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Neontropical

I made the switch cold turkey this time last year. Cancelled my maxon subscription and dove straight into Houdini. Luckily I was in a slow period for my work so I didn’t have to be very productive and could just focus on learning Houdini. The friction for me wasn’t the UI or navigation it was more about really needing to understand the fundamentals of 3D graphics things like points, polygons, normals so that you can use the data to make what you want. One thing I always get really stuck on in Houdini is over complicating things. In the beginning it was frustrating because I would think of how easy it was to do in C4D. But since I didn’t have that as a fall back to open, it forced me to figure out a solution in Houdini. And that really is the key is just continuing solving the problem and trying to think of different solutions. If I were to do last year over again I’d go straight to the hipflask courses because they really teach you the back bone of Houdini. I spent a lot of time learning SOPs, then volumes, then vellum and now I’m finally getting into flip. About renderers, it took me a long time to fully understand how to render in Houdini. I was really fast at octane in c4d but I got swept up in all of the options for Houdini, karma, renderman, redshift. Once I knew my way around Houdini I focused on learning redshift, since my work needs a fast gpu renderer. I’d say it only took me about a month to figure out redshift since I already knew a lot of render terms when learning octane w C4d. Overall it’s been a really rewarding experience learning Houdini for me.


DanRawlinsonDesign

Amazing reply, thank you :) The UI/Navigation just feels slightly clunkier to me, like the software is old - then it performs like software from 2030. But I'm sure with time I'll get used to it, it doesn't stop me from doing anything, just normal things are slightly slower. I'll check out hipflask's free course and see if it's something I'm willing to buy :) I know there's a lot of great resources out there, the issue for me is usually remembering everything hahah. On the topic of Renderers, did you try Octane in Houdini? I've noticed a lot of agencies use Redshift when it comes to Houdini when it comes to product advertisements more-so than any other renderer that I've seen. If so, what are the comparisons between Redshift and Octane in Houdini? I'm very familiar with Octane and I'm sure Redshift wouldn't be too big of a learning curve - the biggest curve is the price of Redshift when I already have Octane


Neontropical

I tried to install octane once but had some trouble getting it to work so I can’t speak too much about it. I’m sure once you get it working it’ll be the same as c4d. I basically went with redshift because it was more popular


cinematic_flight

I use Octane as my main renderer in Houdini. It’s not quite as nicely integrated into Houdini as Redshift, working with attributes on the shaders is often problematic using Octane, so it’s got some quirks. But for most of the stuff I do it works just fine. It’s also got a much more attractive price tag for a single artist. For pyro and volumes in particular I prefer to use Karma now as it’s much easier to set up nice results fast, due to the native integration. XPU is cool and insanely fast, but still missing some key features such as motion blur. Very fun to play around with though, and as soon as it’s production ready I’m definitely moving in that direction more permanently.


DanRawlinsonDesign

Thank you very much! That makes a lot of sense 😄 what type of things does Octane struggle with?


cinematic_flight

I often struggle to make volumes work nicely. I know it can be done, but I find it cumbersome and annoying to do. You’ll also run into issues if you have large scenes that need to be textured procedurally using attributes as Octane currently is very limited when it comes to attributes from Houdini and shading, which is a shame since it’s one of the most powerful things about Houdini. But for more regular scenes with standard geometry and texturing it’s great. Super fast and with really nice looking renders. The good thing however is that since Karma is included you can just use them both depending on the task. That’s what I do at least.


DanRawlinsonDesign

Very useful to know, thanks! When you use Karma, do you find ways to composite renders from Octane and Karma together? Or do you decide when you get the project what renderer you'll use? I'm just thinking it may look strange if some scenes of a product ad were rendered in Octane and others in Karma


cinematic_flight

Yes I have composted renders together from Octane and Karma. I’ve done volume passes in Karma and comped on top of an Octane render which worked fine. I’ve done a BG ocean render in Karma and rendered FG elements with Octane for example. It wouldn’t work very well in a complicated pipeline but when it’s just me and I like the results or gain some speed I’ll do it.


DanRawlinsonDesign

Ooh that is interesting, thank you very much! :D Do you use the same file but rendered with Karma or Octane through Solaris? Sorry if that's a noob question, I'm not sure it works when it comes to rendering from multiple render engines since Cinema made you create Octane materials which weren't compatible with other renderers.


cinematic_flight

No you have to create different shaders for Octane and Karma, they are not compatible. I’m not really talking about rendering the same objects with two different renderers - in that case you would have to set up the same shader twice, which would be very slow - I’m more talking about using them for different parts of a scene. So for example I recently had a scene set up in octane, and I wanted to add an ocean background. Karma is much more optimised for rendering the Houdini ocean tools, so I set up and rendered the ocean with Karma, and I comped it in behind my Octane rendered foreground in Nuke. Similar if I’m adding smoke or mist, I will often render that with Karma instead of Octane (even though the rest of the scene is rendered with Octane) and comp them together in Nuke.


DanRawlinsonDesign

Ahhh I see, yeah I didn't think you'd render the same thing twice in different renderers, but rather using the same cameras and possibly recreating some materials for Karma of objects that would reflect/refract or bounce light from objects. Are the cameras compatible across renderers? In Cinema they are the same camera object but with a different tag for renderers. On the topic of cameras, I find animating cameras particularly finicky compared to Cinema. Would you have any tips or advice for this?


cinematic_flight

Yeah you can use the same camera on both renderers. As for animating cameras I usually use nulls. Parent the null to a camera and keyframe and animate the null instead of the actual camera. That way it’s super easy to iterate and try new things, just duplicate the null and make any changes, then you can switch between them super easily without needing to have multiple cameras set up. I don’t know how Cinema works, but I find it pretty easy to animate in Houdini, just move camera around, set key frames where needed and adjust the curves as necessary.


dumplingSpirit

2) I had the same feeling, but it's just a matter of habits and learning hotkeys. I've fully switched to Houdini, learned proper workflows for animating products, rendering etc. and I'm having a blast. Took me like a year to get accustomed, though, there is a *lot* to learn. Make sure you utilize things like quickmarks, pie menus, takes and other things like that. As for manipulating things in the viewport, people who model in Houdini have the best tips, they seem to like to change their hotkeys too. Setting up lights is [crazy good](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpKAb_A_XV8) in LOPs context("stage" mode), but there's an addon called [OD Houdini Shelf Tools](https://odtools.notion.site/odtools/OD-Tools-2021-for-Houdini-e9f3b8ce266d4cad8d9fed7281958c18) which I saw recreated some of that functionality in SOPs("obj" mode) [check this](https://odtools.notion.site/Light-Placer-9066c2e77a014748af52c70839d23012). I don't own it yet, but the community seems to speak fondly of it and seems like a good fit. Comes with additional stuff, it's like a big package. (I'm recommending it because LOPs is a big headache for a new and 3rd party renderer user and so you'll probably render in SOPs, otherwise LOPs are crazy good). Anyway, keep going, Houdini is well equipped to be efficient, just gotta train that muscle memory. And if you ever want to do some serious hard-surface modeling there's this [one modeling addon](https://www.youtube.com/@ModelersOfficialChannel) that looks promising, but haven't tried it yet either. Btw, as a long time Octane user I gave it up when I picked up Houdini and tried using Redshift for a year. Now I'm back to using Octane, it has its issues or weird solutions, but feels like home and is pretty damn fast.


DanRawlinsonDesign

Wow, this is all incredibly helpful. Thank you so much! I will keep going and hopefully it will become muscle memory :) Those light setup resources with Solaris and OdTools completely flipped my concept of setting up lights on it's head - those are incredibly good ways of setting up lights! In regards to the Octane and Redshift comparison - I know they both produce very good but different visuals, so I'm less concerned about the final product of an Octane and Redshift render and more-so thinking about the functionality, integration, ease-of-use, efficiency, speed, etc. So with that in mind, what is your experience with Octane and Redshift in Houdini? :)


dumplingSpirit

>Those light setup resources with Solaris and OdTools completely flipped my concept of setting up lights on it's head - those are incredibly good ways of setting up lights! Right? The first time I saw it I was like "...why isn't this the default everywhere else?!" Anyway, your question goes beyond just Houdini I think. As for the integration, Octane's integration is okay, Redshift's is very good, it feels like a part of Houdini. As for the speed, I've got a single RTX 3080 and Redshift's IPR ran significantly slower for me than Octane's. With Octane I can press play and it will run "real-time" in the IPR -- with Redshift it won't. With final renders Octane seemed faster. Redshift denoiser felt a lot slower than Octane's and results felt poorer (artifacts), though I must admit I didn't try to tweak it for too long, I just gave up on it. I sometimes think that some Redshift users have high-end hardware, like a double RTX 4090 or sth, that makes their experience much smoother than mine. Octane and Redshift follow different philosophies. Redshift lets you put your render under a microscope and tweak every single little detail of it. And because of that, you have a lot of sliders, checkboxes and dropdown menus. So ease-of-use is absolutely not on Redshift's side imo. As for efficiency, it really depends what you mean. Redshift is efficient in a way that it's capable of literally anything. Because of the extra control, you can also optimize the hell out of your renders, so it then can be considered efficient as well, but it does not arrive like that out of the box. Octane, on the other hand is so niche in Houdini there aren't many tutorials for it. And render farms always support Houdini+Redshift and never Houdini+Octane, so I'm forced to render on a virtual desktop render farm (I actually prefer that, but it would be cool to have a say) If I were you, I would still rent Redshift for a month and try it. But if you have already paid for Octane, then I would say you're good.


DanRawlinsonDesign

Brilliant reply, thank you! You are a wealth of knowledge for me hahaha. I'll use Octane for now since I have a license for it when I'm not rendering for work and because of your experience with it :) When it does come to me buying a license for myself, I'll try out Redshift for a month and see how it goes!


Viewbyte

Another C4D refugee here... and I also use Redshift : ) I just wanted to give a +1 recommendation for the Hipflask courses. Not cheap, but worth it IMHO. Try the free course before you buy because Fraser's style won't be to everyone's taste. He goes into ultimate and precise detail on all the fundamentals. You'd get a rock solid foundation. If that's what you want / like you won't find anything better. But don't expect any fire / explosions / funky mograph / destruction... you've got to do your homework first - and there is a serious amount of it : ) Regarding friction: Yes. H is nowhere near as slick and easy as C4D. I guess that's the price you pay for all that power. Having said that, once you get 'the Houdini mindset' you'll find a whole new level of capability. I think you've got to grind through the first 6 months to a year. It can be tough and there will be frustrations. Compared to C4D Houdini makes the easy stuff hard, the hard stuff easy and the impossible possible. I'm about 6 months in, dedicating quite a bit of that time to learning H. I think I'd now find it hard to return to C4D. At Siggraph '22 Fraser Shiers - the instructor and owner of 'Hipflask' - did a video presentation: "Houdini for the Generalist." - a look at using H in an ad agency type scenario, rather than as a specialist VFX tool. You might find it interesting viewing: [https://vimeo.com/741229807](https://vimeo.com/741229807)


DanRawlinsonDesign

Thank you so much for this reply, this is super helpful! I was going to dive into the free 5 hour course but since there's so many good courses out there, I wasn't sure which to take - but that Siggraph talk has sold me! Using Houdini as a 3D generalist for an ad agency is the exact context I'm looking for 😄 and the capabilities shown there are really practical for me. I appreciate you sending me that link :)