Another great video, thanks Bubblepins! Let me ask you this. Having more or less invented it, Houdini has the edge in procedural modelling at the moment although I understand Blender is also adding procedural modelling tools as well. - How would you compare procedural modelling in Blender to Houdini at the moment? - If you had to direct model a complex shape, perhaps something organic like a Porsche or a head, would you do it in Blender or directly in Houdini or somewhere else? Thanks again.
This is a very good question! I like both Blender and Houdini, my workflow would to use both! Take the best of both worlds! Houdini is best at procedural and we can create generators or a node setup that will create the base shape or help with generating selective items for the Porsche. I like Blender for it's rendering system, Cycles renders very nice results and Eevee is just SO fast. And Blender has a bunch of addons that can be purchased at affordable prices, so I would use a combination of both to create the best workflow for the Porsche. I would treat each project differently and the workflow may change depending on the project. What I would add to the Houdini / Blender combo is Substance because texturing will pushes it to another level. When rendering with textures, I find that you can pack even more details in, but render faster because all the details are baked into the textures. I am planning to do a Houdini Procedural UV topic soon and that will lead to a Substance Painter tutorial as well. I plan to go over some small tips into how to prepare a geometry in Houdini so Substance Painter will recognize each material and auto-create the material slots and prep the UDIM's. As well as a Houdini to Blender material slot.
@@bubblepins Looking to spend my time wisely. Houdini is so vast I feel I might have to dedicate my life to becoming proficient in it. Do I also need to learn Blender? - Is direct modeling in Houdini compared to Blender slow or does it come with a less capable direct modelling tool set (I notice there is a commercial Houdini DM plugin) - Is there a way to switch Blender from a Z-up to a Y-up system? If yes, then how? I couldn't see it. If no, then is there a simple way to export Blender assets to Houdini as Y-up? Looking forward to the Houdini proc UV / Substance tutorials. You are building quite a remarkable collection. Thanks again.
@@tsegulin I just looked up the DM plugin you mentioned, it looks NICE! This is the first time I heard of it! I would say if you like direct modeling workflows, try out the new features in Houdini that SideFX has added with the wheel menu. See if that is good enough for you before you purchase the DM plugin, but if you really are serious and want to focus more onto direct modeling yeah I would get it. As for Blender vs Houdini for direct modeling, I think Blender kind of wins, but not by much. It's pretty close. The best thing about Blender imo is probably just the shading system, you can direct model and shade at the same time without losing performance. Houdini is more procedural, so it's more of a long run game. If I wanted to build something very very grand that requires a lot of pieces, I would use Houdini, because say I'm building a city, I can make HDA's for the streets, buildings, roads, signs, traffic lights, cars, houses,... and so on. But Blender may not be able to give you all that on the same level. I find that a lot of Blender generators have pre-built models and it just glues it together. Like they have have pre-built 10 houses and randomly scatters the houses across the city, but Houdini can use HDA and generator unlimited different houses and scatter them around the city. The above isn't really a definite answer so I would say this as a rule of thumb: If you're building 1 thing, then probably Blender is your best bet, but if you're building 10 or more, I would use Houdini. But in the end, just use what you're most comfortable with, because learning either or learning both still requires a learning curve and that requires time and learning resources too. I couldn't find a way to turn the Blender axis around. There use to be one in the previous 2.9 versions, but I think they took that away. But you can switch the Houdini axis lol, I don't know if you want to do that though. I can't wait until I do the Procedural UV, I'm still working on some example HIP's and it still has a long way to go. But this topic will lead onto the Substance world, which I'm really excited about. Because then we can load the textures back into Houdini viewport and I want to see if it'll look as nice as the Blender viewport. Hope that helps!
Another great video, thanks Bubblepins!
Let me ask you this. Having more or less invented it, Houdini has the edge in procedural modelling at the moment although I understand Blender is also adding procedural modelling tools as well.
- How would you compare procedural modelling in Blender to Houdini at the moment?
- If you had to direct model a complex shape, perhaps something organic like a Porsche or a head, would you do it in Blender or directly in Houdini or somewhere else?
Thanks again.
This is a very good question! I like both Blender and Houdini, my workflow would to use both! Take the best of both worlds! Houdini is best at procedural and we can create generators or a node setup that will create the base shape or help with generating selective items for the Porsche. I like Blender for it's rendering system, Cycles renders very nice results and Eevee is just SO fast. And Blender has a bunch of addons that can be purchased at affordable prices, so I would use a combination of both to create the best workflow for the Porsche.
I would treat each project differently and the workflow may change depending on the project.
What I would add to the Houdini / Blender combo is Substance because texturing will pushes it to another level. When rendering with textures, I find that you can pack even more details in, but render faster because all the details are baked into the textures. I am planning to do a Houdini Procedural UV topic soon and that will lead to a Substance Painter tutorial as well. I plan to go over some small tips into how to prepare a geometry in Houdini so Substance Painter will recognize each material and auto-create the material slots and prep the UDIM's. As well as a Houdini to Blender material slot.
@@bubblepins
Looking to spend my time wisely. Houdini is so vast I feel I might have to dedicate my life to becoming proficient in it. Do I also need to learn Blender?
- Is direct modeling in Houdini compared to Blender slow or does it come with a less capable direct modelling tool set (I notice there is a commercial Houdini DM plugin)
- Is there a way to switch Blender from a Z-up to a Y-up system?
If yes, then how? I couldn't see it.
If no, then is there a simple way to export Blender assets to Houdini as Y-up?
Looking forward to the Houdini proc UV / Substance tutorials. You are building quite a remarkable collection.
Thanks again.
@@tsegulin I just looked up the DM plugin you mentioned, it looks NICE! This is the first time I heard of it! I would say if you like direct modeling workflows, try out the new features in Houdini that SideFX has added with the wheel menu. See if that is good enough for you before you purchase the DM plugin, but if you really are serious and want to focus more onto direct modeling yeah I would get it.
As for Blender vs Houdini for direct modeling, I think Blender kind of wins, but not by much. It's pretty close. The best thing about Blender imo is probably just the shading system, you can direct model and shade at the same time without losing performance. Houdini is more procedural, so it's more of a long run game. If I wanted to build something very very grand that requires a lot of pieces, I would use Houdini, because say I'm building a city, I can make HDA's for the streets, buildings, roads, signs, traffic lights, cars, houses,... and so on. But Blender may not be able to give you all that on the same level. I find that a lot of Blender generators have pre-built models and it just glues it together. Like they have have pre-built 10 houses and randomly scatters the houses across the city, but Houdini can use HDA and generator unlimited different houses and scatter them around the city.
The above isn't really a definite answer so I would say this as a rule of thumb: If you're building 1 thing, then probably Blender is your best bet, but if you're building 10 or more, I would use Houdini.
But in the end, just use what you're most comfortable with, because learning either or learning both still requires a learning curve and that requires time and learning resources too.
I couldn't find a way to turn the Blender axis around. There use to be one in the previous 2.9 versions, but I think they took that away. But you can switch the Houdini axis lol, I don't know if you want to do that though.
I can't wait until I do the Procedural UV, I'm still working on some example HIP's and it still has a long way to go. But this topic will lead onto the Substance world, which I'm really excited about. Because then we can load the textures back into Houdini viewport and I want to see if it'll look as nice as the Blender viewport.
Hope that helps!
Thank uuuu☺️
Thanks for watching!