Along with a brand new website, SideFX has released Houdini 15.5. This latest version of Houdini brings a new crowd solver, third party rendering for Houdini Indie, new modeling tools, and much more. For the full list of features and upgrades you can visit
Houdini 15.5 released
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What a release!
Some much stuff for a .5 release.
I don’t see how max 2017 can remotely be called a new release compared to what SideFx is adding every new update they roll out.
Please, please, makes AD will never buy SideFx!
What an amazing release!
You know you have something cool when you’re done watching the release video and you have a grin ear to ear 🙂
Modeling tools look ok but nothing so amazing. Viewport displacement display ok.
Good god! Autodesk are asleep.
How did they succeed to make me believe hardware tessellation is only available on directx?
Really looks impressive, and the 3rd party render engines for indie is awesome!
well done Side-Fx!
What is so amazing here?
Which 3D application are you currently using?
For merely a .5 release it is very nice to see. And for Indie users to now have render options is a big thumbs up.
this? amazing? you guys must be kidding. lol
Oh, yes. AD work much better, yeah.
Autodesk it’s a cancer of CG industry.
Sade FX- good work. If AD is angry you all doing well.
Hope for a big improvements in Houdini 16 in character setup and workflow speed.
I think the meaning of “Amazing” has been changed.
Is this what they get for $2,500 yearly maintenance?
what a double standard here.
It is 199 yearly not 2500 ? The Houdini indie version has all the feature and the reason people are amazed by it is the Quality of the tools coming out of side effect and they’ve only been targeting game developer for 2 releases , This isn’t even a full release it a half release . 15.5
ANd why people are happy with this for all of Houdini Amazing feature this is second release targeted at giving that same quality of feature to game developers ,rather than just Technical artist and High End Visual effect are being targeted at game designer . Not to mention you can export these simulation and create In game Effect in Unity and Unreal .https://cgpress.org/archives/cgtutorials/creating-in-game-fx-using-houdini .
Yes, it is truly amazing how many ignoramuses work in this industry 🙂
If you earn more than 100,000 a year and consider $2000 a big cost then maybe try to earn less and use Indie version which has all the features as well 😀
Second thing, it’s not about maintenance, but mostly about full access to the support (but someone who uses Autoede$k’s software most likely does not even know what it means – you talk to resellers, right?). You can send them your production files and they will solve the problem for you – or if it’s a software bug they will simply fix it the next day – not next release.
Last but not least – it’s not about double standards – it’s about healthy relationship between users and people who make the software. I haven’t heard anyone, who is using houdini in production, complaining. That’s simply because we can clearly see where it’s going, how strong it becomes with every release, and that developers not only know exactly what they’re doing but also listen to the people – not just talk about it. Also, for someone who’s using houdini on a daily basis, the full list of new and improved stuff in this release is indeed impressive (and for dot upgrade I’d say amazing)
It’s also very important to notice that especially many of 3dsmax users have no idea what’s behind the interface they’re clicking everyday. If I had not switch to houdini, I would have been very satisfied with the latest max updates. Yet, I’m constantly seeing people b**ching about missing fluids or ‘new icons’.
Have a nice day!
“I haven’t heard anyone, who is using Houdini in production, complaining.” Really… That’s a lot of Kool-Aid.
It would be great to be a developer of Houdini since users have very little expectations.
i don’t know from where you have that with a little expectation! just to be clear as a VFX tools it’s a beast that can handle a lot of data and that is required if they won’t reach this customer request sidefx wouldn’t exist!
the first 5-8 min are interesting:
https://vimeo.com/140505036
You can talk about $2500 as a cost, but for my tiny shop I am looking at paying Autodesk another 500 to have nearly zero development in non-archviz areas, or getting the insanely powerful Houdini for half that.
Hey,
That’s exactly what I don’t get about people who are using max. During last year you got MCG (which is of course 50x slower then vex in houdini, but still 😉 ), another boost in viewport speed, improvements in skinning, improvements in python integration.
What are you expecting? I’m just curious…
Because regarding FX, it is very expensive piece of software (considering amount of plugins you have to buy to get a full-blown fx environment), but they’re not gonna write anything better than Fume, TP, Thinkbox toolset or realflow.
Honestly, they can’t do much more then core optimizations when all the tools are already there, production ready.
And Bifrost.. just see how much time it takes on maya side. Probably they will never port it to max. How many max users would use it anyway? And half of them would start complain it’s too complicated or will find another reason.
MCG is a good case in Max failure to understand how it should do things.
When Softimage got ICE in first 2 years lot of stuff build with ICE appeared from users. How much is made in MCG out there? not much and i can say inferior to what was build with ICE and this in a product with much more user base.
First of all
FX industry (like any other system) has a limited number of users. If anyone will have a possibility to use cg for a fun – it’s will completely devalue all industry.
What exit?
Progress will be only for someone special. For big company like a ILM, Pixar…
For us- just small update and useless “cool” unneeded things.
Each new year CG industry will become smaller and smaller. And FX also not because it’s costly for developer, but because it’s a big piece of money for big studies.
I haven’t read all the comments, but the feeling is that some people is wondering what is so great about this release.
I’m not a Houdini user, I’m just messing around with it, but many requests I’ve seen on the forum were about improving the modeling workflow.
Yes, there were other requests, but they did a lot about modeling, in fact to me it seems a pretty solid release in that sense.
How many of the 3ds Max user request were filled?
Also, I don’t know how many of you noticed the daily builds they are rolling out. After the 15.5 480 came out, people found out bugs. Tickets were submitted, and bugs have been fixed since… what is it? merely a week?
Now, compare to what we get with 3ds Max. The bugs, when they are fixed, are part of the yearly update or the SP. I think the dialogue with SideFx is something AD can never be compared to. Bug found, ticket submitted, bug fixed.
Now, if it seems I’m pro Houdini and vs Max, that’s totally wrong.
I switched to Max four years ago. I simply loved it. It’s been a breeze to me. Is not perfect, as any other 3d app out there.
But what seems clear to me is that AD is a big, big company. I’m not saying it is a good thing or a bad thing, I don’t have elements to say nothing like that. What I can say, though, is that they are slow. After four years we’ve got updates, sure, but compared to the pace SideFx is keeping up with Houdini, AD looks like a dinosaur and this makes me feel uncomfortable about the future of 3ds Max.
I can buy Houdini for a ridiculous amount of bucks, and use it for real.
In order to use Max my only hope is that someday the company I work for will not drop it, because I won’t definitely spend those money when I can invest in Houdini, especially considering that if one day I decide to give my career a stir and invest in smoke simulation, particle meshing, liquid and so forth, with Houdini there’s plenty of room. With Max I should spend more money on top of what the basic package already costs.
Even now that I mainly do Motion Graphics, 3ds Max at work is at risk. We also have C4D, which I could easily use, and AD didn’t do one single thing to prove there’s something on that side for motion graphics users. In last four years (but I believe even more) they didn’t add one single feature for motion graphics.
Except for MCG, which is not what the user base asked for, is not ICE. It is slow, there isn’t much around for it to use. People say it’s a young tool, give it time.
What is it? Two years already? In the meantime the industry move forward, how much time 3ds Max need?
Is not a rant, is more a concern from someone who likes 3ds Max and would like to see much more in its future.
But right now I feel pessimistic about it.
As a frustrated 3Ds Max user. I would really like to see a Houdini tutorial focusing on…
Bringing an object from 3ds Max into Houdini.
Making a simple particle system in Houdini colliding with that object.
Bringing that particle system back into 3ds Max and it fits in world space.
This would temporary solve my Max frustrations and lead me into Houdini.
Does a tutorial like this exist? SideFx could you make one?
Fingers crossed.
it should be pretty easy todo.
1. download the free version of houdini and make first a particle animation with a tutorial. there are a lot of them on sidefx.com
2. 3ds max export a test mesh as fbx or alembic
3. import it into houdini scale it correctly (transform sop)
4. make a particle animation
5. go to the path where the object is and export a obj file (not sure if it support point export)
6. if this obj shows correctly then you can get a indie license
i haven’t got a 3ds max around me otherwise i could make a example but i’m sure it’s not hard there are a lot of other studios that have manage that with the data transfer.
@nomad: look at rohan dalvi video at vimeo…a lot of free tutorials esp. for people how make a transition from max -> houdini
https://vimeo.com/rohandalvi/videos/sort:likes/format:thumbnail
here a realworld example about awesome support(also you get this kind of support with apprentice or indie version):
I do a free project with fluids in houdini. After two day I got a really annoying problem. Everytime after press ESC my cooking interrupted and houdini crashes. So send my file with syteminfo file to siedfx support…the wrote back after 20min with advice me downgrade nvidia driver …this doesn’t helps…so I tried to debug my scene and found out the polydoctor SOP causing this issue. I mailed this info to sidefx and today I got a message:
Side Effects Support Ticket: #35745
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Hello Tom,
This should be fixed in 15.5.488
Cheers,
Silvina
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In response to:
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Side Effects Support Ticket: #35745
Hi Tom,
I was able to reproduce this issue. I submitted it as bug #75590.
Cheers,
Silvina
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In response to:
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So, after uninstall 6 houdini version(13.xx, 14.xx, 15.xx–> before
uninstall i tried my evil scene in all this version and it has same
problem) and reinstal one clean houdini version…and nothing helps. …I found out that polydocter SOP is my evil cooking interrupter…I dont know
what is happen there but something strange..
But anyway thanks for your incredible fast support 🙂
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thx. tom.
@ Tom Freitag:
I’ve submitted some other bugs in the past days, and the response has been as fast. Bugs have been fixed in the new daily builds.
I’m on apprentice.