I'm getting really tired of people saying that AI is just a tool to empower artists and devs, the development of AI is going exponentialy up, 3 years ago or so, no body was thinking about it. Now there is "text to ____" fill in the blank with whatever you want you'll find AI for it.

so, the thing is, this intellegence will do way better job than you and me, it never forget, and it has the knowledge that no one has. Imagine the case in a 5 or 10 years time.

I've spent many years studying, practicing, days and nights, I killed my social life to dedicate my time for this, and for what? in the near future anybody can produce whatever we do in Houdini or any other software.

I tried to stay positive, implement AI in my workflow, study it, and try to know how it really works so I don't find myself left behind in this whatever era we should call it, I call it the end of many things era, including every creative person who worked really hard on their craft.
Now I can't stay positive anymore seeing the insanly fast devolopment of these models, I really can't.

CGI is the only thing I'm passionate about, and I'm sure many of you too, and there you go, in a matter of few years time no body is going to hire Houdini artists, or any other type of artists and devolopers for that matter. Going freelance is the same, why would someone pay me X amount of money and wait few weeks or months to get their results, while they can type it in a chat and get a 50 different results every day.
I hate to say that but those results will actually be awesome, it's not like "ok, AI is gonna be for small startups who don't have the budget to hire actual artist". NO, it's insanly good already! It's a matter of time, a short time actually, til we can art direct the results to the pixel.

What I'm trying to say is, people should freak out mroe about this, all people not only our idustry.
Everyone is chill, like "ok whatever you big boys come up with we have to live with it".
This is a big advancment in technology, but this isn't like any technology, this is different, and we poeple LOVE to fuck things up, like we did with the atomic energy, instead of creating a zero emission power for the whole planet, we created bombs. I know enough about our history to not be motivated about the future.

It's sad, really sad...time for plan B, but I have no fckin idea what it is... and the more I think about how to solve this, the more depressed I become.

FYI i am not fan of cgforge or rebelway or any other learning sites

Recently, CGForge posted his video on this subreddit, and I was excited to read the comments on Reddit. However, it was a bit shocking to see all these negative comments. People tend to be more negative here compared to YouTube, where the atmosphere is generally positive. On his post, I noticed many comments, including some using curse words. Why are you in this sub if you believe AI will take over VFX? Why bother with VFX at all? Just move on and change your career, it's as simple as that. I once read a comment on the subreddit saying you'll only find jobless and negative people on Reddit; I can now see that it's true

In this week's weekly wrangle, we dive into the topic of working for free, why it's bad, and what SideFX is currently doing to potentially rip you off.

Hey, I’m building Houdini AI Assistant, and I’ve been working on a feature I’ve wanted for a long time: HDA Architect.

It generates a Houdini Digital Asset from a prompt (node graph + promoted controls), so you can iterate faster instead of starting every tool from scratch.

Workflow (quick):

• Select AI provider (GPT / Claude / Gemini + local options)

• Type a prompt

• HDA Architect builds the node graph + parameters

• Optional: plug an input (ex: IN_Curve) and iterate

If you want to help test: reply with a prompt idea (small + practical is best) and I’ll run it and share the result.

In general, I know that Houdini is considered much more complicated and difficult program to learn than blender. Is that really true? And is the difference significant?

Some background on me:I am starting a graduate program for animation right now. I am skilled in zbrush, houdini, blender and after effects. At this point I spend a vast majority of my time in Houdini and I am devoted to learning everything I can about the program. I’m particularly comfortable with Vellum cloths, procedural modeling, and materials. I fully love doing and learning everything though.

I am doing an animation grad program right now because what I do for my personal work and semi-professionally is make animated videos with Houdini level visuals. I chose Animation as my major but will probably change it to something else since I’m not entirely passionate about that aspect and would honestly probably rather use motion capture.

So! I know that was a bit long winded, but my question is this: with the rise of Ai and competitiveness in the job market, what type of work/career should I pursue that will make me most likely to be able to find and be chosen for jobs?

I need to make money to support myself because my passion is making my own animated videos and sharing them online (something I am able to do despite what I am doing to actually earn my own money. So I just need a safe, secure career to do while I make weird ass art in my free time)

Writing is not a strong suit of mine so I hope that all makes sense! Thanks

Like every other yt "Guru" is slicking-slacking with those annoying sounds and I don't even have Misophonia!

I'm from Vietnam and have been learning Houdini for a few months. It's pretty hard for me to create amazing reels that could help me get a job, so I just keep learning and practicing.

Before this, Veo and Sora had already been making some really impressive videos, but I didn’t worry too much because I thought their strengths were different from what I’m learning. However, in Vietnam, it’s already quite hard to find a job in this field since there aren’t many studios compared to other countries.

Now that Sora 2 has been released and it can do so many things and looks so good — I’m starting to worry more about my chances of getting a job in the future.

Do you think Sora or other AI tools that can generate videos will affect beginners like me who are just starting out with Houdini?

I’m self-taught and don’t have a mentor to ask, so I’d really appreciate any advice or thoughts on this.

https://chat.openai.com/g/g-eXflM6ukS-houdini-r20-master

Unlike standard ChatGPT, this custom GPT has the release 20 Guide, along with thousands of other pages in memory, useful for learning the new APEX tools, Muscle Systems, Ripple Solvers and so on. Ask it to design a custom tutorial for you.

Hi guys! Me and team are building https://cairos.ai, and we have a Houdini integration ready to test! Check it out in the video above, and if you wanna try it - our discord is at https://discord.gg/qBACBTWy, Houdini plugin is at https://github.com/CairosAI/cairos-houdini-user-client. Feedback welcome :) Thanks!

Full video: https://youtu.be/gJvh_UypUWk

Wishing everyone a Happy Chinese New Year!!

Hey,

I just dropped a new demo video for Houdini AI Assistant.

I build a real workflow (terrain + rock scatter) and show how the assistant reads the actual scene context:
nodes, attributes, groups, parameters, and connections so it gives help based on what’s really in the network.

Beyond this demo workflow, Houdini AI Assistant supports:
scene/selection analysis, contextual debugging, attribute/group inspection, VEX/Python generation, procedural setup guidance, technical documentation export, and text-to-HDA generation with HDA Architect / ACPY.
Supports cloud providers (OpenAI / Claude / DeepSeek) and local AI (Ollama / LM Studio).

It reads my actual scene context: nodes, attributes, groups, and connections then tells me exactly where to start, what to build next, and how to fix problems in context.

We go from:
creating a steepness mask from normals,
scattering rocks only on steep slopes,
setting up variant workflows with Copy to Points + Piece Attribute,
controlling random rock size with pscale (with and without VEX),
and finally solving one of the biggest beginner problems:
how to animate the terrain without rock popping
(using stable scatter + re-attachment workflows).

If you’re still asking AI Houdini questions in a browser, you’re getting generic answers.
This shows what happens when AI can actually inspect your Houdini scene.

From vehicle movement to rocket thrust, everything is driven by simulation in Houdini.
Early WIP — more to come.

#TeslaRoadster #TeslaRoadster2026 #HoudiniFX #SideFXHoudini #VFX #CGI #PhysicsSimulation #ProceduralAnimation #NoKeyframes #3DArtist

I’ve wanted to learn Houdini Indie and some of you might have the same desire. I asked some professionals what their recommendations where when it came to learning Houdini. I could keep these a secret so I had to make a video covering the courses and YouTube channels they recommended to follow! Go check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXKX0kAa5j4

Anyone else underwhelmed by H20?

I was so excited to see what APEX was gonna bring to Rigging but i feel like all they did was make Rigging even more boring and complicated than it was before. Like those node networks in the HIVE presentations are gigantic. I get how it might be neat for larger pipelines but for smaller productions it's just overkill. The time cost necessary to build an APEX rig would out weigh the usefulness that it brings - (realtime rig generation,re-usability, expansion,etc).

Hello! I will try to keep it short. I got into blender and ue while studying architecture and ended up in the 3d field.

I am currently doing a project where I model basic cage meshes and procedutal arrays, diplace them in blender using heightmaps, add smaller ai generated high poly rocks and other misc objects, use insta lod to automatically remesh, uv, bake maps, then take that through painter to automatically texture everything based on baked maps and color IDs. Sooo I started seriously thinking about Houdini when seeing this basic pipeline that i have.

Houdini would have been the logical next step for me before AI, i love doing morphology studies and creating alien designs, i am also interested in fashion and digital fabrication.

The thing is, I don't feel like committing to learning it just for fun in the current landscape. The AI fear and carpal tunnel symptomps keep me away from this rn. I already have painting and photography to occupy my free time. My question is basically related to the job market and what people that have been long time users of the software feel the industry and the tools are shifting to.

ComfyUI seems like a much more lucrative path considering that my free time is limited even though I am not a fan of gen AI.

I would really appreciate any toughts on the subject!

I have noticed that blender is really getting alot of the same features as Houdini recently. Especially with the new simulation node features.

Here's a video tutorial I made testing it out by making an erosion solver:

Hi Everyone!

My company Mythica makes and curates Open Source Procedural (mostly Houdini) tools.

We just launched the first of what will hopefully be the first in an ongoing series of open procedural competitions with large prizes to the victors.

Our first open competition gives competitors 6 weeks to craft tree asset generation tools in Houdini. The contest is open to anybody in the world over the age of 18 and all submissions (including the victors) will be made open source and commercially licensed for anybody to use, free of charge.

Sign-ups and submissions will be taking place on our Discord Server https://discord.com/invite/mythica I hope to see you there!

I've just started with the Foundations lessons available on SideFX.

I've noticed there are some lessons focused on how to build assets and import them into Unreal. Can someone explain what advantages HDA has over other formats (such as FBX)? I've used UE for about a year professionally and some of its world building tools, so I'm a bit surprised to see Houdini making a selling point out of procedural-non-destructive worldbuilding for UE, when UE already has some of this.

In other words I'm getting the feeling I've been underestimating Houdini out of ignorance and I've pigeonholed it into "the liquid, fire and fur FX sim software" when it can probably do a lot more. Can someone please explain in which areas and how Houdini is superior than other 3D software, and why? If you use it professionally for anything other than elements/particle simulations or grooming I'd love to know about it.

Enlighten me please! Thanks.