houdini breaks out of the box Feb. 12 at a Side Effects Software launch demo in Toronto for the new and improved 1.1 version of the 3D animation software. The early verdict is that animators’ lot in cg land just got a lot easier.

Houdini is ses’ sequel to its film effects industry powerhorse prisms; it runs on all sgi boxes from the ubiquitous Indys to the higher-end models like the just-announced octane.

The open house will intro Houdini to prisms users and any interested prospective new Houdini users. For prisms customers, Houdini is an upgrade path scenario, designed to c’exist with prisms. Many houses are working cross-platforms. There are about 1,500 prisms site licences worldwide (1,000 active), about 50 to 75 of which are in Toronto.

Houdini 1.1. costs about $18,000 (includes one year of support and upgrade charges), and while additional global sales are in the cards, for now ses president and coo Kim Davidson is concentrating on satisfying the existing customer base. ‘We want to make sure we have the right package for those users.’

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oudini 1.0 was released six months ago, and was put through the paces by several veteran cg animators whose input helped refine the 1.1 version, which is shipping at the end of March.

In a recent roundtable discussion at ses’ Toronto office, prior to the launch, some Beta testers, Dave Geldart of Toronto’s Waveform Digital Productions, an eight-year-old company specializing in film/tv special effects, and John Coldrick, vp of Axyz Animation, a new Toronto cg shop whose primary focus is commercials, talked about the evolution of 1.1 with two of Houdini’s creators, ses product development director Paul Salvini, and Davidson.

Animators peg the strength of the upgraded package as superior modeling options, all the right tools in an integrated environment (that really is integrated, with complete communication between 2D and 3D) and ease of getting-up-to-speed ­ without any loss of speed.

Houdini convert Coldrick says the big problem with prisms is its intimidating interface. Unlike prisms, Coldrick says with Houdini you don’t have to learn everything to be able to use it, ‘you can have a junior animator sit down and use it, and yet a senior animator can do all they did with prisms, and more.’

Fellow Beta tester Geldart says the net result ­ user interface streamlined with no power sacrifice ­ used to be considered ‘mutually exclusive.’

Geldart, also a cgi teacher at Centennial College’s Bell Centre for Creative Communications, estimates the initial Houdini learning curve could be shaved by as much as half the time needed to crack prisms, and could mean the difference between learning (a 3D animation program) or not.

This is crucial, as the business of cg effects animation boils down to speed. Cost considerations and tighter deadlines enforce faster turnarounds. The highly competitive nature of the biz also results in an audacious degree of talent poaching, so being able to get a junior up on the program quickly can be paramount.

Salvini says a design goal was to put it in the hands of more people.

Houdini is deemed user-group friendly, a necessary trait since the need-for-speed on jobs has spawned a lot of fiercely concentrated production activity among ever-widening pools of cgi producers.

The new 1.1 version of Houdini has added character tools and a Houdini Developer Kit, as well as significant speed and stability enhancements.

In addition to cottoning to the completely redesigned interface, Coldrick pins Houdini domain tools, which allow you to take organic shapes and traverse in a soft environment, as a big thing.

Houdini has ‘amazing modeling,’ Coldrick says. ‘prisms dealt with polygons, Houdini also deals with nurbs (Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline), metaballs and B-Splines.’ And Coldrick is particularly keen on having polygons, metaballs and nurbs in the same model (editor’s non-td translation: smooth shape controllers, sort of like girdles for organic 3D objects).

Geldart, currently doing 25 shots of 3D effects animation on Shadowbuilder, an Apple Creek Communications feature, was able to save time on a swarm-of-wasps effect using the souped-up animation features. After modeling the wasp he was able to render it efficiently with the aid of Houdini’s particle geometry instancing capability, whereas previously it would necessitate using a memory-intensive copy function.

Geldart says formerly the options were to have multiple particle systems, or opt for going blurry, and meant fighting with a scene that should have been easy.

Another time-shaving example was modeling a dog in a couple of hours with elliptical metaballs, which could have taken days before. The inverse kinematics feature of the 1.1’s optional character tools let Geldart have chains of bones within the limbs.

Currently working on making billboard-art-come-to-life in a live environment in a Trident spot for jwt, Coldrick finds the rotoscoping tools work really well. He’s also using RenderMan, and finds the Houdini interface ‘much more direct than prisms,’ passing on the little nugget to ses prez Davidson that a recent Web surf turned up Houdini being marketed in England as an interface for RenderMan.

Salvini says the change to the RenderMan interface is primarily the ease of setting up shots, quickly adding that ‘prisms is the next best interface for RenderMan.’

Other advantages of 1.1, according to Salvini, include its rich set of spline-related extensions to the expression language, and mantra enhancements including atmospheric effects.

When my brow unfurrows, and I ask about how easy it is to get in and do your own code (since they seem to be proficient in it), Coldrick riffs about Houdini having ‘lots of back-door access.’

Geldart is also pleased with the ‘being able to tweak anything’ motif. ‘When we do a film we’re often writing code, having that ability is very important.’

Davidson nods, ‘We kept it open as possible,’ adding that as an animator you need the flexibility to be original, ‘you never want to be shut out.’

The powerfully integrated system allows the animator to see results right away, and to easily make and see changes. ‘It allows us to get feedback more quickly,’ says Davidson, which Coldrick agrees helps to melt any psychological experimentation barriers.

Salvini says the need to be able to go back and make fundamental changes to the animation is one of the things Houdini was designed to ‘do nicely.’ Perhaps this was born out of Davidson’s days of setting up alternate scenes, anticipating the render-intensive changes an art director might request.

For the spot Coldrick is working on, billboard girders were built, rendered to video, and then deemed too thick. One tiny change achieved Coldrick’s desired slimming effect. Coldrick says using other packages (which remained nameless), he would have had to start over. ‘You don’t waste time worrying about details, you know you can tweak.’

Geldart, genuinely coming out with a great marketing tag, adds: ‘In other packages you build a model, in Houdini you build a solution.’

As to Houdini’s best feature, Geldart says, ‘it’s a pack of features,’ and sums up the extension of power and flexibility as ‘prisms on steroids.’

Coldrick sums it up as ‘speed, control and power.’ But the bottom line is, well, still the bottom line. While all the facets of Houdini could end up improving the lot of effects (either upping the volume or creative-q), market reality dictates that saved time is not necessarily reinvested in a project, or as Coldrick puts it: ‘The demand curve keeps pace with increased capabilities.’

However, Houdini will help meet the current production challenges of less time and money and help further the trend for producers to consider cg producers as creative partners and enable them to deliver the goods as envisioned.

On a sober note, Coldrick wonders if the ease of change will lead to computer animation being a participatory process akin to online editing. ‘I don’t know if it will ever get to the point of the client looking over your shoulder saying: ‘left, right,’ I think an animator needs time to go and do. . .’

Moving beyond the day-to-day adventures in writing code, ses partner/ceo Greg Hermanovic has put together a strategic development team which is focusing a little further down the road, sussing out what animators will need in the future to ensure Houdini will continue to supply the tools and the power to get animators out of tight spots. Hermanovic and his crew are musing over the architecture needed in an environment where the pool of contributors and sources of elements to a project are many and sometimes far-flung, and working out a protocol for stage-managing the virtual set. . .