Houdini 16

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owei
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Re: Houdini 16

Post by owei » 08 Feb 2017, 09:51

Hey there!

Arrived back home yesterday in the evening and here are my impressions on this event ;)

Wow, it´s been a long time since I´ve been excited about a software release. Monday night 19h-23.30h was the time! A crowd of around 400 people flooded the rooms of the Rich Mix Theater in London Shoreditch. I advance I met some good old Softies in a pub around the corner. It´s been four years since the last event in London I attended..and it was the last one for XSI, as everybod knows. So, feeling a little nostalgic, but the mood around was pretty optimistic and we all were talking about the future and expressing the hope, that Houdini will become a good replacement for our old companion XSI. And it really might get, as the presentation showed.

Prior to the show I had the opportunity to meet Fianna in person, the young lady responsible for lots of short Houdini tutorials on Vimeo for example, which was great ! (Hallo Fianna, ich hoffe, Du hattest einen guten Flug ;) ) Also chatted a little with Jeff Wagner, Chris Hebert, Paul Fratesi and Scott Keating (Paul and Scott visited us 2015 at UberTage). They all were quite excited about this release. If you are a little familiar with Houdini, you will soon know why ;)

Watch the hole presentation here:


After the show I also met quite a bunch of familiar faces. I also chatted with Kim Davidson, Co-Founder of SideFX, a great person. And Fianna introduced me to Crisitin Barghiel, the head of development. All of them so nice, impassioned, open minded an interested in thoughts and impressions of the audience. It was a pleasure to meet you all boys and girls and made me so optimistic about the future! Congrats to everybody at SideFX for his release! See you soon!

cheers,
oliver

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Re: Houdini 16

Post by Rork » 08 Feb 2017, 11:22

He Oliver!

Thanks for the event impressions, I can imagine the evening was a great one. :)
And 400 people! That's quite a large group of people showing up for this. :-bd

2017 is going to be an interesting year for sure!


@Fianna: Growing up with that kind of music around the house, it was very recognizable. So hence the question. ;-)

cheers!

rob
SI UI tutorials: Toolbar http://goo.gl/iYOL0l | Custom Layout http://goo.gl/6iP5xQ | RenderManager View http://goo.gl/b4ZkjQ
So long, and thanks for all the Fish!!

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Re: Houdini 16

Post by SamHowell » 08 Feb 2017, 12:57

Fianna wrote:@Rork - there's a few jazz fans at work but if you are wondering who picked the music for the evening, i gotta say, i have no idea :) wasn't me :)
There is never an occasion that doesn't require some Miles Davis.

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Re: Houdini 16

Post by SamHowell » 08 Feb 2017, 12:59

angus_davidson wrote:
SamHowell wrote:Well I would say that presentation was a pretty clear demonstration of the way Houdini is going and the kind of people SideFX are. They didn't say it outright but they have people like us Softies and others in their sights. They actually listened to what people need and they have generated a lot of good will towards them.

It's nice to be excited about this industry again. Now they just need to get the Cloth sorted. :)
Round about thee 54 minute mark on the youtube stream there is a subtle shout out to the Softimage community. ;)
Yeah, he almost lets it slip but holds back. /:) There's a lot of disgruntled users of other software that are just waiting for the chance to jump ship. That's what he is getting at.

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Re: Houdini 16

Post by angus_davidson » 08 Feb 2017, 12:59

owei wrote:Hey there!

Arrived back home yesterday in the evening and here are my impressions on this event ;)
Might be worth posting it to the Mailing list as well ?
--
Technomancer at Digital Arts
Wits University

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Re: Houdini 16

Post by Rork » 08 Feb 2017, 13:10

SamHowell wrote:There is never an occasion that doesn't require some Miles Davis.
Or Dave Brubeck ;)
SI UI tutorials: Toolbar http://goo.gl/iYOL0l | Custom Layout http://goo.gl/6iP5xQ | RenderManager View http://goo.gl/b4ZkjQ
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Re: Houdini 16

Post by jonmoore » 08 Feb 2017, 17:19

owei wrote:
After the show I also met quite a bunch of familiar faces. I also chatted with Kim Davidson, Co-Founder of SideFX, a great person. And Fianna introduced me to Crisitin Barghiel, the head of development. All of them so nice, impassioned, open minded an interested in thoughts and impressions of the audience. It was a pleasure to meet you all boys and girls and made me so optimistic about the future! Congrats to everybody at SideFX for his release! See you soon!

cheers,
oliver
Had a similar experience. When we all walked in together it was cool that the first person we bump into was Kim Davidson. I moved on to carry on my conversation with Panos (Redshift) and turned around 10 minutes later to see Kim still engaged in conversation with that same (what's the collective noun) flock of XSI alumni. :)

There was a beautiful nerdy passion to the presentations and all members of the SideFX team were as happy listening to feedback as they were to show off their new wares.

As the presentation unintentionally leaked, they already have the blueprint in place for 16.5 and are now engaged in the feedback loop for H17 and beyond.

It felt great leaving a product launch event with a sense of optimism. Usually I'm just worn down from a barrage of sales mumbo jumbo that has little to do with my needs and desires...

Great to me you too Oliver. ;)

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Re: Houdini 16

Post by Draise » 08 Feb 2017, 22:56

Panos is a legend in my opinion. Great personality in the forums when I was using the alpha.

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Re: Houdini 16

Post by Mathaeus » 09 Feb 2017, 10:28

Back to topic, it's looking like nice release, while I don't see any significant news since v14.
And exactly nothing even close to enough, to spread out of the standard circle defined by "I hate Maya even I have to use it everyday", "I'm coder who wants to do something in 3d but I don't want to learn modeling, animation and anything similar'', and finally, that 1/10 to 1/5 of SI users able to utilize ICE , or they believe so.
That is, regular users of Max, C4d or Blender, still will not be able to figure out what on the earth is important there, and they'll be completely safe with this - even if there is something in H that worth for them, someone will create an equivalent.

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Re: Houdini 16

Post by owei » 09 Feb 2017, 13:40

Well, nobody claimed it to be a generalist tool for now, or a replacement for XSI. H16 is not by now. It is still geared to more technical people. But, if you listened closely, I guess this release is a shout out to the competitors like: "Look, we are addressing stuff, we usually did not shine in." I think there are several points in this release that make it a big change to H14. The redesign of the node editor, unifying workflows, shader editing just to name a few. Sure, there is still missing some more user friendly approach to the data in your scene. Still much room for getting better. But again, I´m optimistic. Even if you consider the speed they put this stuff together. And they addressed lot of stuff people asked for. So, best way to make H better, participating and making suggestions.

My 2 cents

@Jonathan
Great to meet you in person, too ;)

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Re: Houdini 16

Post by julca » 09 Feb 2017, 15:43

Hi everyone !

Thank you for your feedback ! Can't wait now to download my H16 indie :ymhug: !

I also can't resist to ask you if you have discuss with this great team about some modeling ergonomic feature that make xsi so efficient and that Houdini can benefit ?
Like transient Hotkey for snapping and pivot, etc.
(and all other stuff that @McNistor talk about on sidefx forum).

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Re: Houdini 16

Post by Mathaeus » 10 Feb 2017, 10:58

julca wrote:u if you have discuss with this great team about some modeling ergonomic feature that make xsi so efficient and that Houdini can benefit ?
Like transient Hotkey for snapping and pivot, etc.
(and all other stuff that @McNistor talk about on sidefx forum).
I think we all know examples of successful ergonomics, modeling, animation, done without any public discussions, and that could be even one man band work, through one, two, max three versions of software. Even Maya :D got some useful modeling, well still not competitor to XSI or Max, but, useful.
For me, such long discussion, where practically one guy is left to be tortured by FX veterans (where btw many of them are showing an unbelievable ignorance related to subject), it's only a sign of *not* be willing to do the damn modeling correctly. Perhaps not intentionally, but this doesn't matter.
Just like with any other commercial product, influence belongs to influential people, that is, those who are able to pay more. Everything else is illusion.
With a small difference, that on AD forums, individual is able to express the opinion in organized way, and still stay alive. Not that much, but at least, without 90s style of brain washing on H forums.

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Re: Houdini 16

Post by owei » 10 Feb 2017, 12:14

julca wrote:Hi everyone !

Thank you for your feedback ! Can't wait now to download my H16 indie :ymhug: !

I also can't resist to ask you if you have discuss with this great team about some modeling ergonomic feature that make xsi so efficient and that Houdini can benefit ?
Like transient Hotkey for snapping and pivot, etc.
(and all other stuff that @McNistor talk about on sidefx forum).
Hey Julca. Well, I guess it is an ongoing process and as far as i see, there is a lot of stuff going on in that area. Did you take a look at the vimeo videos? There might be some stuff already implemented. I´m not (yet) using H for modelling, so I can´t comment on these. I just will state, that SidFX listens. And the 90s guys will retire some day.. ;) I tend to cheer the positive developments.
Beside that, I guess these are some nice tools already ;) Take a look in this thread.

cheers,
oli

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Re: Houdini 16

Post by julca » 10 Feb 2017, 14:33

owei wrote: Hey Julca. Well, I guess it is an ongoing process and as far as i see, there is a lot of stuff going on in that area. Did you take a look at the vimeo videos? There might be some stuff already implemented. I´m not (yet) using H for modelling, so I can´t comment on these. I just will state, that SidFX listens. And the 90s guys will retire some day.. ;) I tend to cheer the positive developments.
Beside that, I guess these are some nice tools already ;) Take a look in this thread.
Yes, there is already a lot of great tools and I recently started modeling in H (just littles projects for now) !

And after a bit of time, I surprisingly build relatively fluently my model and, because I come from xsi (like all of you ! :ympeace: ), I still see somes areas to improve, not mainly in term of pure tool or operator, but simply in term of fluidity and accessibility.
Anyway I will continue to post RFE and yes, the direction of the developments sounds really good.

Cheers

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Re: Houdini 16

Post by McNistor » 14 Feb 2017, 12:03

@Mathaeus There's was no one being persecuted (I'm assuming that's what you mean by "tortured") in that thread. I'll grant you that there were a few naysayers and still are, they're everywhere, but in general one should expect opposition, both for good and bad reasons, when trying to change minds. Otherwise, the extremes would be utter gullibility and respectively, absolute intransigence.
The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.
-Thucydides

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Re: Houdini 16

Post by Mathaeus » 14 Feb 2017, 16:46

My apologies, it was an unhappy hyperbola. Anyway, in my opinion, public discussion is not the best way to build direct modeling system. Imho, firstly it has to be a recognizable system with recognizable "soul'', like great positive examples of Metasequia, Mirai and XSI at the end, system of modifiers in 3d Studio Max, or work of Kent Trammell for Blender. Rules first, while wishes and suggestions, particular options and tools are coming later - again, that's just my opinion.

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