3dsmax 2017

[Alex_M]

I think Cinema4D looks very powerful and the big plus compared to Blender and Houdini is that V-Ray for C4D looks much more developed and production ready). I have a few people using it in my region. And yes it could be an alternative too. But Houdini is far more powerful and is cheaper (though cinema4d have many options they don't seem to offer option of a full featured version for indie users like Houdini). Blender is free. So I bought Houdini and I installed Blender and I am learning them (I'm still learning max too cause I will always use my perpetual license along with them) so I really have no time to learn cinema4D. I even won a license a few years ago and just sold it (which Maxon kindly allowed and helped transfer the license, not a thing Autodesk would do!).

A quick question. Why did you buy Houdini Indie when there's an Apprentice version which is totally free and basically the full featured $4500 package but meant for personal use (you are not allowed to use it on commercial jobs)? It has a few more restrictions like no third party renderers but it's basically the full package with all tools. Is it because you wanted to actually start doing commercial projects with Indie right away?

Totally agree with you, it is (at least for me) the best ever solution we have today. I just doubt on max ... How long will we be able to use our perpetual license ??

Is Autodesk even legally allowed to revoke perpetual licenses that we've already bought?

[rikou]

[...]So I bought Houdini and I installed Blender and I am learning them (I'm still learning max too cause I will always use my perpetual license along with them) so I really have no time to learn cinema4D. I even won a license a few years ago and just sold it (which Maxon kindly allowed and helped transfer the license, not a thing Autodesk would do!).

Totally agree with you, it is (at least for me) the best ever solution we have today. I just doubt on max ... How long will we be able to use our perpetual license ??

[jstrob]

Why isn't anyone considering cinema 4d? I don't get it.

I think Cinema4D looks very powerful and the big plus compared to Blender and Houdini is that V-Ray for C4D looks much more developed and production ready). I have a few people using it in my region. And yes it could be an alternative too. But Houdini is far more powerful and is cheaper (though cinema4d have many options they don't seem to offer option of a full featured version for indie users like Houdini). Blender is free. So I bought Houdini and I installed Blender and I am learning them (I'm still learning max too cause I will always use my perpetual license along with them) so I really have no time to learn cinema4D. I even won a license a few years ago and just sold it (which Maxon kindly allowed and helped transfer the license, not a thing Autodesk would do!).

[padre.ayuso]

Personally, I don't want to spend more money. If I'm changing software, then I'll change to something I don't have to feel compromised to pay. Blender seems to do that and it seems like an awesome software that will do what I need.

[Lupaz]

Why isn't anyone considering cinema 4d? I don't get it.

[jstrob]

The Houdini demo reel is impressive. It seems to do everything MAX can do, but at a 1/10th of the price. Why in the heck is anybody still investing in 3DS MAX? Shouldn't all VFX people be rushing to it, from MAX? Once the modeling part gets smoothed over, Autodesk might need to wake up.

For Indies users it's cheap with some limitation. But for bigger companies, it's 4500$ for the full version or 2000 for the basic version (PERPETUAL LICENSE!!!). that's the catch. if you need to grow, it becomes more expansive, but in my opinion still lower than max and plugins (for example 3 year of max (3970)+forest pro(240)+growFx(325)+hairfamr (700)+phoenixFD(1000)+frost(495) and you are already at 6730 and you don't do half what houdini can do!. Also considering the fact that houdini (as weel as blender) are available for Linux which is a free OS, you can save a lot setting up a render farm (and mantra render license are illimited with the 4500$ version).


Like I said indi has some limitation but for 199$ you can get 1 Houdini license plus 3 houdini engine licenses that you can use for rendering and simulating.


INDIE LICENSE

Commercial usage of Houdini Indie is limited to following:

The annual gross revenue of commercial entities and contracting entities does not exceed $100K USD
Commercial entities and contracting entities can purchase a maximum of 3 Houdini Indie and 3 Houdini Engine licenses
Houdini Indie cannot be used in the same pipeline as commercial versions of Houdini
Houdini Indie uses its own file format for saving scenes and assets
It is restricted to 1920x1080 when rendering out animations
Houdini Indie works with the following third party renderers: RenderMan, Arnold and OctaneRender. Redshift, V-ray and Maxwell Render will be supported in the future.
Please refer to the EULA [End User License Agreement] for specific details regarding these restrictions.

[jstrob]

So, Houdini has nothing to do with Blender? Blender on steroids?

The thing they have in common is that if you qualify as an indie for houdini, both are very cheap. Blender is free and houdini is only 199$/year, no plugin needed.

That's why I just feel like I have no choice to learn them. Every time I need to buy a 1000$ plugin for max cause I need to do something that max alone can't do, I spend a full night learning blender and Houdini!

[glorybound]

The Houdini demo reel is impressive. It seems to do everything MAX can do, but at a 1/10th of the price. Why in the heck is anybody still investing in 3DS MAX? Shouldn't all VFX people be rushing to it, from MAX? Once the modeling part gets smoothed over, Autodesk might need to wake up.

[jstrob]

So, Blender is a modeling software with a built in renderer (cycles). V-Ray makes a plugin- which is awesome, but what is Houdini? I went to their web page, but to a layman, it wasn't very clear.

Blender is not just for modeling and rendering (unlike zbrush) , you can animate, do effect, paint, do movie editing, camera tracking, compositing, VFX, fluid sim, particles, sculpt like abrush, so it touches everything in the animation pipeline.

Same thing for Houdini, it's by far the best solution for VFX, but it can also do anything (modelign, animation, rendering, workflow, games, vfx, crowds). Though it's a bit difficult to use in term of modeling. But they are committed to make it more and more good in modeling and character animation in the coming versions.

see their road map video from Siggraph 2016: https://vimeo.com/178392971
ans see what the Shed did in term of character animation with it: https://vimeo.com/167542179

At 199$ for indie, it's an incredibly powerful tool for a price lower than most of Max plugins. you can use it as a swiss tool plugin for max (transfering animated geo via alembic, you can also transfer particles and volume like cloud, fir and smoke). for example in archviz, you could probably use it only for crowds if you want. you could also use it for procedural modeling for some complex architectural structure, model and animate growing trees, creates clouds (and import them in max to render via VDB in V-Ray).

[glorybound]

So, Houdini has nothing to do with Blender? Blender on steroids?

[Alex_M]

So, Blender is a modeling software with a built in renderer (cycles). V-Ray makes a plugin- which is awesome, but what is Houdini? I went to their web page, but to a layman, it wasn't very clear.

It's like Maya - an animation and FX package but allegedly much more powerful. It is also said that it needs no plugins since you could do pretty much anything with it - water sims, cloth sims, destruction, explosions, procedural mesh generation etc. etc. Apparently big blockbusters are made with it. If you're doing strictly arch-vis I would say it's not something you want to mess with. Here's a little demo of what you can do with it.

[glorybound]

So, Blender is a modeling software with a built in renderer (cycles). V-Ray makes a plugin- which is awesome, but what is Houdini? I went to their web page, but to a layman, it wasn't very clear.

[jstrob]

Only thing now Svetlozar, is when I post in the Blender section i can't edit my post (no option at the bottom like i get here).

[jstrob]

Blender section should be visible on the main Forum page:
http://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum.php

Let us know if for some reason you are not able to see it.

Ok thank you and sorry Svetlozar! i found out why I was not seeing it even after your post: I had som option set up in the forum. I think i set them up many years ago when I didn't know what Blender was.

It is in the GForum Actions=>General setting=>miscelaneous options=>Exclude forums from "What's New"

It also exclude content from the Forumhome when the following checkbox is checked.

[Alex_M]

I have no problem with the visibility of the Blender section. Anyways, I just jumped over there so we don't derail this thread which was supposedly about Max 2017. I just asked my first questions there. I'm seriously considering starting learning it just in case. You just never know with Autodesk and their one sided decisions as we've seen many times.

BTW, Blender version 3.0 is expected to have a proper layering system with nesting etc. similar to Max. This was one of the main things holding me back from diving deeper with Blender. If this is implemented, I'm sure the user base will grow even more.