SOFTWARE REVIEW
Houdini 18.5
PRICE From $269/year (indie) to $6,995 (floating studio licence) | COMPANY SideFX | WEBSITE sidefx.com
KineFX: as the most exciting feature, we can use the modelling tools for the animation itself, literally warping the spacetime
It’s been about two years since I wrote a review on Houdini for 3D World readers (back in issue #241), and a lot has changed since then. We are currently living in a world where artists are stuck within the walls of their home all day, and digital content has become an increasingly essential intake for many. Thus, it’s a rather responsible task developing such software as Houdini. Sadly, it seems there is an opposite trend in the software industry, as such companies use the enthusiastic users as guinea pigs. It’s cheaper than having an appropriately sized in-house testing and QA team, and also yields more bug reports per time because of the higher user exposure.
To be clear, Houdini is generally better in this regard than many of its competitors, but the last two new major modules were astonishingly buggy at their releases – even after the first few ‘production builds’ I couldn’t recommend them for serious production. Actually, they revived the memories of my Maya years.