Professor rants about Geometry Nodes in Blender - what's great and what's not so great.

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Yes we still have some black frames in there, yes the audio is still slightly offset, no we don't have a proper intro yet... but... you get the idea.
In our second (or first depending on how you count) episode of our new nerd rants, Manu gives Mo a rundown of why he's excited about Blender's geometry nodes, what they are capable of and what they are still incapable of.

[@ViralKiller]

Manuel is like the Houdini final level boss

[@Gichanasa]

Very nice insight from the professor. Blender provides basic to mid-level capability tools for modeling, sculpting, animation, video editing/compositing, and now procedural... which is ideal for indy artists who need to mimic the production houses that use the AAA level applications like Maya, Houdini, ZBrush, Nuke, etc. Blender probably will not be able to replace any of those tools in the industry (as the professor mentioned, the Blender foundation probably doesn't intend to, while the users usually wish that it will come true), but it is a nice sandbox where people can get a taste of what the high-end applications are about, at no cost to the users. Nice to have for sure.

[@sonario6489]

The Blender Foundation does intend to replace the other tools actually ....at least that's the mission statement.

[@Gichanasa]

@@sonario6489 Corporations need to be able to call and make demands to the tool provider when there are problems, which is unfortunately not feasible for open source usage... they would rather pay to use the tools and have that right to have the guaranteed support. There seem to be increasingly more studios using Blender these days in their mix, but Blender fully replacing them seems to be still far off, if ever... even though I personally love the notion.

[@sonario6489]

@@Gichanasa I know. Lack of technical support is one of the biggest hurdles keeping Blender from being top dog

[@davidmcsween]

"...do you think they come up with all of this themselves?" Hahaha, OMG have you seen the rest of Blender? Who else decided that Z up is the right up and right click select is default :D

[@carso1500]

have you not keep up with blender in like 3 years?

[@RazvanFlore]

I like the conclusion that Houdini and Blender are perfect companions. It's not just about what's the best software, it's about the endless combinations you can make with it. One thing I wish for the future is to have an easy-to-use bridge between them.

[@hectorescobar9450]

That is something that would complete my workflow.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

What a pity Houdini has such terrible Python support.

[@GrischaTheissen]

I would love to see a C4D MoGraph system in Blender. Competition for Houdini is probably a couple of years away but a Cinema 4D replacement would be amazing. Only scratched the surface of GN in Blender but someone could just make a great UI for it and sell it as Blender MoGraph.

[@StrayVertex]

It's worth checking out the rework proposal called "Fields and Anonymous Attributes" as that seems to be where it's headed for Geometry Nodes. You, good Sirs, could provide some valuable feedback :)

[@juliocargnin]

Yes… I was expecting the conversation touch this aspect. It seems the development decided to start it again with a different perspective and as we noticed with the “fields” builds things started to look much more familiar and approachable.

[@divyanshmishra6834]

A nerd rant about integrating machine learning in Houdini?

[@flashgiz1]

full blown procedural nuclear aircraft carrier that Houdini is, sounds about right

[@AcademiaCriativa]

Thank you for the mature and professional discussion. Very often, the Blender subject derails but you guys showed that professionals can talk about software on a very inteligent way. I agreee with you, as a Blender user and a 3D generalist, the future of Geometry Nodes is bright because it will give users some procedural power that otherwise I could only find on another software. If you add the massive add-on community, then things will be even bigger in my opinion.

[@walabe8]

Love where the channel is going

[@HAZD_xyz]

I really like how Professor doesn't know everything about blender but did know and point out the important things in a conversation like that, covering funds, approach, pros, and cons. Very objectively! That brought the conversation to a very high level. Nice!

[@RodTebisxTD]

Hey guys, please chapter these rants videos, would be nice to go direct to the subject. Thanks.

[@nitinsharmax129]

We want more tutorials about attributes and that field nodes experimental branch if possible

[@JimmyGunawanX]

Houdini and Blender = can be like Batman and Robin. Houdini Engine for Blender would be a nice combo. If Blender has Geometry Nodes 3D modeling tools that works like in edit mode but with interface like BoxCutter (modifier), then it might be interesting.

[@DarkMagician903]

This was initially an interesting discussion, but sounded very one-sided talking about why Blender is worse than Houdini, whilst not understanding driving factors for community-driven projects

[@pom791]

Agreed, not surprised that entire interview was an echo box with a bias towards Houdini

[@Distop-IA]

I feel that there's a lack of discussion on what blender can do that Houdini lacks, probably not as "friendly" as Houdini vex which is basically C, blender still can do most of it inside its python console. As well great additions as Sverchok nodes made by the community. Houdini cant do sculpting, specially needed on cfx and cloth workflows but when your sup comes around and ask for an art directed shape, try and sculpt blendshapes inside Houdini and tell how that goes. Because it makes me want to kill myself. In conclusion what I heard from this discussion is " blender is deficient, blender is deficient, blender is deficient... oh they work really well together"

[@zevnikov]

You guys just smile trougout my long hours of learning Houdni. Thank you for your amazing contribution to this beautiful craft. You simply rock. You shoud become Saints od Sidefx software.

[@BoboTheImp]

Absolutely dying to know what you think of the attribute field branch. It's much less "houdini like". Your feedback would be most welcome!!

[@xanzuls]

12:30 tbh, Blender foundation had this node based modeling and particles concept like decades ago. You can find development videos of node based particles and stuff on the Blender YT channel that are really really old. They just never quite had the fund and resources to pull it off, so it took them a long time to finally go to that direction and slowly develop nodes to interact with all parts of Blender.

[@luizfellipe1206]

I'm a simple man, I just want blender to make a plugin for unity to expose and modify parameters of geometry nodes!

[@aweidenhammer]

Your insights are valuable. I wonder if you are communicating at all with the blender foundation or developers with your thoughts on how they might improve the software?

[@earychow839]

The top comment by Stray has already mentioned but yeah the fields proposal won the competition between the two proposals to replace the original design of the attribute processor, so 12:30 "It is weird how they come to same conclusion as SideFX did a few decades earlier" , no, we have decided to not go down that path but to go with the Fields appraoch, which is very new in my opinion.

[@JacobMerrill]

Don't forget upbge, You can make games using eevee.

[@GHOST_001_Bravo]

Entagma has a very pure quality content..

[@workflowinmind]

0:18 Manuel's "no" ahahaha

[@pacpak]

Hahah that why I put Houdini and blender close to each other in my toolbar because of the same color and best software ever. It should be juste one.

[@bunksoup8137]

I’m with Mo on the suspicion that Blender dev team probably does look at other packages at least to know what tools to build. Geometry nodes really is Houdini jr, there’s just no way they’ve managed to not be influenced by adjacent programs. Having said that, I love blender and I hope they develop it enough to push Houdini even further.

[@pom791]

Youd be surprised how often devs accross platforms look up at each other for reference, goes both ways

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Remember that Blender has a fully generic node-editor framework available for addons to use, and many of them have done just that -- Animation Nodes, Sverchok and Sorcar, just to name a few. As these become popular in the community, naturally the Blender developers will take ideas from them.

[@HristoVelev]

Interesting perspective, thanks guys :) We at Bottleship are also Houdini / Blender - it's a great combo indeed :)

[@Entagma]

Great to hear it's finding an increasing adoption! Cheers, Mo

[@ryderbrooks1783]

The graphical composition of the node functions is absurd. Give me a DSL with a robust type checking/debugging and let me subclass stuff and code what I want.

[@kokoze]

Nicee!

[@goodguy7883]

Where to learn this cg developer stuff, anybody please let me know

[@violentpixelation5486]

I enjoyed this discussion very much! So great that you guys are featuring #Blender so much. Love it. I'm a small Patreon supporter but will check out your new Blender course sooner or later for sure. Keep up the great work!

[@disruptive_innovator]

He's right, it's important that my software's colors are coordinated.

[@AK56fire]

Could you please tell about the professor. I'm not aware who he is.. There would be more people who would like to know more about him.

[@devmishra18]

Would love to hear a talk about Mo’s “eating behavior”:)

[@Entagma]

Sweets for dinner. That's about it. Read about this diet in some sporting magazine. Might not have been scientifically accurate...

[@michaelerla5253]

Would be curious Entagma's POV on the development of Maya's Bifrost, or even the newer C4D Scene Nodes

[@ajaciedjuhh]

You should have this talk again in a year. To see how it's changed.

[@pragmaticvfx]

This is awesome guys! I think one idea for your videos could be to interview Houdini artists here. The format you created is just perfectly setup! Kind of like Lex Fridman of Houdini :)

[@yousefyaghoobi282]

Awsome podcast 👌

[@3d-illusions]

They’ve removed that ability to creat attributes in the tree now. Ruined it. New rant please :)

[@HandleBar3D]

This was a joy to watch

[@MrThomasgeorgegroves]

I could listen to Manu talk for hours

[@MrFrgtme]

More Blender tuts guys please, you are great!

[@zipazip]

12 Minutes in, no ranting going on... ;D

[@abv250]

I don't think 'rant' was the proper adjective - perhaps used as a draw, but not representative of the discussion. I loved this analysis. I'm just learning Blender geometry nodes, and this gave me some much-needed context for what I'm struggling with (such as applying colour to instances and vertices). The tutorials out there tend to show how to achieve an effect without explaining why something works, wherein the learning experience could be generalized into a broader skillset.

[@julio1148]

What makes me very optimistic about the future of Blender is that: community is engaged, developers seem happy to work there and are very capable, and the software evolves tremendously with each full release.

[@Smuglu]

One thing that's great about Blender, is that it's a great tool to get introduced to all kinds of 3D modeling pipelines in a very familiar environment. Once you get the hang of one thing in Blender, you can often apply same shortcuts and logics, when you start to tackle something new. IE: I tried to get in to Houdini like 4 years ago and it felt completely alien. But once I first played around with Shader Nodes in Blender, it gave me a easy way to get used to nodes and now when they introduced Geometry Nodes, it gave me a very familiar way to get in to these node-type modeling things. I plan to check Houdini again, once I get a bit more in to geo-nodes.

[@jefflhama]

I stills use animation nodes and I have a hope that it was integrated in the everything nodes project, it was so easy and a please to use, geometry nodes is so....so.....weird, it was the main reason of my start in houdini this year

[@mexihkano]

Moving to Blender because I wan't it to match with Houdini

[@strangeapprentice]

Great talk! like you guys to "rant" about Cinema4d Nodes vs Blender Nodes? What happened to you guys with Cinema4d? Did you stop using it? Tell us your story please. Thanks love you guys!

[@gerdokurt]

I think the products can exist side by side. I try it with a comparison: A big production is like an orchestra of sofwares. You use the very best specific softwares for specific tasks. In a large scaled project the losses due to differences in performance, problems in exchanging, inconveniences etc. usually exceeds the money you "save" in not chosing the best software very fast! Blender is like a Keyboard/e-piano. You can make all the different sounds of an orchestra with the Keyboard.It`s much easier than master all the instuments, you can compose and make concepts very fast and last but not least, many jobs dont ask for the full orchestra Blender is a great opportunity and a real game changer for small companies or independent artists. I dont think it will increase its market share by taking away from Proprietary Sofware. It`s increasing its market share by creating an entirely new segment of studios, customers and projects.

[@salarycat]

Haha... the subtly clickbait title :D He didn't rant much though, it seems he likes it but wants more nodes!

[@jamaljamalwaziat1002]

Big thanks

[@GifCoDigital]

For any Houdini users that have looked at Blender GeoNodes what do you think about having the params in the actual nodes in the node tree instead of just these kind of node icons Houdini has but all the parameters are in a separate pane. Haven't used Houdini enough to make my mind up what I like better.

[@hkspowers003]

In my opinion it won't be great for very large networks. During production we often end up building very large networks which take some effort to keep the flow clean and organized. Having these huge nodes won't allow for a very clean network, plus if you are only going to show the main parameters on the node but still need a parameter view to check the other parameters, then you might as well just stick to having all the parameters in a separate parameter view and keep the nodes themselves streamlined and clean.

[@GrischaTheissen]

I am not sure about how I like it in GN (haven't used it much) BUT I really like it in cycles and think it's the best looking node editor of all render engines. So simple to look at a tree and see everything that changed. Not sure if it works for GN though.

[@GifCoDigital]

@@hkspowers003 Yes I agree that large node networks quickly can get out of hand, especially when trying to reuse a node chain on the other side of the tree and having a million connections making it impossible to easily see what connects to what. I do disagree that if you need to have a param view just have all the params there. Why not have the params you use 90% of them time on the node? I love to be able to scan over a node tree see what I am looking for and immediately tweak the value without having to first click the node and then move to another pane.

[@nekok4191]

@@GifCoDigital yes it would be great to be able to manually pick from the Parameters View those values you want to expose in node directly

[@abstractwaves6166]

Nice video, just want to say that the developers of blender did check some documentation about houdini, but they do try not to copy paste design of other soft because it simply won't work in blender as it has different ui/ux, for example now in geo node they're going for the field approach that resemble more the shader editor, and it just make more sens

[@dudewithcomputer]

"The full blown procedural nuclear aircraft carrier that houdini is." Lmao

[@drumboarder1]

My one fear is that they'll remove typical modelling abilities

[@rezaVfx]

Plz make a procedural Origami tuts❤🤘

[@samartini1]

Good discussion there guys, I think 3d software is always going to be like comparing apples to oranges. Could blender take on ZB for sculpting, probably, could Houdini take on ZB for sculpting, doubtful. Every software company seems to be going nodal these days, which is great news but nothing will touch Houdini. I was surprised to hear Houdini was around in ‘87. Sounds as thought it’s as old as Max. I do think blender is in it for mass market adoption with the relative ease of use, probably not as user friendly as C4D but I think it is probably the area they are gunning for.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Houdini’s Python API is still tied to obsolete Python 2, though. Blender made the switch to Python 3 about a decade ago.

[@martinianogarcia9167]

Great podcast guys!

[@npj5578]

Great talk. Please do more of these!

[@cihankenar1]

Houdini and Blender need to join forces. Can you imagine an integrated renderer like Eevee or Cycles in Houdini ?

[@nanoSpawn]

Actually, that's been possible for a while. Houdini can use Cycles, with its materials.

[@anastasiashopine7808]

lovely podcast as always

[@nicetake3954]

Props to Mo for live-switching this and staying on track haha

[@Entagma]

Aww, thank you!

[@raxlyy6416]

more podcasts pls.

[@Bone-studio]

I really liked your view Manuel :) Only a comment, Blender won't overcome Houdini because it's not it's target at all, but it's not because it's not targeted towards production, but because it's targeted to be like other DCC's, like Maya, Max, Houdini is way more specific and targeted towards some complex tasks that neither Max, Maya or Blender target :) But with that, I totally agree with your conclussion, Blender and Houdini are perfect companions :)

[@danielkrajnik3817]

20:55 that's a good point

[@heraxvot6609]

I'd love to hear you rant about the trend of all popular DCCs migrating to node systems. Blender - geometric nodes, Cinema4d - scene node, May - Bifrost, Adobe Substance 3D. Are nodes actually the future of CG?

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

At some point they will discover what seasoned programmers already know, that a textual representation is superior to a graphical one for many things. Then we will see a demand for a textual alternative to nodes.

[@sonario6489]

@@lawrencedoliveiro9104 As long as the visual representation still stays for people who aren't programmers, I'd be on board with that. Being able to see what your stuff is doing is better than blindly guessing/

[@JohnSmith-wg3pl]

Houdini dead now?

[@gcharb2d]

Hype is what drives donations, that's why the Blender Foundation tends to push a lot of new toys that they don't often bring to a satisfying level of completion, and as for Blender killing Houdini, very unlikely since Houdini has huge support from the professionals and I doubt that SideFX will sit on their hands in the next decade or so just so an open source, donations driven software like Blender can kill them!

[@aldo_3d]

What is a TD that they keep refering to in VFX?

[@Entagma]

a technical director. Usually building the tools for the production

[@abrarsavan7709]

You guys are Awesome!

[@Entagma]

Aww, thx!

[@aharonluccier1570]

So far i don't tested much on the blender geometry nodes, but it looks good. Let's say, if Blender can expand the possibilities, why not. I personally would set priorities to other things in Blender, like better memory instancing, caching mechanism because this i what bothers me mostly when the scenes got heavier. But there is light at the end of the tunnel. In 3.0 there is coming a more "Clarisse" like instancing system, so we slowly get there where we wanted since 2.83. -The Geo nodes will be beside some other features a nice to have in my opinion.