Rob I feel your pain, I have been driven towards Houdini for much the same reason, their robust volumes are really enviable.
There is hope for some relief from third party solutions, at present emfluid 4 and the BA fluid shader can get you pretty far, but it's still a far cry from houdini's capabilities and sheer rapidity of use. (I think a lot of that comes from the quick conversion from geometry to volume via SDFs, the amazingly nice viewport feedback, and the simple fact that the volume shaders in houdini are pre-set such that you don't have to spend hour after hour tweaking and rendering over and over to get dialed in.) An interesting thing is that when I priced out third party solutions to equip 4 artists with all the third party tools we would need, the cost (not including the price of the initial soft licenses) came out to be less than the cost of a single seat of Houdini. So an external/third party solution for volumes would make a lot of sense. In the short term though houdini/xsi corrdination should be workable, thats kind of the standard scenario for Houdini after all, where it is used in conjunction with other software... definitely take a close look at Alembic which seems fantastic, too. And please let us know what you discover in your explorations! :) > On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 9:19 AM, Rob Chapman <tekano....@gmail.com> wrote: > > excellent, thanks guys! , guess I would be just happy right now to match > > the cameras up between apps and do lots of captures from the rather > > outstanding Houdini volume cloud data in the viewport :) > > > > http://vimeo.com/27480398 > > > > seems there are also a few Houdini <> Krakatoa / Realflow convertors, so > an > > additional step to another shared format may be the way to go. > > > > Thanks > > > > Rob > > > > > > > > > > > > > > On 16 April 2012 14:05, Peter Agg <peter....@googlemail.com> wrote: > >> > >> Houdini can export obj sequences iirc. In which case you could load them > >> into Soft using Polygonizer if you don't have Alembic. > >> > >> Particles are probably going to be slightly tricker though (unless you > do > >> something weird like bake the information into geometry or something - > use > >> points for position and UVW for velocity. Probably not a good idea - > just > >> thinking out load with that one!). Without a custom format I guess > you're > >> limited to hacks. > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> On 16 April 2012 13:27, Ben Houston <b...@exocortex.com> wrote: > >>> > >>> The latest version of Houdini R12 has pretty comprehensive Alembic > >>> support as opposed to the very limited Alembic support in R11. Thus > >>> for geo, and points, transfer back and forth should be possible. > >>> Alembic does not provide any solution to transfer volumes back and > >>> forth though. > >>> -ben > >>> > >>> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 8:24 AM, Alok Gandhi < > alok.gandhi2...@gmail.com> > >>> wrote: > >>> > AFAIK there is no option for getting data back from houdini to soft, > >>> > maybe > >>> > Alembic could solve the problem. You cannot import .bgeo in soft. I > >>> > would > >>> > rather render from houdini/mantra. > >>> > > >>> > Alok. > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> -- > >>> Best regards, > >>> Ben Houston > >>> Voice: 613-762-4113 Skype: ben.exocortex Twitter: @exocortexcom > >>> Exocortex - Passionate CG Software Professionals. > >> > >> > > > > > > -- > Best regards, > Ben Houston > Voice: 613-762-4113 Skype: ben.exocortex Twitter: @exocortexcom > Exocortex - Passionate CG Software Professionals. > >
