Changed jobs recently and i’m at a point that i have an opportunity to expand on the rigging/skinning side of TA for the moment.
Considering Houdini has expanded on its rigging tools (APEX i think its called) what will be the best DCC to start with? My long term plan is to create tools and automate as much as I can on this pipeline so naturally Houdini came into my mind as well (however I’m not that sure how the Apex workflow can help).
I’m very tempted in just learning the basics + some advanced things in Maya and then see how i can translate it using Houdini or python tools.
As much as I would love to say Houdini, I haven’t met an animator yet that likes Houdini’s animation interface (though I have an admittedly small sample size). And rigging has to go where the animators are.
I say stick with Maya for rigging/skinning professionally.
As a personal project though? Go for it! It won’t get better if nobody is working on it.
I generally agree unless you are looking at crowds or something procedural. Maya has been considered the standard for animation for many years. This means that there are many animators who know Maya and they are easy to find and employ. Houdini animators are scare and Houdini is a costly tool. It makes no sense for a studio to go this route or to train Maya people to use something else. This isn’t to say that Houdini is bad at animation, it’s just not a practical choice.
There is already a better crowd simulation solution for Maya: Golaem crowd.
Autodesk recently bought Golaem and will include Golaem crowd “by default” in the next version of Maya.
It is assumed that the integration will be improved and the development rate will be accelerated
