Have you or anybody else tried to write importers/exporters for Houdini? We would need to write an importer to migrate Softimage data, and an exporter to dump data to our game engine. In softimage, evaluating a mesh is mostly taken care of by the SDK as it evaluates the construction history and hands you the final result depending where in the stack you ask it to evaluate. Since Houdini is procedural and doesn't have a concept of a 'frozen' mesh, how do they handle this?
Matt -----Original Message----- From: Andy Nicholas [mailto:a...@andynicholas.com] Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2014 4:07 PM To: Matt Lind; softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: RE: Houdini Weaknesses Yep. Just check out Houdini's digital assets (also known as OTL's). They'll do much of what you need and more. You can hide and lock stuff up to your heart's content if you need to be protective about functionality or content. It'll never be fool proof, but you can at least make it hard to break. On 22 May 2014 at 23:45 Matt Lind <ml...@carbinestudios.com> wrote: > I think Softimage is OK on that front. Good in some areas, lacking in others. > Almost anything we've had to do Softimage got us 80% of the way there > fairly quickly, but the problem has always been getting that last 20% > which is often the most critical part. I've probably spent more time > than I've cared for to work around the lacking points or limitations. > The lack of open file format and ability to deal with nested models reliably > has been a hindrance. > Softimage relies too much on top-down cascading propagation and needs > more support for lateral relationships such as groups and sets to > establish dependencies. > > Basically I've had to come up with a logical design for a pipeline > that can accommodate the file structures/dependencies of both > Softimage and our game assets and it hasn't always been easy. Having > a new environment with different rules would put a fresh spin on the problem. > > > Matt > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Andy Nicholas [mailto:a...@andynicholas.com] > Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2014 2:36 PM > To: Matt Lind; softimage@listproc.autodesk.com > Subject: RE: Houdini Weaknesses > > God yes. With bells on. > > If you think that Softimage is good on that front, you'll fall > hopelessly in love with Houdini. > > A > > > >
