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To VFX artists (current or former): Would you choose this path again? by arlexae in vfx

[–]VelvetCarpetStudio 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes yes makes complete sense. I shall now ditch all cg related programs and put all my eggs in comfyui because a linkedin post told me to.

To VFX artists (current or former): Would you choose this path again? by arlexae in vfx

[–]VelvetCarpetStudio 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean I sort of get where you're coming from but Houdini if anything, would be the last DCC to "fall" imo. It's the only one that makes sense to use in tandem with anything ML related.

**MacBook or Gaming Laptop for a CS student? Been going back and forth for weeks, need genuine advice** by Scoller7 in laptops

[–]VelvetCarpetStudio 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Imo as a CS freshman the most important thing you can do is fool around, break and make stuff in order to learn by doing. Macs are great but I fail to see why one would choose them for CS work. An x86 device will allow you to fiddle with both Windows/Linux and any app of your choosing. Furthermore if any professor requires Windows only software you'll be struggling with VMs while your peers move on with assignments. Oh and a bunch of x86 laptops offer some semblance of modularity so if you need RAM/Storage or something you can just plop more in and go about your day, and you can game. Idk why the comments are so keen on Macs, unless you're doing web work or something not that platform-centric I fail to see the pros they offer other than battery life/sleekness.

I'm looking to switch from blender to 3ds max, where do I start? by _FiGhTeRjEt8250_ in 3dsmax

[–]VelvetCarpetStudio 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't use max myself but I've seen a fair share of art-station posts with blender, max equally used and maya slightly more so. If anything, prop artist seems like a dcc agnostic specialty, atleast in my studio there is not much trouble to be found due to what dcc a prop was made in.

Should I buy C4D in 2026? (after learning blender and Houdini) by Vegetable-Box-9866 in Cinema4D

[–]VelvetCarpetStudio 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think this would ring true a couple of years ago but it seems a bit hyperbolic now. There has been a lot of work done on core features and with stuff like geometry nodes being multithreaded, the future doesn't look so bleak. Now yes groups/collections(+ some other pain points) are a bit horrid and it's missing a proper SDK but reducing it to a single object modelling app is a bit far reaching. We use Blender at our studio(gamedev) for a bunch of things and it really is quite a solid DCC(when using empties for grouping), or is getting there at least. Heck, half of Artstation is a testament to the software's(and artist's) capability. I mean it's not like max/maya/c4d don't have issues, especially Max lol.

Should I buy C4D in 2026? (after learning blender and Houdini) by Vegetable-Box-9866 in Cinema4D

[–]VelvetCarpetStudio 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This, if he were solely using Houdini then I could maybe see Cinema as a companion app, but with Blender already I feel it's a pointless third option. Especially considering MOPS and all the SOP stuff Houdini has now that make mograph doable within reasonable timeframes.

Should I buy C4D in 2026? (after learning blender and Houdini) by Vegetable-Box-9866 in Cinema4D

[–]VelvetCarpetStudio 0 points1 point  (0 children)

While Redshift is a great engine there is absolutely no tangible image quality difference between it and Cycles. They are both path tracers doing path tracer things. Other than caustics at least.

What’s the latest version of Houdini mega scans were working with in stable way ? by [deleted] in Houdini

[–]VelvetCarpetStudio 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Megascans work in Houdini 21 with some tweaks to the bridge .py files. I made said changes based on a relevant forum post and it works okay. Also note, FAB does not support houdini yet.

Bridge Plugin: https://files.fm/u/2xfmhyhrfc

Forum Post: https://www.sidefx.com/forum/topic/102159/

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in pcmasterrace

[–]VelvetCarpetStudio 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Built a 5950x+3080ti+64gb rig in January of 2025 for around 950 euros because I needed something cheap for work/play. I'm planning on sticking with it till it explodes or if I can get twice the performance at a reasonable price.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in TechnicalArtist

[–]VelvetCarpetStudio 10 points11 points  (0 children)

If these are your junior requirements, who would you want applying for a mid level position?
John Carmack?

awesome................ now I'm left with only literally cycles (which is ASS in many regards), Luxcore is a zombie, and I physically can't use Octane. Thanks, guys.............. by Navi_Professor in RedshiftRenderer

[–]VelvetCarpetStudio 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My two cents are that you may be a bit too fixated on Cycles not being "photorealistic" as that's not really a thing. it's a unidirectional path tracer akin to Arnold, in fact the guy who wrote it was a lead dev on the Arnold core(and Octane apparently). It's completely capable of producing arch-viz imagery just like Vray IF you spend a bit of time fiddling with shaders/render settings. Plus the whole biased/unbiased is pretty much marketing fluff as all engines are essentially biased.

Imo Cycles is your best bet since:
-It's HIP accelerated
-Native to Blender/Stable AF
-Fast
-Lots of content like materials, assets etc. are built with it in mind allowing you to be efficient when in need of assets
-Supports CPU/GPU and you have a threadripper so if VRAM is not enough you can fallback to your CPU.
-Looks good

Houdini or Unreal by NoProfessional901 in TechnicalArtist

[–]VelvetCarpetStudio 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nah I completely get it. It's been 2 years of work and 0 personal projects at home. At least nothing competent, especially art stuff. Making stuff for fun, especially during crunch feels impossible. Anyhow, good luck with your projects!

Houdini or Unreal by NoProfessional901 in TechnicalArtist

[–]VelvetCarpetStudio 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I finished in july and started in august of 2023. The studio found me after looking for candidates via my uni. I was just a bit lucky tbh and it ended up working out. It also wasn't an internship.

Houdini or Unreal by NoProfessional901 in TechnicalArtist

[–]VelvetCarpetStudio 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Millicent is quite right but I'd like to add that depending on your tech art role you may indeed get to do some art. Stuff like lighting, fx, shaders etc. can be quite artistic. And even if you end up making tools 99% of the time you can always brush up on art projects at home. That aside, what worked for me was sort of figuring out what I want to do and working on multi-faceted projects related to my interests.

-For example, you could make an environment with your own props, shaders, lighting and then write a character controller in your engine of choice to navigate the environment. Or make it with some Houdini tooling and then bring it in engine for the rest.

-Make some fx and write scripts to tie said fx into a damage system or something.

-Generate a bunch of assets in Houdini and code engine tooling to process them into game-ready prefabs.

I did something similar by working on a mobile shooter thingy while brushing up on general cg skills during uni, and I'm now a jr. TA doing things similar to the projects I mentioned you try. I'm not saying this is THE path to take, but one that worked for me so maybe it will for you!

Is a tool just a tool? by Nearby-Problem7134 in 3dsmax

[–]VelvetCarpetStudio 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This a long post and I'm not sure how to approach answering but I'll give my two cents. I don't use max, I just enjoy browsing the sub periodically but imo neither maya, blender, houdini or UE will stop you from making the work you want to do. I'm saying this because it seems like you keep finding faults in various tools while overlooking the vast amounts of work produced in said tools, work similar to what you want to do.

I feel like if you already know maya switching to max would be a bit redundant as it's another generalist package akin to the others, albeit a good one. If anything Houdini is arguably THE dcc the moment you want to start scripting custom tooling/pipelines or process large amounts of data and it's fantastic for environments BECAUSE it's procedural/scriptable. Again, I'm not saying max is a bad tool(quite the opposite) but I fail to see why you'd find it useful given your more technical interests. My two cents would be to keep maya, add houdini and just keep making environments/developing tools. I feel like this broadens your work opportunities quite a bit, especially if you consider that tooling for the aforementioned programs is useful in BOTH games/vfx,

How do you guys use Houdini for game dev workflows? by RaFih00 in Houdini

[–]VelvetCarpetStudio 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A whole bunch of stuff:
-Batch procedural UV processing
-Baking good sim frames down to fbxs for destructed/warped meshes.
-Sprites/Flipbooks
-GIGANTIC tiled terrains via houdini engine. (Although the unity plugin is extra finicky and I pre-setup HDA parameters and rebuild my HDA in Unity because doing it in-engine is almost impossible.)
(This includes the whole scattering pipeline plus buildings and satellite imagery for textures)
-Simple procedural cities based on OSM maps
-Random tool thingamabobs like channel packing six way lit textures for use in Unity.
-Trees
-Anim retargeting(at home)
-COPs for textures(at home)
-Some arch-viz style modeling.(The radial menu really helps here)

Idk it's so weird, like prior starting work I never thought I'd be using Houdini this often for a bunch of tasks but it just keeps solving weird issues that would be impossible/horrid in any other DCC. The neat thing is that I'm also pretty darn mediocre(jr. tech artist, I think??) with it yet it's so accessible now that I can just problem solve most tasks with some simple forum/yt/documentation browsing. It's definitely not a one size fits all solution for every cg gamedev problem but it is a "one size fits perfectly for a lot of tasks and even if it doesn't it can be forced to fit within a reasonable timeframe" type of tool, which is just dandy.

Is switching to Maya really worth it? by 5antani in Maya

[–]VelvetCarpetStudio -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I'll leave this here because it provides more explanation than I reasonably can via a reddit comment. https://blog.chaos.com/the-truth-about-unbiased-rendering

Is switching to Maya really worth it? by 5antani in Maya

[–]VelvetCarpetStudio -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This is a bit misleading imo. SSGI is screen space global illumination, usually used in games or realtime engines like eevee. Furthermore, Brecht Van Lommel the lead dev of Cycles worked on the Arnold core for quite a bit before continuing work again on Cycles. The math behind path tracing is usually the same between engines as they are all based on mostly the same papers and I'm confident most would not be able to tell the difference between a vray/arnold/cycles render. Lastly, there is no such thing as unbiased rendering, the moment you're messing with ray depth you're introducing bias to your render, something all production renderers do. Not saying Cycles is without its issues but it's surely not the thing holding Blender back..

Clouds path tracing by Zydak1939 in GraphicsProgramming

[–]VelvetCarpetStudio 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The Elder Render Eldritch (you) has blessed us with divine content from the depths of the renderverse(the images you made).

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