Cineversity

Athanasios Pozantzis - 24 August 2015 10:11 AM

3D-Pangel - 24 August 2015 10:03 AM

+1 to Dr. Sassi’s suggestion, in particular that each asset get’s its own thread as I am sure that more can be done with these assets than what would be originally thought.  In retrospect, I would imagine each asset is its own plugin.

QFA…
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3D-Pangel - 24 August 2015 10:03 AM

... I wonder if I—or rather, she—could qualify for an academic license).

You should contact Maxon sales and discuss that.

Also, the idea of treating assets as plugins is exactly the way to look at it.

Cheers
Thanassis

Maxon Sales can help me get an Arnold license ... as well as an educational Arnold license?

Really?

Dave

3D-Pangel - 24 August 2015 11:28 AM

Maxon Sales can help me get an Arnold license ... as well as an educational Arnold license?

Noooo, I misread your post. I thought you where referring to C4D
So, please forget my comment.

Cheers
Thanassis

Educational Licenses:
http://www.maxon.net/education/overview.html

=====

My impression so far, since I have dealt with many companies in that matter:
The idea is normally, that learning the application in an guided environment is supported. The exact requirements to get these educational licenses differ from company to company. Similar to that, a lot of companies have specific versions of their software, e.g., not compatible with the commercial version, or only after a specific update of the files, these project files become compatible. There are sometimes other restrictions. In pretty much any case, the license is not good for commercial work, and should not even considered for it at any time, as that would break the agreement and burns bridges, which I think is the worse part someone can start a career by using pirated licenses.

If one is interested in software for educational purposes, check out the specific websites for the “game rules”. If you are a teacher, the chances that companies supports your efforts are pretty good.

My best wishes.

So now that we are several months past the R17 release, I return to my original question. Where are the assets for Houdini? Orbolt now actually has one less (13) asset!

I know that Noseman said in his excellent tutorial that Maxon was making a commitment to creating assets. Are there any tangible results of that commitment?

So far, I am glad that I didn’t purchase the license for the Houdini engine…

Thanks,

Lance

Well….it really has only been 2 months.  But with that said, I am not sure who is doing the Houdini Asset development.  Is it Maxon developers? Cineversity personnel and/or super users?  Is it the group out of Canada that was established to work the SDK?  Not sure how the development resources are being applied to Houdini asset development, but knowing that may help level set when to expect results.  But in all situations, I think we need to be more patient as I would imagine absorbing the Houdini SDK to create these assets is not a trivial exercise and if it is the Maxon team, then add a few months for rigorous quality control and testing.  Remember that anything they develop has to meet their trademark reputation for stability.

Dave

Hi Lance,

Yes, I can see that this is not really encouraging. Thanks for asking again, as I believe some people might wonder as well. I know that the three example scene on the MAXOn page will not do the trick for you http://www.maxon.net/en/products/houdini-integration/get-more-info.html
Just to be clear, I have no information about the next step - so please do not extrapolate from my words, but since Houdini 15 is out, I guess that the improvements of H15 will have to do with the delay. AGAIN, a wild assumption here on my side!
Having met some people since its introduction, who work in the VFX industry a lot, I can see that the time between projects might be a great time to develop material that can be sold. Which is another indicator that I keep believing in it.

Crossing the fingers, and thanks again for staying tuned.

Thank you Dave,

You are spot on, nothing is more dangerous than a quick delivery with no quality for a company. You certainly have a good idea about this industry, so thanks a lot for your input here.
My personal hope is that things will accelerate and that the slow start is soon forgotten. Again, I share my personal view here.
A good idea is certainly to visit the Houdini fora and ask the Houdini Artist for specific help/solution. I can’t imagine that anyone is really against a good professional network. I talk here about a production based need, I’m not certain about the Hobby level.

My best wishes and thanks again.

Thanks for the replies!  I have no issue being patient. I hope that Side Effects is patient, too since I can’t see how buying the engine license makes sense for many people right now.

Best,

Lance

Sorry if I projected at all the idea of being “impatient"on you, Lance.

Not my intention, not my impression. To see the option for new tools and have too wait is certainly not what anyone likes to have.

Yes, there is something that stops the flow currently. As this is certainly not something any company likes to have, I guess there is a motivation to solve it.

Sorry if I moderate here more than have the option here to share facts, I wish I could do more than that. What I can do is to monitor the progress and see what is public—and share that here in the thread.

My best wishes

Thank you! 

Lance

You’re welcome, Lance.
I stay tuned, as this is big ;o)
Take care!

BTW, just to produce tons of stuff might be nice, but what would be needed or wanted?
Again, check out some of the Maya-Assets, I got some to work, e.g., the Hex Sphere, no colors though*, but it is nice to have anyway.

*Colors as shown in Thanassis series, via RGB Layer etc [workaround] I think I have discussed the colors a decade ago in an tutorial as well. Stable workflow.
https://www.orbolt.com/asset/Johnny::hexasphere_nc

Edit: added image

Hi Dr. Sassi and all!

Happy Holidays!

Yes, I got excited by Thanassis’ tutorial.  In it he mentioned that Maxon had made a commitment to producing assets for the engine.

Here we are now, another month and a half gone by, and no C4D assets have appeared. I agree with you that a ton of stuff might include some useless items but I think we can both agree that the output so far from Maxon is nowhere near a Ton of Stuff. It is still nothing.

Maybe the whole engine is just intended for full Houdini users?. That is fine.

But I can’t help but be disappointed after the excitement Noseman generated.

Lance

Hi Lance,

Yes, the biggest mistake a company or anyone can do is, to promise and not deliver. This is maybe old school ethics, but I keep it that way. Expectation management is today’s idea for that. Please let me expand on that and I hope my perspective is not too far off.

I followed this great tutorial and bought the Indie version from Houdini. :o) Yup, I trust in that so much to invest my very own money. When I got a new computer, I installed v15 of Houdini and—no show anymore. Quite the frustration, as many others have expressed it as well. All seems to fall apart, right? Please read on.

To get the v15 out of the system (C4D) and get v14 installed, is not really documented anywhere, but it is very simple to do. Do I digress here now, nope. The point that I try to make here is simple. I can see the whole delay in the fact that v15 has hold many new features, and to find the best way to get them working for C4D R17 might have created a challenge. I have no insider knowledge and I guess the NDA would not allow me to share it anyway, so I can only guess.
To rush out solutions is not a good idea, as changes after the release can cause more damage than they provide as solution. Typically an installed workflow becomes interrupted with patches, and that can be expensive.
Happily enough, SideFX downgraded my license to v14 for now, and I can do what is in the tutorial.

Given the fact that I have seen quite some more tutorials since, I ask myself often, why people do Houdini to C4D tutorials when they miss to acknowledge the options in Cinema 4D nearly completely. My intention is here not to bash the authors, it is more about the question what makes really sense to set up in the first place! To do things that can be done, e.g., in MoGraph easily, feels weird, to say the least. What makes sense—is a question that I want to ask everyone in this thread, as I did before—with no results, so I repeat: What are your expectations and wishes, what are the key-features in Houdini and are those missed in Cinema 4D, and makes it sense to implement that into the pipeline? With those answers things might accelerate more than not.

All of that is my personal view, not in anyway representative for anyone or anything else. I can see great things happen with the pipeline Houdini and Cinema 4D. I hope Thanassis will share more tutorials here, as he certainly has a great way of presenting such material. With this expressed perspective, I hope my position is crystal clear: I believe in it and I hope that on the end everything will make sense. So, keeping a promise that is based on “being on time” or “being in the quality” we are used to be, is the question for me here. I go with quality, always.

My hope and wish for 2016 is, that we get more “stuff” than we have ask for, more solutions that we might have imagined and that things get a constant increasing momentum.

Having said that, HAPPY HOLIDAYS