Thanks Vincent. I needed that speech.
I posted my comment about Maya being appealing BEFORE I saw the clause
that Softimage would stop working in two years.
What part of the pipeline would you say a company can rely entirely on
Houdini for? FX and Rendering, what else?
On 04-Mar-14 14:10, Vincent Fortin wrote:
This is just my 0.02c regarding Houdini pricing...
You can always negociate with SideFX. They are a very open company
driven by passion.
Studios interested in making a transition should discuss with Janet
Fraser ja...@sidefx.com <mailto:ja...@sidefx.com>
Yes the extra $$$ for the floating license is weird. IMHO they should
revise that pricing. But otherwise, workstation license is 4,495$.
Autodesk users are often hesitant to pay for upgrades because they
don't feel like they're getting much in return. With Houdini you get
blown away every release. And your studio can have its say in the
development roadmap.
Mantra is a very solid renderer, actively developed by SideFX. I
wonder how much studios pay for their rendering needs? Mantra
rendering is FREE (aka unlimited). It's both REYES and Physical.
How much do studios pay for FumeFX (and Max and Vray when you don't
wan't to render in scanline), render layers that don't match and need
to be fixed in comp, cloth in Maya and issues related to supporting
multiple softwares/plugins, licenses or upgrades that IT needs to keep
track of. Yes ICE is an awesome little creation platform but has never
reached maturity. It can all be done in Houdini + more.
Man time is often wasted in studios, Houdini has that philosophy that
everything can be offloaded to the farm, easily, without any or very
little development. How much time wasted with finding the right format
for storing your things on disk? XSI Models, pc2, collada, point oven,
fbx, realflow .bin. I'm sure you too have tried them all! Houdini's
.bgeo stores everything from points to volumes, nurbs, metaballs,
custom attributes and has always supported geometry with changing
topology. Can be compressed, or not. Can be made ascii. They have a
standalone geometry viewer that is pretty cool. Any data stored in a
.bgeo can be used as rendering proxies. But if you prefer Alembic, it
is also fully integrated in the software/renderer as well as out of
the box Open VDB, Open Subdivs, EXR2 and DEEP COMPOSITING (hello
modernity!).
How much time wasted opening 2GB scene files in Softimage or Maya? A
Houdini scene is always lightweight because of its referencing
philosophy. In fact , a Houdini scene is based on the UNIX file
system. You can unpack a full scene on your hard drive as a directory
structure. It is true when they say Houdini is a pipeline on its own.
With built-in environment variables, you can set up a small pipeline
very easily. Often times I find myself doing a full project within the
same scene. Never had any instabilities in years with Houdini. Never
needed to "merge in an empty scene" to fix some random scene corruption.
They support every Linux flavors or Windows, or Mac. They have daily
builds and a 100% free learning edition with no time limitation. I see
a lot of potential in Houdini Engine for games or even for film if
Bifrost fails to deliver in a reasonable time frame.
In fact I have become such a Houdini fanboy that every time I finish a
project I'm tempted to send flowers and chocolate to Toronto.
Of course your mileage may vary but overall I don't think Houdini is
so overpriced considering all the problems you'll skip with it. I
choose to stick with the real passionate people, not the greedy blood
suckers. All the insecurity Autodesks generates regarding its
development roadmap and licensing schemes has been doing too much
damage in its user base (includes Maya for the last 10 years).
Incidentally, if you visit the Houdini forums, you'll find a community
that is very mature, positive and helpful.
Vincent
On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 12:59 PM, Angus Davidson
<angus.david...@wits.ac.za <mailto:angus.david...@wits.ac.za>> wrote:
Mostly a lack of respect.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* Ben Rogall [xsi_l...@shaders.moederogall.com
<mailto:xsi_l...@shaders.moederogall.com>]
*Sent:* 04 March 2014 07:42 PM
*To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
<mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com>
*Subject:* Re: Softimage transition audience poll
Yep. Or $4495 for a workstation license and then $2495 per year.
For a minute there it looked like Autodesk was doing something
half reasonable with the free transition offer to Softimage +
Maya. But then I saw that accepting that means that I would not be
allowed to use Softimage at all after February 2016. I'm not even
sure what Autodesk gains from that.
Ben
On 3/4/2014 11:00 AM, Francois Lord wrote:
What I find interesting in the fact that people want to jump the
Autodesk boat is that they seem to forget they have to buy a new
software.
For a company that relies entirely on Softimage, that decision is
not a cheap one. Houdini is 7000$ for a floating license plus
4000$ per year!
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=385&Itemid=190
In two years when Bifrost will be nearing maturity, Maya will
become a lot more appealing if you stay on subscription. Be kind
with your bean counter.
just sayin.
On 04-Mar-14 11:37, Alan Fregtman wrote:
I've set up a poll out of curiosity...
/Where will you transition to when Softimage falls?/ Vote!
http://strawpoll.me/1257710
(Multiple-choice allowed btw.)
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