Its All About Flow
Houdini's structure is the one of networks carrying data. Your workflow is Houdini's data flow and the other way around. The way you assemble ideas is the way you work. Houdini wont read your mind but you can read his, it's easy. If you understand underlying logic, you will immediately feel that its interface is efficient. That is why we don't rush into modeling a t-rex but teach you Houdini's language.

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The inside anD the outside
Houdini's operator-based approach means that you immediately have access to the core of Houdini through the interface, because its one and the same. Nothing is hidden and everything is in front of you. Don't play hide-and-seek with special features. Having access to Houdini's core doesn't mean it's technical or difficult. Quite the contrary.


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Non-destructive approach
Houdini allows you to go back anywhere in your history of operations to make any change. This has no equivalent in the industry for pure 3d apps. This becomes essential in production where you must faces quick decision changes. Imagine a world where you do not lose anything of what you do, where every bit of work you produce something will be able to be reused later on.



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Proceduralism and data flow
If you can work on 1000 objects as easily as one object without having 1000 different nodes to connect together, there will have to be a paradigm shift. Understand Houdini's revolutionary way to deal with complex scenes, which helped create is reputation.





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Understand procedural selections
A key to Houdini's non-destructive paradigm is the procedural selections which evolve with the non-destructive workflow. You might want to change the height of a bridge and keep extruding only all the faces under a certain altitude to create your post and at the same time and be able to change the number of posts, while being sure each one has the proper length to adapt to the ground. Learn how to create procedurally-defined groups of points or primitives.

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Whiteboards
Whiteboards have been an essential parts of cmi's innovation, which is now becoming a standard. They are back to help you understand what can't be explained by just talking. Traditional slide shows are back to recapitulate your knowledge. They're now available as additional pdf files for you to print.





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A strong foundation
Instead of a quick fly through, this is, as always with cmiVFX, a solid foundation where we lay the stones one after the other. We don't dwell on cosmetics. We focus on understanding. We don't want to leave any gaps in your education that make you say: "oh if only i had known that, i wouldn't have spent so much time on this ". Our intention is to fill the gaps that manual exploration always leave behind. If video tutorials aren't for that. what are they for?


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The Author
David Gary is 27 years old, french, and has a Bachelor Degree in Pure Mathematics, a Master Degree in Philosophy and is preparing his PhD in the interdisciplinary field of philosophy of mathematics, phenomenology and cognitive sciences. Aside of his studies, he's directed a dozen of short movies and video clips, being a director/video instructor. He began to be a strong CG specialist since a long time using various tools as 3dsmax, Maya, Houdini.

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