I have said it before but I really want to learn Houdini. I believe it could really help me take my effects to the next level to ave a strong VFX package like that in the bag. I have started before, watching tutorials and stuff but I always get distracted and forget about it.
How did you learn it? Live project? Awesome webinar? Please share your tricks. I’m sure there are more than me who’d appreciate it.
Fxphd just started their July term and I think Im gonna dive in and take the Houdini stuff. I did take their stuff a while back and was an awesome experience. Let me know if you want any info about them!
They’ve been doing a webinar series http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=202&Itemid=361 do all of these then take on a project ie: blow something up.
I’m going through the 3dBuzz Fasttrack tutorials at the moment and I will check out the webinars after this. I’ve got to say, it’s Very nice and thought out editor. I’m impressed!
I’m through the basics now. I have an ok grasp of basic operations that I need to move forward. Now, the fun stuff! Shaders, particles, Fluids and dynamics! This is going to be a kickass holiday 
Could you keep us up to date of your progress? I would love to follow your evolution with Houdini.
Will do! Currently, the nice weather and being off work has kicked my motivation in the teeth… And I’m away next week so I expect a stall in my progress.
Today I have started playing with Dynamics and F*ck Me, you’ve got to be kidding me.
I just redid one of my standard tests with a sphere falling, colliding with a static sphere breaking a bit, then hitting the floor and completely shatter. First time I tried this it was in pulldownit, since the clustering is so cool. In PDI its straightforward enough once you get your head around how the plugin works. In Houdini, it was made with like 5 clicks. With off the Shelf stuff. O.O Not only that, but since it’s procedural, I can tweak it while testsimming. I could watch the sphere fall, shatter and look cool. Then just click a node further upstream and completely remodel it, change the number of chunks then hit play again and it just works! No recutting, no waiting for fracture scripts. It’s insane! I love it!
Sure there are drawbacks like when it breaks it can be a nightmare to find the problem, however, that holds true for any package until you master it.
Just something that pops up in my mind. Can you have ghosting? Like a duplicate of your effect in wireframe with an offset of the original and x frames delay? Culd be maybe easier to debug
Yep, there is a trail node you can plug in to anything that does just that. Plug it in to animated meshes, Rigid bodies, particles, lines, whatever. You can then set it to be a template and keep working with your other stuff and the trail will show up as a wireframe.
Started looking at the PyroFX stuff today. It’s cool! At first it seemed to do pretty much everything FumeFx does, but I’ve found one problem with it so far. One of the best features of fume is how you can use the fire to light the smoke. You can’t really do that with Pyrofx (as far as I can tell). You’d have to bake that into the shader (Game Style! :D). So that’s a bit of a drawback.
However the thing I’d use it for most would be to make textures for sprites. That means I would probably do the elements separate anyway so it’s not a problem. For that, pyrofx is great. Some awesome presets are included which are great starting points for a whole bunch of effects. (Yes, they are quite a bit better than the maya fluids smokepuff we all love so much).
Edit: Oh, and I miss the briliant preview from Fume. Pyro does a decent job, but nowhere near as good.