But at the same time, Houdini will surpass their expectations due to the common belief that Houdini is not good in the department of modeling.
The problem with Houdini is that there’s still a gap in the ease of use for modeling, and a lot of artists can find this problematic, I mean the ‘little things’ that you need to toggle on and off quickly which can through people off sometimes.įor Anyone seeing something for the first time being modeled in Houdini, especially if they used to model using other 3D software, the first thought that will probably come to their mind is: there are more time and effort that is being spent to model stuff that can be modeled easily and relatively quickly in other software. If you don’t want to model everything in Houdini you can use Blender because it is very good, and easy to use for modeling and the best thing it is free, so you probably want to use it because it’s commonly used for this purpose. Image source : Pavel GeraskinĪctually the way Houdini works can be very effective in terms of the necessary effort, and time-wise as well especially when modeling environments and natural scenes.
The current issues with Houdini’s modeling have less to do with its procedural nature and more with other factors. To be honest, a lot of plugins and add-ons bring more to Maya in terms of automation and proceduralism because doing everything manually is unhealthy especially when we are limited by time or projects are just too big. I don’t think it’s a good thing to want to do 100% of the work non procedurally because you are denying yourself many tricks you won’t have in non-procedural mediums. When it comes to modeling, a lot of artists feel like Houdini falls short compared to Maya in terms of speed and efficiency especially. But now Maya has way better UV unwrapping tools compared to what it had before.Īlso, Maya’s NURBS modeling works great and is very useful for organic modeling and high-accuracy curved surfaces. The UV unwrapping in Maya used to be bad and a lot of the artists that used Maya had to use UV unwrapping plugins or they used Blender because it was a better option.
Image source : Youtube/Autodeskįor polygonal modeling, Maya is easier for the user and can generate better results in a shorter period of time overall, because Autodesk has improved Mayas modeling tools to be equivalent to what you can do using Blender or 3ds Max. Houdini lets artists and studios fully explore an idea then easily make changes to generate multiple iterations giving high degrees of flexibility and control over their projects. Houdini node-based workflow lets motion graphics artists work on complex projects, it is actually one of the best competitors of Cinema 4D which is the weapon of choice for a big portion of motion graphics artists. Indie video game developers can also use Houdini to save time and effort when working on their projects because they have limited resources. Actually Ubisoft one of the biggest game development studios used it to create natural environments for their game Far Cry 5. Houdini, on the other hand, is not currently used in game development studios as a major tool that artists can rely on like Maya is but it can be very handy for creating procedural game environments using Houdini engine. Maya is dominating the video game industry since the nineties and to this date, a big portion of game development studios use it as an essential part of their pipeline because it is very good for creating video game characters, environmental assets, and of course it has a fantastic set of rigging and animation tools that makes the job of animators easier and allows them to generate results. Maya is one of the best 3D programs if not the best 3D program that studios and professionals use in the video game industry because it has all the necessary tools that they need to get the job done.