I am in the same camp, I don’t see Houdini as my modeller, the same way I don’t see Maya nor Softimage as my modeller although IMHO Softimage is certainly the best in breed for this kind of work.
jb > On 17 Jan 2015, at 21:59, Greg Punchatz <g...@janimation.com> wrote: > > We (Brad did all the ICE magic) worked up some pretty niffy tricks for our > head tech demo. > > We could pose our head which was a slightly enhanced FR rig export a > reference head into ZB... bring it back into soft the subtract the the > deforms of the mesh and reapply only the differences from the corrective > shape. > > Point drift is caused most of the time by subdividing the model in Zbrush. If > you do a subdivision in Z all your base point will shift. In our case the > mesh was dense enough that was not an issue, we could still clearly see the > forms without subdividing while in Zbrush. Brad wired up a ICE tree for the > imported corrective shapes to be triggered by pulling different distances > from the rig. Of course drift can happen from someone moving points they have > no business of moving, or even worse they move points in the wrong direction > for the correction or shape. I always work in a stepped process to avoid this > for shapes, whether I sent to Zbrush or not. I am at first only focused on > how the point mass moves first. I try to get this done with as few > proportional moves as possible. Then I test the motion in Soft and on the > rig., take a look at what it looks like with the jaw open etc. Then I slowly > massage the shapes into place checking the sculpt in action > > I don't remember if the zbrush link busts your rig, in our case the workflow > was to use separate reference geo. > > It is better if it when done all under one roof but if my point count goes > high enough I will jump through a few hoops to get to a better point > manipulator. > > Raf I have never heard the term combinatorics before, and when I looked it up > I could not find any references that clearly showed me how it applied to > shape animation or rigging. Can you point me to a reference that might help > fill in my knowledge gap : ) > > Also Eric, I had heard of folks having a different neutral vs skinning pose > but I have not really seen a good explanation of the idea. I have modified a > sculpt to be better for rigging, but that shape then becomes my base shape. > What is the difference? > > > > On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 2:31 PM, Raffaele Fragapane > <raffsxsil...@googlemail.com <mailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com>> wrote: > If you're doing combinatorics you don't model the shapes in isolation, you > tweak a base and need to see the result on the combination, which might be > one to four tiers of combinations away. > You don't do combination sculpting without the rig because you don't do > combination sculpting on the final shape half the time if you're sensible and > can't waste a lot of time in kickbacks. > > Doing shapes in ZBrush is doable, but they all need a lot of work after > coming back in because by the nature of ZBrush you will have shit drifting > all over the place. When they will add more than a single morph and a few > simple vector operations to wire the morphs it will then be the ultimate tool > for it, right now it's like trying to drive a truck out of a parking lot with > a small gate. Blindfolded. On iced out ground. With a monkey hitting you on > the head with a baseball bat every five seconds. Technically doable, but not > worth the bother unless you get to show the mental breakdowns on TV and cash > them in :) > > If you're doing cartoony or largely procedurally shaded stuff you can take a > fair amount of drift. if you're doing something that has hundreds of rigid > scales or precisely styled hair bound to the UV space it's an unmitigated > disaster when you don't have something like Soft (or a shitton of stuff piled > on top of Maya) around to do the work. > > On Sat, Jan 17, 2015 at 6:16 PM, Greg Punchatz <g...@janimation.com > <mailto:g...@janimation.com>> wrote: > Raff while what you say is true about needing to check the results of your > sculpts in combination with with other shapes and deformers. There is no > reason those edits should not be done in the tool-set best suited to sculpt. > > Using something like Zaplink or a few scripts can make the back and forth > seamless. ICE made it so much easier to to pose based deformations and > corrective shapes using Zbrush to edit. > > That being said I still do a great bit of my shape work in soft, unless its a > very dense mesh, then I whip out the Z > > On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 6:16 PM, Raffaele Fragapane > <raffsxsil...@googlemail.com <mailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com>> wrote: > The problem with ZBrush, or any modelling app that doesn't have your full rig > in it, is that for things like combination sculpting they are useless, > because you need to see multiple timelines of the shapes converging as you > refine them for the result to be any good. It's also a ton easier to get > combinatorics started in Soft since you can start any shape from any number > of others with ICE. I so miss that in any other app (that last bit is > literally the only one where Houdini could compete or even surpass Soft, > actually, though it's somewhat painful to wrangle the shit together when you > hit a certain degree of complexity and you end up spending more time making > an uber rig than you do working the shapes' alignment). > > On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 11:27 PM, Jordi Bares Dominguez <jordiba...@gmail.com > <mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com>> wrote: > Thanks for the notes, there has been quite a lot of changes but it is true > there are a few of your comments still pending, the most pressing to me is > speed and the viewport needs still lots of love. > > BTW, I was not advocating to use Houdini for modelling though, rather use > Zbrush to be honest and now that Zbrush is getting closer to a full set of > traditional modelling tools it is pretty obvious it is the route to go. > > My feeling is that character work is certainly more painful but at least you > get some serious gains and unfortunately there are no options so we are in a > transition moment. > > So far they are listening and moving forward so I will stick to Houdini for > the time being and keep an eye on others. > > :-) > > jb > > >> On 16 Jan 2015, at 21:28, Raffaele Fragapane <raffsxsil...@googlemail.com >> <mailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com>> wrote: >> >> A lot of quality rigging, despite piles of papers trying to sell the public >> on the contrary, is still manually tweaked. Taking things out of the app >> where you have the full rig makes authoring a major pain. The most basic >> example is shapes, doing shapes work in XSI for something like a combination >> sculpting setup was as easy as it got, especially after ICE. >> The way data is presented and accessible, the speed on large meshes, the >> modelling toolkit, it all lent itself to that kind of work in a perfect >> storm scenario. >> Doing the same in Maya, comparatively, is beyond painful and requires a >> pretty big staging effort to separate work and write accessory tools, in >> Houdini you don't even have a particularly intuitive modelling toolkit, and >> the handling of large meshes was pretty meh with it (at least up to 12, it >> seems to be getting better and promising to be getting better again). >> >> The toolkit in general is pretty hard to impossible to give to a modeller >> with little inclination to learn something like Houdini, while with both >> Maya and Soft that's not a big challenge. >> >> I haven't tried the muscle system in a while, so my comment might be dated >> to the point of not being valid, but the last time I did it was a bit of a >> joke. No arbitrary topology for the deformers unless you cloth collided (and >> the cloth solver was anything but acceptable), only some weak superset of >> metaballs, rather slow, but at least it was relatively stable, and overall >> clunky and requiring the lot a lot of micromanagement and a lot of SOPs that >> often refused to play nicely with the rest of the app. >> Mind, I haven't found a single commercial muscle system I would use if they >> paid me for it, which is pretty embarrassing given when we needed one for >> WWD we got a rather intuitive one done in just a few weeks that worked for >> over 99% of the show meshes without manual intervention of any sort on the >> sim, and literally only a dozen mesh fixes across over 800 shots. >> >> On top of all that, and again this is pre-14, most pre-13, it's slow. Mind >> boggingly slow to articulate a decent animation rig. I suspect this last >> point has been, or is about to be, superseded though since the viewport has >> been getting some love. >> >> The main issue though remains that preparing an asset in Houdini remains a >> long and involved process which very few people from other departments, some >> times nobody, can be recruited into, it's born, lives and dies in the hands >> of TDs. >> >> I've always had a soft spot for Houdini, and I'd give my money to SideFX >> rather than many other companies any day of the year, but as a company their >> commitment to character work of artistic or hybrid nature has always been >> patchy (and I don't necessarily blame them for it) and subpar. >> They have a lot of work to make up for it, but they seem to be slowly doing >> it while making sure they don't lose their core business with FX and >> end-to-end clients. >> >> I will certainly be looking at H14 as soon as some space for it in the stash >> of stuff I need and want to do before clears up :) >> >> >> On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 6:45 PM, Jordi Bares Dominguez <jordiba...@gmail.com >> <mailto:jordiba...@gmail.com>> wrote: >> May I ask you to elaborate the “complex character rigging and tuned >> deformation”, I may be missing something. >> >> To start with you have muscles in Houdini which you don’t, let alone FEM >> simulations and a universal physics engine to cope with pretty sophisticated >> things… >> >> Certainly it is easier in Softimage and more artist friendly to setup but I >> see the rigging side as one very strong point. >> >> If you are talking about screen space corrections, blend shapes and advanced >> contact collision its certainly doable with the toolset. >> >> :-| >> >> thx >> jb >> >> >>> On 16 Jan 2015, at 16:59, Raffaele Fragapane <raffsxsil...@googlemail.com >>> <mailto:raffsxsil...@googlemail.com>> wrote: >>> >>> It's only true for some definitions of rigging. >>> If you need proceduralism of course it does spectacularly well, and assets >>> are simply best of breed in the industry and have been for years, end of >>> story. >>> For the hand-crafted complex character rig and tuned deformation kind of >>> job though, no, it's not nicer than Soft, and I'd be hard pressed to make >>> an argument for it over Maya (which I consider pretty bottom barreling >>> already without a ton of custom work). >>> >>> Some of the upgrades in H14 and some of the future roadmap do bode well for >>> that though. >>> >>> On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 1:28 PM, Gerbrand Nel <nagv...@gmail.com >>> <mailto:nagv...@gmail.com>> wrote: >>> Well I say nicer, because there are allot of toys to play with. >>> I think rigging is the part where you need a non destructive procedural >>> work flow the most. >>> In Maya it feels like you have to make damn sure you are done with step A >>> before moving onto step B. >>> Houdini is flexible to the point where you become reckless with your work >>> flow :) >>> Bit more complex when you get started, but worth it. >>> The auto rig at the very least doesn't break like the soft one used to in >>> 2011 :) >>> G >>> >>> >>> On 16/01/2015 14:08, Mirko Jankovic wrote: >>>> Riggin nicer then Soft? >>>> Will have to check it out then.. In maya rigging and enveloping is huge >>>> crap and biggest reason that I don't wanna ago back int othat hell at >>>> first place. >>>> >>>> On Fri, Jan 16, 2015 at 12:11 PM, Gerbrand Nel <nagv...@gmail.com >>>> <mailto:nagv...@gmail.com>> wrote: >>>> After trying to learn maya for about 6 months, learning houdini is a >>>> breath of fresh air!! >>>> It is not softimage, but I think its the only thing that will come close >>>> to the flexibility and power of soft for small studios and freelancers. >>>> Once you get into it, It is even more power. >>>> I tried learning it about 2 years ago, and gave up because I thought my >>>> time would be better spent getting better in soft (the future was still >>>> bright back then) >>>> Back then it seemed complicated, but after dealing with maya, it feels >>>> sooo much friendlier. >>>> The way I see it, you get the operator stack, and ice tree, all in one >>>> place, the network view >>>> So its one thing to learn. >>>> In Maya I feel like I have to learn new software every time I do something >>>> else. >>>> Rigging I found nicer than soft, and the animation editor in houdini feels >>>> like a polished version of the soft one. >>>> Houdini engine is still blowing my mind.. like it doesn't stop!! >>>> At $300 you cannot ignore this as a piece of your pipeline! >>>> I'll probably do allot of work in maya because I need to fit into teams of >>>> Mayans, but with the houdini engine, I can do the work in the software >>>> best suited for it, without forcing the rest of the team to conform. >>>> G >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On 16/01/2015 12:08, Mirko Jankovic wrote: >>>> modeling and character riga nd animation wise it is I assume sitill nt as >>>> suser friendly as SI right? >>>> how us ievrall generalist and smalls tudio experience? >>>> SI is more or less out of the box great steramlined solution.. >>>> >>>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it >>> and let them flee like the dogs they are! >> >> >> >> >> -- >> Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and >> let them flee like the dogs they are! > > > > > -- > Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and > let them flee like the dogs they are! > > > > > -- > Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and > let them flee like the dogs they are! >
