Houdini vs grasshopper

Hi guyz as a professional user of grasshopper for a decade I’m getting used to Houdini. in terms of platform and workstation there is no big difference except animating feature and generative models! its really forward thinking. any way i create this topic in order to share your experience about this app (pros & cons). i hope mcneel’s guy take a deep look into Houdini because its really futuristic in case of parametric designing and form-finding on Physics-based generative logic!
to begin: For Loop - Fractal Ornament - YouTube

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I guess most people here are fully aware of Houdini and its feature set.
It has impressive capabilities and has solved things like loops or better scripting capabilites, which are long overdue in vanilla Grasshopper in my opinion - pretty well.

However, it’s an even harder tool to learn and control than Grasshopper. This is due to it’s complexity but first and foremost because it obfuscates many processes and leaves you with a battery or component, described with a weird name or acronym. I like the more low level approach in Grasshopper better, which eventually leads you to a better understanding of tool agnostic geometry and maths concepts.

A huge downside is also that, like many animation and mesh modelling tools, it deals in units and not accurate measurements. This is fine for exploring new ideas and going crazy with exuberant geometries, but a deal breaker for things that need to manifest in reality at some point.

It’s true that it’s performance is pretty good and that it can handle more than Grasshopper, however things in my opinion add up quickly, and once it’s reaches a certain point, it becomes pretty laggy.

Houdini is also not a new thing! It’s been around for at least two decades and has been “misused” in architectural and design experiments for at least the last ten years. :wink:

The new kids on the block are the Sverchok add-on and Geometry Nodes in Blender. Another thing to look out for is Grasshopper 2, which should be hopefully released in the coming months!

In the end, Grasshopper is really a tool for designers, engineers, and architects, whereas Houdini is for the movie and effects industry.

By the way, fractals can also be done in Grasshopper!

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I strongly disagree with diff-arch in their explanation for use-cases of Houdini. I think that 1:1 comparison of the two programs is not a good idea, as well as quickly dismissing the vocabulary and design of the nodes & node names in Houdini.

When I first used Houdini I also was confused, not only because of its complexity, but also because I was trying to apply my knowledge of grasshopper to it. But aside from the node graph, they are completely separate paradigms. I don’t know that I can really pinpoint all the differences, but I do know intuitively that after spending a lot of time with both programs I approach them with a completely different mentality.

While Houdini isn’t as obvious in its design for working with real-world measurements as grasshopper, I can confirm that it can do so readily. While it would probably be foolish to try to operate houdini as a tool for working with full-scale architectural projects, when the scope is realistic, or when it’s programmatic flexibility is advantageous, it can be useful and liberating for design workflows as compared to grasshopper.

Overall, while it probably requires more competence and bravery than the average grasshopper user might need to exercise for any given project, it can be an exciting and useful tool in your arsenal. It is always important to be respectful of the knowledge and capabilities of who you are working with, and introducing new tools and data transformations into projects inappropriately can lead to mistrust and misperception of tools & methods. Always be responsible with the implementation of sophisticated tools & workflows in your practice.

Hey mate, in the same boat, but a bit later to the party, how did you go?

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