Houdini training day 1

So, after 100 days of #gastaloops, I thought I should give Houdini a go.
And in the same way, I want to force myself to do something everyday: so, what could be better than posting my steps on my blog?
I don’t have a proper plan. I want to use my blog as a big notepad, a way to write down my thoughts, ideas, problems and solutions.
I come from Cinema 4d, so I think I’ll try to see if there are some common aspects between the two programs.

The first thing that I had to learn are the names of the things around Houdini.
In every tutorial you will hear these words, but no one says what they mean. So:

SOP: surface operator, geometry network
DOP: dynamic operator, dynamic network
VOP: vex operator, vex builder network
SHOP: shader operator, shader network
CHOP: channel operator, motion/audio network
COP: compositing operator, img network
ROP: render operator, out network
POP: particle operator, particle network

In Houdini there’s a difference between point and vertex.
Vertex is part of a primitive.
Points are the lowest level attribute of any data type you can have. Like weight, null, nurbs.
You can have a primitive in one point, for example. A point is where Houdini stores all the informations about something. Makes sense.

I had to learn to use my wacom pen with the 3 buttons on.
You move your camera in your viewport with your spacebar pressed.

Menu-Windows, you can select the “desktops”, it’s basically the Layout of Houdini viewport.

TAB works like Nuke, it opens all the tool you need.