So I have few question about Houdini that I can’t really understand.
My question is more like a general question for the tech artist who are good at houdini and/or PCG. Can Houdini replace PCG in procedural generation?
Is Houdini really worth to learn if I want to be a juior/senior tech artist?
To what exptend, Houdini can help create cool things in UE?
I don’t know if it can replace it. Epic made Electric Dream demo. But you need at least gtx4096, which is unacceptable for me as a developer. Not everyone on the team has it. And its freaking buggy. Since they use a lot of workarounds on Fortnite (no craks in modular pieces, no pivot painter, etc, because its actual game and not a tech demo), thanks to the state of their engine, this feature is forbidden for me. If you were a programmer you would call it a “hack” 
Is Houdini really worth to learn if I want to be a juior/senior tech artist?
Definitely. But not everyone has those possibilities.
Thanks for the reply:
I sell my kidney(not) and bought a 3080 and the Electric Dream demo run 30fps 1080p. It’s super slow and make me wonder will future project really use that kind of technology? My guess to that answear is yes but in a version where it scale down a lot. The performance is a huge issue but I guess the UE dev are focus more on the feature set first, performance second.
Back to the topic on should people learn houdini, I dig around more and I guess Houdini is still the king of the VFX and important to the tech artist toolset.
Hi Zandermn,
Take a look at this video on how Houdini was used to procedurally generate the City in the Matrix demo.
As you can see, there is a robust Houdini to Unreal pipeline. My advice would be to start with learning PCG, and if you find roadblocks / missing features to investigate if what you’re trying to do can be accomplished in Houdini.
There are three layers of skills you need to learn here:
How to build art that works well when composed in modules, and that can be parametric (“number of storeys” for a house and so on.)
How to compose a good scene using parameteric and procedural assets.
The actual knobs you turn in Houdini, or PCG, or Blender, or any other tool, to actually configure those things.
Skills 1) and 2) will transfer between any kind of tool you use; skill 3) is a matter of sitting down and doing examples for a few hours or days, once you need to learn a new tool. (If you can do it next to someone who’s already an expert, who can answer questions, that greatly accelerates the job, btw – one of the benefits of in-office in-company work!)
So, if you’re new, the most important parts are steps 1) and 2). Those will serve you for most of your career. Chances are, 10 years from now, neither Houdini nor PCG will be the cool hotness, so no matter where you start, transferring those basic skills to a new set of knobs is in your future.
The good news here is that you can start on any one of these tools! PCG is good, although it doesn’t really have the “build and texture the meshes” pipeline down. Blender is good. Houdini is good. Whichever one you start with, is really a personal preference, and should mainly be informed by how easy it is for you to get help/instruction on the tool you choose. If your best buddy is a Blender wiz, well, that should answer the question!
Thanks everyone, really clean the fog inside my head. Houdini you are gona love me.
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