Ultimately I can do the same things in all three packages, in Maya in example I don't even try to find workarounds, whenever I bump into one of the innumerable gaps I just write my way out of it with a node, which incidentally is also why I'm taking a looking to splice and looking forward to their CUDA implementation instead of using my own in c++. Text is tremendously expressive, if expensive in terms of learning curve, which is also a cookie point for vex really.
The problem comes when you have deadlines and you simply want to experiment without redoing at the end of the process. For that Soft was simply the perfect storm. ICE limitation of having a strict I/O domain and the sequential stack with entry points, the clarity and abundance of atomic nodes, and a generally cohesive experience remain unbeaten. In Soft when you hit a wall you often hit it hard, but those are few and far between, and in between you could really fly. Same goes for clusters, properties, drag'n'drop and how Soft presents and links those larger aggregates, they simply work 99% of the time. Maya and Houdini simply don't provide that experience, and their learning curve to reach that level of fluidity is measured in years, while with Soft we had people who never used it literally flying around within a month. As a creature TD Houdini simply doesn't get you on the zone quickly enough, if ever. It's brilliant for a number of things, infinitely powerful, has best of breed solvers, but it gets in the way constantly. It's patently obvious they rarely, almost never in fact, had to address teams like the ones I run as user base. Performance in general is also pretty abysmal (was, might be better know) and optimisation is opaque and lacking in immediately useful tools and diagnostics. Again, as of two and half years ago. Might be different now and I wouldn't know, but nothing I've read or seen suggests so. On 31 Mar 2014 23:18, "Jordi Bares" <jordiba...@gmail.com> wrote: > Slow performance depends on many things like having nested assets, and > yes, you won't find an interface to manage your blend shapes but what you > can do with your rig imho is truly phenomenal. > > Regarding the deformations ICE versus VOPs I would love to know more about > it, what do you feel you can do in ICE you can't in Houdini? > > Assuming you are doing with the off-the-self toolkit and without any > proprietary pipeline tools to speed up rigging building a proper asset > interface, protect it from the user and all that takes time but do you feel > is much longer than any other package? > > jb > > On 31 Mar 2014, at 12:04, Raffaele Fragapane <raffsxsil...@googlemail.com> > wrote: > > I have to admit to not having tried again in at least two and half years, > but I haven't seen any related release notes related to rigging since then, > so bear with me if this is not recent or still actual information, but in > what way is rigging in Houdini phenomenal? > It's a major pain in the arse, generally slow both performance wise and to > actually produce the rigs, and it has absolutely zero adequate facilities > for a lot of stuff such as shape manipulation, and while VOPs are great, > when it comes to deformations they don't even scratch the surface of what > ICE can do. > And while it's true assets are phenomenal, the sheer scope of investment > to wrap a character up to give it to an animator is staggering, it takes > forever to truly and properly armor up a rig and expose only the right > context in the right way. > > >
