@eternityblue
It does not really work that way unfortunately, you don't open a thread with a kind of defiant attitude asking for someone to show off or to prove Houdini worth something and can be adapted to your iClone workflow.
I admitted elsewhere that Houdini requires a lot of patience and has a steep learning curve, this is not something you decide to use to quickly resolve your issues. The essence of Houdini is not to work fast but to do the job and never hit a wall, no matter what the challenge is (the only exception here being sculpting, you can't do what ZBrush do in Houdini). But - unless you are very experienced - you won't work as fast as with Maya, Softimage, 3DSMax, etc..
I'm using Houdini on a daily basis at work for VFX work but I'm unable to answer your question regarding a "good workflow" with iClone because it depends on what you mean by that and what you are using iClone for. Like any other 3d DCC tool you can do modeling in Houdini, so you can use it to create any object that you can import into iClone through 3DXchange. Houdini has the advantage to let you do procedural modeling at a level not reachable by any other software. You can do procedural animation as well, of course. So here there are no difference with any other 3D DCC tool: you create assets you get into iClone, for a very cheap and legit licence price (similar to a Maya LT subscription but with infinitely more power).
Regarding rendering, as I often mentioned it in my messages, I'm not trying to render anything outside of iClone. To me the point of iClone is to render as much as possible everything in iClone at "interactive speed" and max quality, I'm not interested in having final renders at realtime speed though. If I start rendering outside iClone then what the point of using iClone in the first place ? What I'm interested in iClone is still the "Machinima" idea and how to obtain the best results with its constraints.
Back to a "good workflow" I'm afraid I won't be able to produce a good receipt that you can instantly and magically apply to your workflow. I may help you though, if you ask precise questions about Houdini, except perhaps when it comes to character rigging/skinning and importing/exporting characters through Houdini/3DXchange as I didn't had the time yet to explore this area of Houdini!
I hope we will soon see Alembic import into iClone so it would really help for VFX work, this way we could easily import Houdini simulations into iClone. OpenVDB import would be a plus as well granted iClone introduce volumic rendering. Meanwhile, you can export alembic and camera from iClone to Houdini, so you can use your iClone objects as matte objects and render volumes and simulations in Houdini then composite the results either in Houdini or in HitFilm or whatever. For me this is the only exception I render outside iClone for now.
Not sure what to add for now, except I may appear a bit schizophrenic about Houdini, on one side I advise to discover and use it while at the same time I'm warning it won't be easy a requires a lot of patience and elbow grease. But ultimately, if you really learn Houdini, you will never regret it, you can do things in there you won't be able to do anywhere else.
What's for sure, and that was my point in the other thread is that in terms of power/price ratio, Houdini Indie is unbeatable (Blender aside as it is free of course).
So if you are young enough, full of energy and don't know yet where to put your money for a 3D DCC tool that you will probably use the next 30 of 40 years, then don't look any further ; )
--
guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.
Edited
7 Years Ago by
grabiller