houdini

Maya has its dependency graph architecture, while Houdini has its many layers of networks.

Most studios use a combination of maya, katana, 3ds, houdini and vray.

What it's missing really is some of the universal, underlying data flow architecture that the likes of Maya and Houdini had from the start.

I lost touch with the CGI industry, but sidefx latest release of houdini includes a dry and wet sand (snow,...) simulator.

Add Mathematica to the list of Houdini alikes.

Maya, Houdini (and 3D apps I've written) opened it in seconds.

Although it is pretty popular for people to drop Intel's lib houdini into faster x86 emulators like Genymotion to let them still use ARM games and Google Play Services.

That's not to say that VFX isn't a large cost to film production, just that the cats sitting on computers running Houdini aren't necessarily the ones racking in huge sums of money.

> some of the universal, underlying data flow architecture that the likes of Maya and Houdini had from the start Could you elaborate on that?

I do 3d graphics on linux, so I have a separate desktop for each session of Nuke, Maya, houdini etc that I'm working on, each with a few associated terminals.

Since Deeper Blue we've seen the emergence of chess engines on personal computers (rather than racks and racks of RS6000 mid-range servers), so Chess Genius, Fritz, Shredder, Junior, Rybka, Houdini and now Stockfish pushing chess engines ahead.

Houdini had a long-standing "feud" with his good friend Doyle, because Doyle would popularize all of these crank theories & practices.

This is exactly what x86 Android phones do when they encounter APKs with native ARM and no equivalent x86, via Intel's "Houdini" solution: The performance is actually surprisingly good, and far exceeds most expectations.

The card trick referred to in the article is likely the one developed by Alex Stone and described in his book Fooling Houdini, [1].

If you want to see how the perfect CG software looks like - check out sidefx Houdini.

Houdini had a slight edge against Stockfish DD, which is a few months old.