Use AI to Teach You Houdini

[@Ferocious_Imbecile]

I've been turning more and more to Bing's free AI for learning Houdini and it's amazing. Instead of floundering around looking through SideFX documentation or googling questions and getting sent up blind alleys to antiquated fora, it goes in depth and tells me everything I want to know. This video is very much welcome. Thanks.

[@isstuff]

I have been asking chat GPT houdini questions, I have 20 years experience and it can still explain things better than most other sources. I have asked it algorithm questions like “explain the A B screen compositing operation” as I was considering what way I should composite 2 volumes together. Also explaining quat rotations to see if it cleared it up to me. I think if it like asking a smart friend at a noisy bar after a few drinks. A bit will be lost in translation, they may not remember the facts exactly but they should point you roughly in the rite direction.

[@InsideTheMindSpace]

Yeah I agree with that statement. It does seem to explain things well for the most part. Sometimes it does get it completely wrong to the point It's not even remotely correct but that seems rare. Getting you moving in the right direction though is very useful when you are completely clueless on something so I agree there is some use to it

[@polymarvels]

Check Microsoft Bing, they had presentation today, looks impressive.

[@DonBurroni]

*right

[@rushikeshheblikar]

In which company u are working sir?

[@isstuff]

@@rushikeshheblikarCause and FX in Auckland, although I am remote from Adelaide.

[@Giant_Swing]

Something important that I don't see many people doing when using chatgpt is that if it gives you something that doesn't work or you want to do it differently, instead of regenerating the response or asking again phrased differently, just tell it "hey this doesn't work" or "I think this is changing the scale only based on this instead or that" or whatever you would say to a normal person, it will also remember those corrections as long as you stay in that current conversation (you can select the conversation from the list on the left) you don't even need to tell him in this example houdini vex code everytime because it'll know from the context of what you've been talking about before that you're asking for vex code, it's a really different approach to search engines and usually for complex problems its better to go through different prompts to keep digging into the problem rather than trying to find the perfectly worded question that will give you the desired answer in one go

[@InsideTheMindSpace]

This is actually something I learned after making the video. Sometimes with simple things it is just easier to regenerate the answer but with more complex questions typically if it gets something wrong you can tell it where it went wrong and it fixes it. Thanks for the comment

[@Giant_Swing]

@@InsideTheMindSpace thanks to you for your content, I've been binging your videos lately and they are super informative, keep up the good work!

[@Simili84]

when it comes down to VEX I found that telling the AI to specifically use VEX code "endemic" to Houdini and also specify the version of the software im using tends to yield better result. Also if the given VEX doesnt work you can ask it to reiterate based on the error msg you are getting.

[@seokinchung]

providing error message to chatgpt worked like a charm

[@InsideTheMindSpace]

Providing it with things that it didn't accomplish also tends to you yield good results. For example if you want it to create points and it doesn't you can ask it to do that and it does a decent job of correcting it's errors

[@chrispetersen3613]

When I learn things I retain a lot more information by using a variety of mediums. I think chat gpt is a nice addition to the list of learning tools like watching, learning, reiterating, and explaining to others.

[@gregorybennings8718]

facts

[@erispe]

I'm sure it's good for simple things like this, and I've found that chat GTP is amazing at helping me code stuff in general. But when something unexpectedly breaks in Houdini and you can't figure out what you did wrong, chat GTP's answers won't help you do anything except send you further down a spiral of madness and despair.

[@edh615]

I want to try to fine-tune chatGPT once they release the API soon.

[@jonathanwennstromm1578]

how did it go?

[@benjaminmartinez9891]

^ any updates?

[@3dforever717]

Why not, but I think you need a minimum base of VEX code to find why it doesn't work sometimes, because if you're newbie about vex it will be a bit difficult to understand, no?

[@InsideTheMindSpace]

It does a decent job of explaining the code it spits out plus if you use it in conjuction with the docs it could be pretty beneficial

[@ideallyyours]

Sometimes you can see at a glance immediately whether code generated by ChatGPT is going to do what you're asking it to. For example, when you were asking it to generate geometry directly from the wrangle, it didn't use a single line of addprim() or addpoint(), therefore will not generate anything. No need to run the actual code. It really shows that using this method to gain knowledge is far less effective for new users, since it's not "teaching", rather, serving misinformation like a bad teacher. It's always more useful to refer to documentation, of which Houdini's are some of the best, and even within the wrangles, as you're typing functions it will offer information as to what arguments are required.

[@roybatty2268]

It is not ALWAYS more useful to refer to docs. Agreed that a beginner shouldn't rely on ChatGPT to teach them Houdini all by itself, but for someone with some experience it CAN be helpful to fill out the boilerplate that you then edit as needed.

[@ideallyyours]

@@roybatty2268 Sure, but look at the video's title? I don't disagree that it's a tool that can save the doing of tedious work, but as a teaching aid it's not better than documentation.

[@InsideTheMindSpace]

I would disagree. It is very good at explaining things in ways that are easier to understand than technical jargon that you find in documentation but Houdini's documentation is some of the better documentation

[@roybatty2268]

@@ideallyyours click bait is going to be click bait, but the fact is that it can be helpful for learning Houdini, full stop. There is no one best way to learn Houdini and it certainly isn't the best way to learn Houdini through only reading the docs! They are pretty good, but heaven help you if you think you are going to efficiently learn Houdini by sticking to just reading the docs! You certainly should start with the website, and take advantage of the starter tuts and such and refer to the docs as needed, perhaps get involved with a local HUG and such and maybe just maybe use a chatbot to assist you with some questions you might have rather than digging through a shitty web browser experience that might lead to an old Odforce post, then a Sidefx forum post, then to Cgwiki - which is really good of course - to finally dig through the docs. See the picture? I have been using Houdini for roughly 6 years and have wasted untold hours using Google style search and the docs etc and from my own empirical evidence have had ChatGPT get me to my answer on some seconds instead of some minutes,... and then I go wasting that time replying in YT comments. 😔 Take care and be well.

[@tsiwt]

this is very interesting, thx

[@HoudinifxAlfredosanmartin]

The chat is exellent, it is very necessary for many questions that come your way, thank you! If you want I have a list that deforms wrangles polygons Hip, I don't understand much about it because I did it without much knowledge, but, they all work!, maybe I can help you a bit more, I have 18 separate wrangles in a Hip !

[@HoudinifxAlfredosanmartin]

drive.google.com/file/d/15jHGGblhS6bQPUp32W9QiHCFIQVbELiB/view?usp=sharing it is my link free : )

[@HoudinifxAlfredosanmartin]

Trust me, I have the hat, I would never lie to you about the link

[@wilmercortez]

I saw this coming.

[@VaibhavShewale]

weapon is only powerful until user know how to use it!

[@SanthoshKumarfojoheartthrobe]

Just one thing. The create spherical point cloud was running on Detail. You sure it is supposed to be on detail and not on points? Nice video btw. This is what I've been trying too since the last month or so.

[@InsideTheMindSpace]

My intent with that prompt was to have it create all of the points which would need to be run on detail because you would only want it to run once

[@NarekPalyan]

@@InsideTheMindSpace you need first of all create one point by Add node,than run AW

[@InsideTheMindSpace]

You do not need to have a point to create points with an attribute wrangle.

[@copaboy]

Been waiting on such a tutorial

[@polymarvels]

Prepare for Microsoft Bing AI...I watched presentation today and in all honesty, I am sold.

[@hipjoeroflmto4764]

I tried Houdini once and after I took 30 minutes touching nodes to end up with just a cube I got pissed off and uninstalled the program. It has potential but the usability takes like rocket science type of knowledge to be good at it

[@InsideTheMindSpace]

Sounds like you didn't give it time to learn the basics. It's fundamentally different than other software. Once you get over that expectation it's not that difficult

[@hipjoeroflmto4764]

@@InsideTheMindSpace that was with trying to follow along videos and learn the basics, not worth the effort for me I'll stick to other 3d stuff

[@ivanraimi5524]

So chat GPT doesn't really know vex

[@InsideTheMindSpace]

Its similar enough to other languages that it works pretty well. Also this was not using version 4. It's likely version 4 is different story since it was trained on an immensely larger data set

[@kmolnardaniel]

As you showed in this video yourself, I would strongly recommend not to use chat gpt to learn houdini. To play around, yeah, but a random google search gives better result with better efficiency currently. This whole thing needs the level of knowledge that you try to get. To be able to judge the code why it is not working, or why isnt't doing exactly what you want, you need the same "knowledge" that you aim to get by it.

[@InsideTheMindSpace]

A lot of times it is just one small thing that's off and sometimes it does get things right. So for a beginner to vex it could give them an idea of how to structure a thought through vex. I dont think its useless but it's definitely far from perfect

[@tsiwt]

I disagree. Chatgpt is only going to get better. soon you won't get errors as long as you keep communicating with it

[@nononsense2688]

This is useful but really scary and worrisome.

[@InsideTheMindSpace]

I wouldn't be too worried at this point. Its useful but it has to be trained on the knowledge of humans as well as needs the creative input of a human.

[@truth884]

It’s what is left after training it is what is scary and worrisome.

[@dheiwofjjd]

This is shocking.

[@azarelthecreator7098]

Or you can just you know stop getting lazier as a society and learn without ai

[@InsideTheMindSpace]

Thats a very close minded viewpoint.

[@MikeMike-wc8on]

You people who use this are digging the grave to yourselves :-)

[@InsideTheMindSpace]

Not sure why you think that

[@konstantinotrembsky9966]

Using a new tech to your advantage is digging a grave? Cmon, man.

[@InsideTheMindSpace]

Those who fail to adapt to change fall behind and are forgotten

[@MikeMike-wc8on]

@@konstantinotrembsky9966 what advantage you mean?

[@MikeMike-wc8on]

@@InsideTheMindSpace pfff adapt? You want to say that making computers to wright for you means adaptation?