Following our CG upgrades survey, Kim Davidson, President and CEO Side Effects Software Inc, shares his thoughts on the results and what he's taken from the survey.
Happy customers
CGenie: Side Effect's Houdini was a fiercely strong competitor in the CG upgrade survey and really reflected strong user satisfaction from its community. So you seem to have a pretty happy bunch of users! Were you expecting the results to be better or worse than they were? (go on be honest!)
Kim: To be honest, when I first heard that you were conducting this survey I wasn't sure what to expect. That said, we weren't too surprised by the results. Our customers often tell us that we are doing a good job but it is great to see this confirmed independently. We work hard to be partners in our customers' production process and it is great to hear that they appreciate our support and upgrade programs.
How users rated Houdini on the statement
"I feel that the upgrades are good value for money"
Value for money
CGenie: Users very strongly agreed that you offer ‘good value for money' in your upgrades (you were frighteningly close to Blender in terms of value!). Did this result surprise you?
Kim: Not at all. We tend to pack a lot into our upgrades with a strong focus on making our customers more productive in their day-to-day work. These productivity upgrades, suggested by artists, make it easier for them to react quickly to creative changes and get shots approved. We are always looking for ways to make Houdini's procedural approach even more efficient to meet the growing demands for high quality CG in movie, commercials and video games.
Frequency of updates
CGenie: If there was one question where you really raced away from the competition, it was over your frequency of upgrades. Users really like the way you work with the daily builds and the longer term goals. As some of the readers may not be aware of this, could you share some of the details of how your release cycles work? And how did you come up with this model?
Traditionally software issues and bug fixes are made available in service packs or dot releases which only happen a few times in the year. This doesn't work well for artists in production because their issues need to be addressed right away.
Kim: Traditionally software issues and bug fixes are made available in service packs or dot releases which only happen a few times in the year. This doesn't work well for artists in production because their issues need to be addressed right away. We were already using daily builds for internal testing and found that when we went gold, the builds were stable enough for production-level work. Therefore it made sense to make these daily builds available to customers on an ongoing basis to open up access to the latest fixes. We are pleased to see how many customers work with daily builds in production. This is a real testament to the success of this program.
Managing daily updates for your customers
CGenie: Your daily builds are proper full dot releases, not quick patches or slapdash efforts and you release versions for Windows, Linux (32 & 64 bit) and Mac OS X. How easy did you find it to implement this sort of operating model and what are the strengths/weaknesses of it?
Kim: Houdini's architecture makes it easy to generate these daily builds and ensures that they are safe for customer use. When we go gold with a major release, the next version is branched off and we produce daily builds for both versions. Development of new features can be added to the new build while most bug fixes go into both. Often bugs are addressed in response to a support issue, and customers who are on our Annual Upgrade Plan can query the bug database to find out which build has the fix. A key strength of the daily build process is that it is automatic; this leaves our developers free to focus on new features. We haven't found any drawbacks and will continue with the daily build approach.
Company focus
CGenie: A very interesting perspective that your users raised was around the question ‘the company focuses on developing the features I need first'. A very powerful point mentioned by one user was that you have gone ahead with your own priorities on occasion, but you often know better than the users what they really need. That's a pretty powerful vote of support?
Kim: It certainly is and we appreciate having our users' confidence in this key area. We understand that, in production, customers' needs are tied very closely to the job at hand. We work hard to address those needs while making sure we step back and look at the big picture. Innovation comes from looking ahead and understanding what customers are going to need tomorrow. Our developers love inventing new stuff and customers are ecstatic when they find ways of using these new technologies in their work.
...in production, customers' needs are tied very closely to the job at hand. We work hard to address those needs while making sure we step back and look at the big picture.
An example of this looking-ahead is Houdini's procedural paradigm. We put this idea in place two decades ago and it is still ahead of its time. You can see how procedural workflows are becoming increasingly popular and starting to show up in other apps, but nothing comes close to Houdini's comprehensive use of procedural workflow. We are proud to have the best and most complete node-based solution on the market and it is great to see our customers using it for a wide range of projects.
Another example is the user interface overhaul we did for Houdini 9, which made Houdini accessible to lots of new artists. This created a paradigm shift for old-time Houdini users, who were taken by surprise. New users, on the other hand, embraced the new workflow immediately, leading to an unprecedented growth in Houdini's adoption rate. Now, with Houdini 9.5, everyone has adjusted to the changes, and the benefits of the new workflow can be enjoyed by everyone. A great side effect of this change has been an explosion in new Houdini learning material available from places like Digital-Tutors, cmiVFX and 3D Buzz.
For every release we aim to balance the long term goals with the immediate needs of customers in production. Luckily, the support we get from the community lets us focus on finding the right mix and has made it easier for us to get lots of key enhancements into our most recent releases.
The value of quality support
How users rated Houdini on the statement
"The support for this software is excellent"
CGenie: Quality of support & software is always very difficult to monetise, it's not something you can stick on the side of the box or advertise like a new set of features. So where do you see the value in such personal support?
Kim: It is our customers that see the value. Our Annual Upgrade Plan (AUP) offers users a wide range of support services as well as access to all dot and version releases. The AUP is a popular program and the vast majority of our customers use it year after year. Customers are given direct access to our bug database to track any issues they have, and we often conduct webinar sessions to help AUP customers get started on a new project or prototype a particularly challenging effect. We bring our R&D and QA teams tightly into the support loop to minimise the response time to customers, and avoid setting up too much organisational structure that might slow us down.
Trends towards personal support
CGenie: Your customers seem to be as close to your developers as I've seen in any industry, with even the nightly access to builds. I think you're starting to see a trend towards similar more personal support programmer with other companies (eg the new Lightwave hardCORE programme). Are they all copying you?!
Kim: Not directly that I am aware. This kind of maintenance/support program has been a big part of the high-end 3D market for many years so there is a lot of precedence that may be influencing them. But maintenance on its own does not account for our success in supporting our users. Becoming partners in their production process and not drawing a line between selling software and using software is critical.
We actually open up a lot of our support resources to our Houdini Apprentice Community and they get their software for free. Everyone can go online and inspect the daily Version log for changes. We don't hide tutorials and forums inside the support program because that wouldn't be good for the overall health of the community. Even daily builds are available to everyone. Customers join our AUP program for direct access to our support staff and for the major and dot releases we put out every year.
Key goals for Houdini
Software used by survey respondants
CGenie: What do you consider are the greatest goals for Houdini in the next 12-18 months?
Kim: Our customers have made it clear that performance is important, so our current two-year plan involves a strong focus on performance. We want users to be able to take advantage of the latest hardware and software technologies. Houdini is being used for all the parts of the production pipeline and it has to be as fast and efficient as possible. That's not to say that we won't be adding in cool new features but I'm not in a position to talk about those right now ;-)
Next year's results
CGenie: We'll be running the same survey next year, what change would you like to see?
Kim: It would be great to grow the number of Houdini users responding to your survey. Our user base is expanding and it would be nice to see a bigger Houdini slice represented in the results. We believe your survey, our Apprentice program and our support will contribute to this goal. It was a very interesting survey and we certainly appreciate the time you took to gather the results.
CGenie: Many thanks Kim for taking the time to speak to us
Visit the Side Effects website to find out more about Houdini
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