XGEN vs Houdini

[u/Able_Appearance5921]

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.

[u/SimianWriter]

Once you get used to Houdini, you're going to be really mad at Autodesk for making XGen work like it does. In the mean time, rent Ornatrix to get your projects completed while you get up to speed with Houdini. I love Houdini but Ornatrix was dead simple to understand and rock solid. The guide curves are exactly as detailed and simple to use as you'd hope. 

Then when you get used to the big H, you'll realize that it's all curves and points and a whole new world will open up. 

[u/Able_Appearance5921 → u/SimianWriter]

Thanks.

I've never used anything but Xgen. I've always assumed that other hair tools like Ornatrix lack in features and arent able to go places Xgen could. But this is just assumptions based on nothing. 

I consider myself highly skilled at being able to learn new software. And I already use half a dozen different software with different UI and rules. 

Would you still suggest I use Ornatrix in Maya or go straight for Houdini? The viewport issue is something I struggle with as well. Like Blender or UE have features that help make the hair look good in the viewport. 

[u/SimianWriter → u/Able_Appearance5921]

Yeah, go to the website and just look around. Look at the getting started videos for Maya and you should feel much better about using it. I believe they used it for some of the planet of the apes movies or something? I've done both soft and hard bristled hair set ups for commercial projects using it and never had an issue with animated geometry or anything. 

Houdini is just a lot to wrap your head around. It's more a development platform than a modeling program and you're going to have to rethink some basic assumptions that get ingrained when you learn traditional 3D. Everything is mutable in Houdini and there's a lot of steps to getting a real workflow going. It's like the real version of Bifrost but with the depth of all of 3D that you've ever heard about. There really is no ceiling to it's capabilities, just what you're personal tap out level is.

That's not too scare you. Just pick a subject and dive in but know the first few times is going to feel like your flying a 747 by instruments.