Mastering Mystery.

I have opened a new blog. Yes, yet another one. But it's ok, because I've closed a whole bunch of my other ones which turned out to be useless to make room.
This one is going to be special. Different. It's going to be a documentation of my journey Mastering Side Effects Software's Houdini.
Now, I'm not a complete newbie at it. I've been messing around with it for a while now. I even organised a training event in Wellington which a lot of my Weta digital colleagues attended.
I've been looking at it for a few years actually, but I only got a real introduction to how amazing this piece of Software was when I started working at Doctor D a year or so ago. I was impressed. Very impressed in fact. So impressed that I think I can make the following informed exclamation: Houdini is the best pipeline foundation, lighting and effects software ever made.
For the most part it makes Maya feel like an old broken piece of abandoned freeware in comparison. Houdini is incredible and most people won't believe me when I say that but it is EASIER to learn than Maya. Way easier. nothing is hidden in menus and intricate plugins and scripts and platform despondencies and buttons over here and over there and random f**cking attributes that mean nothing but seem to blow up everything in your shot. The entire package follows a rigid Mantra (no pun intended) of nodes and groups and expressions. Everything throughout the package works following this same pattern and thus makes it very easy to learn. Once you've learned procedural modelling in Houdini then you also know particles, dynamics, lighting and compositing. Yep, believe it or not, with Houdini you can do it all in one package, and hook it all up together in the craziest way imaginable. If you have used Nuke or Shake and you want to get into 3D, get Houdini, period.
Anyway, to come back to my original point. I've made a new blog, and hopefully I'll have time to fill it up with impressions ideas and tips and tricks for you out there who are intrigued by Houdini but are still using max (shudder)... Aaah.. It's ok, I still love you. Just wipe your dirty hard-drive, install Ubuntu, Houdini and maybe Nuke and I won't have to slug you.
So I guess after this amazing intro you'll have no choice but to visit the MASTER OF MYSTERY!
First post coming up now.
PS- ICE in XSI, that all so "cool" ICE, has been in Houdini under the name os VOPS for freakin' ages! And it's thoroughly stable and integrated. Just wanted to ad that.