Niche or not ?

[NNois]

Hi,
So, we are slowly learning houdini to fully replace Softimage whether or not if Houdini is different or more complicated.

But, me and my few collegues are a small team of isolated artist who are more generalist and rarely doing some big vfx or long term work but we like a lot working with good software and not to be taked for sheeps.

With Softimage i was already knowing we runs a niche software with a very few percentage of 3d artist user using it. But when we need some help we always found some people able to help us plus very excited to work in such a beautiful software, so easy, so logical.
Now i saw this stats on CGchannel, I know this isn't exact stats, but hey, houdini is 10 more time a niche software than softimage !

Some of you guys are working on big studio an see a move over it or do all theses story haven't changed anything ?

Thanks for you input

[kiwimation]

From what I have seen, Houdini has a pretty active forum on there own site, I would guess most users go there rather than cgtalk.

[Mathaeus]

According to number of active visitors on appropriate forums, leading 3d software on planet is Blender. Just now, 920 on Blender artist, 575 on all CG Talk forums together, 164 on Houdini OdForce. CG Talk does not perform very well in last few years, that's not secret. On Russian forums, Max usually holds around three or five times more than Maya.

Don't believe Houdini will be 'dominant', ever, but is it most important... Doing well enough for living and further development, and wanting to be 'better' than neighbor, or 'successor' of something, completely different things, I'd say.

[NNois]

I agree, this is in part why i was always attracted by innovatives outsider, Amiga/Lightwave/Messiah/XSI/Houdini. BUT this has to be at least some active users and thanks to matheus who point the online users showing a 220 active on ODForce now for example... reassuring. Checking the max users is freaking me, I have some near me and they just hate their software, how can we work like that ??

[SamHowell]

Yes Houdini is niche, but not as niche as Softimage has become.

There are always plenty of friendly people on the SideFX forum as far as I can tell.

[Mathaeus]

BUT this has to be at least some active users and thanks to matheus who point the online users showing a 220 active on ODForce now for example... reassuring.

Od Force is really a nice site, very well moderated, has a good number of visitors, people are communicative ... well, like anywhere else. Shameless plug but anyway, this is my most popular post on this place, so far.
Sooner or later, "we" will need to go on some Houdini forum, in any case....

[Werner]

niche or not, it is powerful, and I'm happy with my choice. It took a while though.

[nodeway]

I will repeat what I said on other forum:

You know guys, I'm veeery happy.

For the price of full one year of big Maya, to which I know I would have to buy 3 additional plugins (and each costs more than 800$), I can have all the software out there from other companies and work on what I like.

With...

- UE4 free
- Unity free
- BlackMagic Fusion free
- Visual Studio Community free
- Houdini Indie for $200
- Substance tools Indie for $318 + new payment options
- Zbrush for $795
- Modo for $1495
- Cinema4D Prime for $995
- Blender

... I can start shaping the world to my liking.

I have bigger chance to work on my own (freelance) and convince some companies that never thought about using/working with people like me to include my skills in their portfolio.

This opens up so many possibilities. And slowly but surely ends Autodesk reign. Sooner or later even companies will have to adapt and start using what normal people have access to. With companies of course this may take time, but they can't stop the trend.

It's amazing.

So I really don't care if it's niche or not. Autodesk can bend their math however they like, they just can't beat multiple software with their f*cking offer.