is houdini NUMBER_TOKENd hard to learn for anyone familiar with side effects is houdini this can actually be a really really loaded question there's no doubt that it's one of the most robust software out there for NUMBER_TOKENd content creation but to better understand this question we have to dig deeper into what is houdini and what are you using it for also if you want to learn how to create beautiful environments in unreal engine check out my brand new environment art course called the environment artist survival kit where you're going to learn everything from making flowing grass to fluffy trees and sweeping beautiful landscapes i'll leave a link in the description for anyone who's interested in checking out the course houdini is an entirely node-based software that harnesses the power of proceduralism to build networks of nodes that create an output nodes are compiled pieces of code that can be linked in a chain with other nodes to create attributes parameters or functions each one has specific traits and features people who are familiar with other node-based software such as unreal engine blueprints and substance designer will find houdini's node-based interface much easier than others now proceduralism means aspects of the digital content created can be changed non-destructively at any point in the pipeline or lifespan there are some other software out there that harness the power of proceduralism ranging from fully procedural like substance designer or semi procedural features like NUMBER_TOKENds max and blender's modifier stack the big difference here being that fully procedural means any part of the development cycle can be changed independently of its other components and will update the end result in real time while semi-procedural has some non-destructive features at some point in the development cycle it can't be changed without redoing things in essence it's linked in its history to other components that can't make up its content so here's where things get a little complicated and where people get intimidated by houdini it's important to understand that houdini doesn't operate like your traditional modelling package everything is created through nodes and we need to break down the framework in which you create these node-based networks in houdini there are different types of node network folders called contexts and each serve a different purpose you can think of context as different apps within houdini based on whichever context folder you're using the tools available will change now there are several of these contexts but the main ones you might use are sops aka surface operators which handle modeling and geometry manipulation dops and pops for dynamics and particle operations rop for rendering chop for animation and motion fx and mat net which handles shader development and materials now this type of separation while it seems confusing at the start it actually really helps keep everything organized now you may be asking yourself doesn't houdini involve a lot of coding the answer is yeah if you want to unleash the full power of houdini and accomplish more complex tasks you'll need to know how to code in vex houdini's native coding language but for a majority of tasks you don't need to know how to code at all to start using it and for many simpler tasks you won't ever need to touch any code the way you can work around using vex is by using another context called vops the visual representation of vex you can think of vops like you would in unreal
START_SPONSOR_TOKEN also if you want to learn how to create beautiful environments in unreal engine check out my brand new environment art course called the environment artist survival kit where you're going to learn everything from making flowing grass to fluffy trees and sweeping beautiful landscapes i'll leave a link in the description for anyone who's interested in checking out the course END_SPONSOR_TOKEN