Hi Jordi, Did you ever assemble your Houdini migration notes into a PDF or an ebook?
Cheers, -=Eric On Mon, Jan 4, 2016 at 6:52 AM, Gerbrand Nel <nagv...@gmail.com> wrote: > Yeah Mantra has this ability to make the same looking render, take 4 min > or 2 hours, depending on your settings. > But for transparent stuff.. stay away!!! its worse than Arnold with > internal reflections. > Really can't stress enough how important blender has become for rendering > in my pipeline. > I've tested cycles against redshift, and octane, and in my tests, cycles > came out top.. plus its free!! > It's a real pain to learn yet another piece of software, especially > blender, but I don't think we can afford to ignore it any more. > If someone put a gun against my head and asked me to choose between > blender and maya as the only tool for the rest of my life, I would probably > go with blender. > At least its not #mylife's future looks bright bullshit. > If mantra can get gpu rendering for those smaller but annoying jobs, that > end up paying most of my bills, life would be sweet, Until then its a mix > between houdini and blender for me :) > > > > > On 04/01/2016 12:23, Tim Leydecker wrote: > >> Regarding rendering in Houdini. >> >> Currently, in H15 (15.0303) I´m finding UDIM support a bit limited, f.e. >> for all those cases where one >> would want to do adjustment stuff to a texture put inside a Cop2net and >> then pointing to that in a map slot. >> >> op:obj/cop2net/OUT >> >> The limitiation is that the file import available inside a cop2net dosn´t >> provide UDIM extension resolving, >> the workaround would be to do the adjustments to the UDIMS as if it was a >> sequence (e.g. 1001, 1002, etc) >> and then write the results out to file and link those as maps instead. >> >> That´s an extra step that could be seen desireable anyway, depending on >> where the hand-off line for assets is >> drawn between people/pipeline but still, I would prefer to be able to >> keep the adjustments live and quickly >> accessible directly from a map input slot, understood at a glance. A >> personal preference I guess and not yet >> checked against caveats in dependencies for a packaged/exported asset. >> >> All that´s obviously inspired by one of Rohan Dahlvi´s Houdini tutorials >> (he´s using that for editing an Hdr for lighting). >> >> -- >> >> For general rendering, Mantra really feels like a brother from a >> different mother compared to Arnold. >> >> Same quirks when it comes to finding out how Normalmaps are interpreted, >> colorspace/tonemapping guesswork needed when >> driving stuff like the roughness and even similar types of rendering >> artifacts. Indirect bounce noise, gloss/reflect firelies, etc. >> >> One example is driving a roughness in a material with a texture that >> hasn´t been clamped a little bit. It´s easy enough to create >> fireflies with (ultra)blacks in that texture and end up trying to sample >> that away in rendering. Couple that with DOF and you >> find yourself using insane levels of pixel samples and noise threshold to >> get rid of those fireflies. Won´t work, check your roughness >> values, clamp to 0-1 (or 0.1-0.8) and find that you can save hours of >> render time... >> >> Like I said, it feels just like Arnold, the same user, the same problems >> :-) >> >> Cheers, >> >> >> tim >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Am 03.01.2016 um 20:07 schrieb Gerbrand Nel: >> >>> Yeah,, not to indie :( >>> On 03/01/2016 20:27, Jordi Bares wrote: >>> >>>> Ha ha ha…. >>>> >>>> It is true, we are all getting spoiled by Redshift… but hey! that is >>>> coming to Houdini too!!! >>>> >>>> ;-) >>>> jb >>>> >>>> >>>> On 3 Jan 2016, at 19:22, Gerbrand Nel <nagv...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Wow.. forgot about this rant :) >>>>> It's been about 9 months since I wrote that, and I'm still pretty >>>>> happy with houdini. >>>>> Only thing I don't like much as a freelancer is Mantra. >>>>> Like Jordi said, its probably comparable to Arnold. (I did a fur job a >>>>> few months ago, and it was allot faster than Arnold for what we wanted to >>>>> do) >>>>> Also like Jordi said, you can do some amazing things with mantra, like >>>>> distorting uvs with fractals at shader level (this has been blowing my >>>>> mind >>>>> for the last few months) >>>>> >>>>> BUT... I get the feeling Mantra is designed for large productions, >>>>> where there is a farm to take the hits. >>>>> If you were spoiled by redshift, or octane, be prepared to pull some >>>>> hair out. >>>>> I render most of my simple jobs through blender (cycles is bloody >>>>> awesome!!!), and heavy things with volumes I do in mantra. >>>>> >>>>> This just happened while I was replying to this mail.. >>>>> >>>>> https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=42678 >>>>> Might be worth looking into :) >>>>> G >>>>> >>>>> On 02/01/2016 19:27, Tim Leydecker wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> Now, to keep that thread alive and because Autodesk is about to >>>>>> gently push people more >>>>>> and more into the rental this but don´t own that corner. >>>>>> >>>>>> I´m currently dabbling with the "Apprentice" Houdini 15 version. >>>>>> >>>>>> Mostly at the single click level of things. Doubleclicking on a node >>>>>> still often drives sweat into my hands... >>>>>> >>>>>> It´s nice that using Physically based rendering and shaders as well >>>>>> as pretty much anything related >>>>>> to a first testrendering seems well enough balanced to give a >>>>>> pleasing result to start with. No gamma issues. >>>>>> >>>>>> Hit render, it´ll probably look not too shabby with the defaults >>>>>> already. That helps a lot in the first steps. >>>>>> >>>>>> But then really getting rid of indirect illumination noise is uhmm, >>>>>> something different thought. >>>>>> That´s where Houdini eats CPU power more than I would have expected >>>>>> actually, indirect bounce cleaning is expensive. >>>>>> Same for getting volumetric stuff noise free. That stuff sure is >>>>>> heavy to calculate and indirect bounce noise seems >>>>>> not too easy to get rid off even with the added controls available in >>>>>> Houdini 15. >>>>>> >>>>>> Or maybe my threshold for noise is too low. My personal noise >>>>>> threshold I mean. >>>>>> >>>>>> Coming from Arnold, playing with Houdini´s render settings feels >>>>>> familiar enough, thought. >>>>>> >>>>>> I like Mantra, even if I find it slow to what I am spoiled with from >>>>>> Redshift3D. >>>>>> >>>>>> -- >>>>>> >>>>>> In terms of modeling and doing things inside Houdini, I wouldn´t want >>>>>> to miss an external asset creation package >>>>>> to go along with Houdini. Doesn´t matter what, Blender, Modo, Maya, >>>>>> Softimage, Max, etc. >>>>>> >>>>>> Just something more focused on asset creation or *.abc cache >>>>>> generation to be then pulled into Houdini. >>>>>> >>>>>> I can see myself using Houdini more and more for both first steps in >>>>>> FX and actual rendering shots. >>>>>> >>>>>> I like Houdini and the free entry ticket is great, I´ll be upgrading >>>>>> to the Indie soon. Just for playing. >>>>>> >>>>>> Cheers, >>>>>> >>>>>> tim >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> Am 17.03.2015 um 11:11 schrieb Gerbrand Nel: >>>>>> >>>>>>> I'm not getting anything out of posting this, except knowing I might >>>>>>> save the life of a fellow artist. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> So I spent the last year learning Maya, and got to a point where I >>>>>>> can compete against people straight out of collage. >>>>>>> This got me a bit down, as I'm one of the more experienced softimage >>>>>>> artists here in South Africa. >>>>>>> At the end of 2014 I realized that 3D is no longer fun if it all has >>>>>>> to happen in maya for me. >>>>>>> My brain doesn't work the way maya works. >>>>>>> I'm also not much of a clairvoyant, so predicting what I have to do >>>>>>> now, just in case the director asks for something in 2 weeks from now, >>>>>>> lead >>>>>>> to allot of back tracking. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> At first I decided to learn Maya over houdini because of the price >>>>>>> tag of Houdini FX. >>>>>>> It also seemed like I would exclude myself from bigger projects if I >>>>>>> was one, of only a few houdini artists around. >>>>>>> Houdini indie, and indie engine has completely nullified these >>>>>>> concerns. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> The perceived learning curve of houdini was also a bit of a concern >>>>>>> to me. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I started learning houdini 2 months ago, and I can do more with it, >>>>>>> than I can with Maya after a year. >>>>>>> The first few days in houdini is pretty hard, but the whole package >>>>>>> works as one. Once you get your head around its fundamentals, doing >>>>>>> something new is fun and pretty easy. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> This might not be true for everyone here, but some of us needs a non >>>>>>> destructive open work flow. >>>>>>> So if you guys haven't tried it yet, and if you are fed up with the >>>>>>> whole "there is a script for that" mentality... there is a sop for that >>>>>>> >>>>>>> G >>>>>>> >>>>>>> . >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>> >>>> >>> >>> >> >> > -- -=T=-
