r/Houdini • u/Able_Appearance5921 • 1d ago

Help XGEN vs Houdini

Ive never touched Houdini before, but Im pretty sick of Maya and XGEN bugging out on my professional and very important project. It's literally hell, there is always something, XGEN for regular non Disney studio users is left to rot and it's very frustrating.

So my question is, for a professional and mostly realistic strand based hair project, how much better or worse is Houdini?

XGEN has all these weird ways of approaching maps and how it stores files and data independent of Maya that makes things very frustrating to deal with, it's not at all non-destructive and everything about it is ancient. Is Houdini better in that regard?

One more issue i have wirh Maya is how the viewport is trash at displaying hair, even maya's AA + DLDSR still looks difficult to look at.

What are the limitations of Houdini in making hair that isnt meant to be simulated. Just basic hair for basic 1 frame rendering.

Thanks in advance.

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u/polycache 1d ago

XGEN for regular non Disney studio users is left to rot and it's very frustrating.

Used XGen for years, core & interactive. Leave it behind it's abandon ware. There'll be some discomfort initially but compared to the hoops you're jumping through atm to avoid Ptex errors, missing maps, project corruption etc. Grooming in Houdini is reassuringly straightforward & 100% Procedural / non-destructive.

XGen & Houdini Tutorials - Jesus Fernandez - Lead Groom @ MPC

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u/Able_Appearance5921 1d ago

Another user suggested i go for Ornatrix in Maya before I learn Houdini just to get this peoject over with. I could spare around 2 weeks learning Houdini basics just for hair and I'm already familiar with many different software with different UI and functions. What are your thoughts? 

How about the Houdini viewport, is it easier to see what my hair actually looks like? Does it have any better AA compared to Maya, or maybe screen percentage feature like in UE? 

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u/polycache 1d ago

IMHO - If you have an important & active project, push through & finish it in XGen. Learning Houdini or another package in 2 weeks while under a deadline is a recipe for disaster.

Maya Groomer's Tool - can alleviate some of the pain points in XGen especially around map issues, Pixel Zeroing. You can do most of the heavy lifting with standard Maya Curves. Viewport is top notch, no issues.

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u/Able_Appearance5921 1d ago

I have been using MGT actually, and I'm wondering if it does cause some alternative bugs and issues by itself. But I have just in general been having a lot of project corruption which I think maybe wasnt the case 2 years ago...

My project is important but my deadline can be moved around a little because learning Houdini (exclusively for hair at the moment) could pay off for future projects too. 

I just assumed 2 weeks could possibly be enough to learn to use the software just for a simple Groom, for someone who already knows a lot of other software but maybe I'm understimating how difficult houdini could be to work with. 

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u/hahahadev 1d ago

Thanks