Cineversity

Just watched Athanassios Pozantsis’s excellent presentation on the Houdini plug-in.

Was excited but then went to Orbolt to see what was available.

Unless I am seeing this wrong, there were only 14 items (some of them, like a leprechaun hat and snowman, of rather limited use).

Is that all there is?

There were 1200+ for Maya.

Lance

Hi Lance,

I checked this link:

https://www.orbolt.com/search/?search_ui=NONE&sort=-date

and found only a total of 448 for ALL application. Not 1,200, and only 41 for Maya. You might try some of the Maya Assets as well.

Given the fact that R17 is not even available, and that all of the 448 are available of course for Houdini, makes me wonder ...

How many of these 448 can be open in Houdini will not work as CINEMA 4D assets—if created with the interface you finally want to have?

Let’s talk about numbers perhaps later again, past the time when people have a release version in their hands. OK?

All the best

mechanicalbug - 21 August 2015 01:12 PM

Just watched Athanassios Pozantsis’s excellent presentation on the Houdini plug-in.

Was excited but then went to Orbolt to see what was available.

Unless I am seeing this wrong, there were only 14 items (some of them, like a leprechaun hat and snowman, of rather limited use).

Is that all there is?

There were 1200+ for Maya.

Lance

Hi Lance,
Thank you for your kind words.

I am a bit puzzled. I only see 41 Maya assets on Orbolt. Are you sure you can see 1200 ? I’m looking at Orbolt as I type this.
Houdini has around 450 but that’s expected as Houdini is fully compatible with itself

Jokes aside, Maxon is committed to providing C4D users with High Quality Houdini Digital Assets, but there’s a catch: The technology is so new, that we still don’t know how Artists are going to use it and what they want, so for this reason we would like your feedback and suggestions.
Also, there’s a vetting process from SideFX before an asset becomes available on Orbolt, and that will create a slight delay before an asset is online.

Are you testing the public beta version yourself?
What are your thoughts, and what asset would you like ? I might just make it for you because you liked my Presentation

Cheers
Thanassis AKA Athanasios AKA Noseman

Thanks a lot, Thanassis! For both, the post and the many presentations you have given so far. You seemed like the ambassador of this.

My best wishes.

You are welcome Sassi.

... I so miss a “plus” or “Like” button here. ;o)

Your motivation is infectious here, and I hope it will get even more intense. Great work.

The only thing I would add is the Maya plugin has been around for two years, while the C4D plugin is still technically in public beta. It will take some time for assets to be created.

I am actively hunting for a Houdini artist to create a collection of assets for C4D users. We will make them available for our MSA/Subscribers on Cineversity.

Cheers,
Paul

Yes, my apologies. I thought I was seeing 41 PAGES (!) of Maya assets.  Instead it is just 41 assets.

Athanassios’s presentation at Siggraph was spectacular!

Now I am excited again!

Lance

Hi Lance,

I assumed that was the “math” behind the current options.  … can happen.

Anyway, on the other side, I think no one can do the math about how much is possible with the new options. :o)

Thanks a lot for the last post, on the end it might have only helped to get the word about the fantastic new options out.

Enjoy!

To be honest, I was on the fence about upgrading to R17 until I caught Athanasios Pozantzis (Noseman’s) Houdini presentations (give that man a raise!).  Of course, I do have about a thousand questions:

Does the Houdini mesher work with X-Particles 3?

As everything in Houdini is an attribute, then does the Houdini engine not care whether or not that attribute was created in C4D or via a 3rd party plugin?  For example, could the icicle generator work on a Vue landscape created in C4D via Vue xStream? 

Along those lines, could Houdini created objects (in this the icicles again) be replicated across a scene via Carbon Scatter?

If you are looking for suggestions on what Houdini Assets I would like to see for C4D, here are my top 10 (in order of priority)

1) Flip Solver with Air Field (top of my list!  If VDB based rendering is required, I would purchase Arnold as the ability to do large scale fluid simulations is a big desire of mine).
2) Foam shader (for Maya)
3) Greebles Generator (for Houdini)—- you can never have too many greebles generators
4) Tornado Assets (for Houdini)
5) Rocky Ground (for Houdini)
6) K Fracture (for Houdini)
7) Particle Erode (for Houdini)
8) Point Cloud Volume (for Houdini)
9) Smoke Contrails (for Houdini - while this could be done with TFD, I wonder if this is a better approach for long contrails)
10) Pyro Jet Exhauset - I tried to create a similar effect in C4D…without success.

Thanks,
Dave

Dear Dave,
first of all thank you. Next, I am not a Maxon employee, but part of the Maxon family.

As per your questions:

The particles that come from Houdini and we send to Houdini (we “Marshall” in Houdini terminology), are Thinking particles.
If XP can generate TPs, then YES we can use the Houdini mesher.
If Vue, or any other 3rd party plugin, generates standard C4D meshes, then those meshes can be used as inputs, thus allowing the Houdini Engine plugin to work. I’m unaware of the way Vue handles these, so I can’t comment further.
The same principle applies to Carbon scatter, but I have no idea what instancing method it uses, so I can’t be sure.

You Asset requests are very interesting, and many are already on the to-do list.
Since we can’t test most of the commercial assets (the ones not made by SideFX) inside C4D, we will have to either contact the authors, or recreate similar ones from scratch (I think this caters to our users better).
Soon, I will start a thread for Asset requests, and I would like you guys to write them in a bit more detail. What you want them to do, and how you want them to work (interface).
Before I start it, I will have to setup a few guidelines as to how you can expect an asset to work within the C4D environment, limitations and common workflows.
So stay tuned.

Cheers
Thanassis

Thanassis,

Thank you for responding. I really enjoy your teaching style and clear explanations along with interesting tips, analogies and sense of humor.  As my interests are environment creation and effects (in particular fluid simulations), I am really excited by the possibilities that Houdini brings to the platform.  You echoed some of that excitement during your Siggraph presentation. Unfortunately, that is not a big talking point right now about R17, so I wonder if people just aren’t getting it.

I am confused why assets need to be “made for C4D” when it appears from the Houdini documentation that the C4D/Houdini plugin can read .hda files?  Are not .hda files the native file format for Houdini and Houdini FX?  To get that asset into something that the C4D/Houdini plugin can use, does it require more than the author simply exporting/saving the original .hda file in Houdini for C4D use? I would hope not otherwise what was the point of coding to a specific API within C4D? But if it does require more, then that may slow down the growth of C4D/Houdini assets.  Either way, I don’t expect these assets to be free, so hopefully the authors see future revenue streams by catering to the C4D crowd (though I will admit, people interested in effects probably aren’t using C4D - so we may be a small market).

Thanks,
Dave

I take it you don’t use X-Particles!  I will admit, that is surprising.

Hi Dave,
funny enough I have X-Particles and was on the Beta as well, but have not used them for about a year… I’m disgraceful I admit it

It’s not that straight forward with Houdini Assets. It all boils down to what the asset generates inside C4D. Currently we support Meshes and Particles for outputs and inputs.
Also, there are various data types that are not supported inside C4D. VDB’s for example. Other platforms support them, we don’t, so an asset that imports VDB’s won’t work in C4D. What we do instead, if we want to render VDB’s with an external renderer, is to create the Asset in a way that saves the VDB cache to disk, and then we point Arnold to that sequence.
For the same reason, not all Houdini assets work in Maya either. Don’t forget that the Maya plugin is developed by SideFX themselves and they had a head start of over a year, and it still doesn’t support everything.
Not everything is a simple as it sounds.

Cheers
T

Thanks for the information, Thanassis.

Ideas and discussions about Houdini-Assests will expand the options certainly in a huge way. Your idea “Soon, I will start a thread for Asset requests” sounds fantastic and I hope we get a vivid response to it.

I can’t help myself, but this seems to be something unique and fantastic at the same time. I would love to see that it gets it’s own forum here, so each asset has its own thread and people can find content much faster.

What do you think? :o)

Looking forward to your ideas, and what else will come with this great new option!

Have a good one.

Dr. Sassi - 23 August 2015 10:12 PM

Thanks for the information, Thanassis.

I would love to see that it gets it’s own forum here, so each asset has its own thread and people can find content much faster.

What do you think? :o)

+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.

Already looking into purchasing Arnold (as a hobbyist and married to an algebra teacher, I wonder if I—or rather, she—could qualify for an academic license).  So a thread/discussion/tutorial on exporting/rendering VDB cache files at some point in the future would be ideal…as well as a create a rousing request to get VDB rendering into R18!!!

Dave

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…
+1
Like
Vote
and all of the above

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