even already for 20. The teachings from older tutorials can still be applied to the newer versions of houdini, except maybe for things like kinefx. As for them being generic, I think we must have a different definition of the word. I'd argue houdini maybe has the most non-generic tutorials on youtube compared to other dcc. Just look at : Antagma, Simon Houdini, whatifound, Junichiro Horikawa, Indie Pixel, 9between, hipflask.... the list goes on! As for what @creeper20ps said about the advanced stuff. I feel that if you're an advanced user, you've committed to the software, and should be willing to pay for courses behind a paywall or just do allot of self experimentation.

[@wonkaytry]

over excitement = yikes

[@Skycers]

LOL

[@cinema4d595]

now maya is dead

[@philipejem3614]

Wishful thinking

[@GIBRIDQ]

fool