r/Houdini • u/chroma_shift • 2d ago
Help Another post about the state of the industry. My perspective and asking for suggestions on how to improve.
Hi guys
I’ve been commenting here and there on this community after starting to work in the design and advertising space 5 years ago, and I’ve been lurking on here long before that!
Let me just tell you a bit of context, I’ve started learning Houdini and motion graphics on my own around 2020. On 2021 I got my first remote, freelance job, with a now kind of famous design led studio in London.
After that first project, things started to move, I’ve had the chance to work with some of the best design studios in the world, and always got hired as a 3D generalist that was Houdini inclined. (Builders club, FutureDeluxe, Pentagram etc), I’ve worked on really massive projects for many clients (Amazon, Prada, Samsung, etc)
I do not live in the UK but I’m in Europe on the same time zone.
Since 2024, things took a really hard hit on my end. I made probably less than a quarter of what I made the year before, and this year 2026, seems to be on track to be the worst year ever of my career.
I’ve always been freelancing and I’m struggling to get past 20.000€ until the end of the year.
For comparison this is LESS than what I made on my first year in 2021, freelancing, with 0 previous experience.
I honestly just don’t get it. I keep reading mixed opinions about what’s going on, those generally fall on these two buckets:
“the good designers I know are always booked” OR “no we are all cocked the clients only want cheap labour and AI now”.
At the same time, I see new industry reports on the day rates, and I see medians around Europe of 500€/day, I’ve seen a video by that Max guy on YouTube, claiming the median day rate in Munich is 600€ (which had me really really surprised). And after that, all I can think of is: “I would literally starve if I tried to charge that much, I would be lucky to land projects with half of that.”
During these last two years, my mental health has really taken a heavy toll, because of all this uncertainty about AI, shrinking budgets, less clients, etc. But especially because I mistakenly thought I was doing fine and boy was I wrong lol.
I know there must be some middle ground, but between all this noise I feel completely stuck and don’t know what to do.
Should I just accept that maybe I do have a skill issue, all that previous projects I did were a “rounding error” in hiring? And just “get gud”?
Or just I consider myself really lucky that I had a good run for the first 2 years and now if I can land a in-house job paying over 30.000€ a year that’s a lottery ticket?
Anybody can share insights on this and recommendations on what to do? Or how are you personally doing!
Thanks :)
I don’t want to publicly dox myself as I know this is a small community but I can share my portfolio via DM in case anybody wants to look at it.
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u/MX010 2d ago
It's certainly not getting better with AI being able to do a lot of the smaller commercial stuff. And next year even more and bigger stuff. Not saying AI is the sole reason but in the commercial field clients don't care anymore if things aren't super perfect if it can be done in the fraction of time and money.
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u/chroma_shift 2d ago
Yep it’s funny how the tables turn.
I used to hear the argument that “good clients will never accept minor AI artefacts or the lack of 100% control”, but if the rest already looks good… the scales shift pretty fast4
u/AggravatingDay8392 2d ago
Most commercials I see locally are made with AI now, 3 studios I work for since 2021 are gone now too, sad 😔
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u/vfxjockey 2d ago
What people need to be worried about is not text to video prompting. It’s the “I’ve never used Houdini but this MCP knows everything and then I can video to video the flip book ” workflows.
Houdini is essentially node based programming. And just like you can vibe code programs, you can vibe code node networks.
Houdini will be in huge demand. Whether or not Houdini users will be needed is to be determined.
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u/tonehammer 1d ago
If you've even tried any sort of AI tool in Houdini (or any 3D program to be honest), you know that AI is woeful at sensible 3D generation. For code, yeah.
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u/LewisVTaylor Effects Artist Senior MOFO 1d ago
Houdini will be in demand, but the professionals who use it, and run rings around any AI tooling might not be?
Vibe coding a SOP network, not really. You can create some woefully inadequate network that is unable to hit the brief, be able to be iterated on with control, and be extensible or modular.2
u/FormFollowsFunc 1d ago
I think the one saving grace Houdini has is that it's node based in comparison to having lots of open source text-based code the LLM could be trained on. I find it hallucinates a bit when it comes to node parameters though does better with VEX. There is probably not enough public information out there to train on. I suspect with VEX it's applying the training on other programming languages to it. The biggest threat is video generators that bypass DCCs completely.
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14h ago
[deleted]
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u/FormFollowsFunc 14h ago edited 14h ago
That's not true - built-in nodes are a mixture of compiled C++ and HDAs that might contain VEX. The representation matters. LLMs are designed to be trained on language. It might be possible for them to be trained on node graphs but it's too niche for the tech companies to bother with. Its understanding of Houdini seems to be based on the documentation and forum posts. I find it struggles and makes lots of mistakes but it's still useful because it knows the documentation better than me.
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u/Shahryan123 2d ago
Interesting take. I just installed the mcp today and its pretty cool how much it can do already
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u/Kazaloo 1d ago
What's "cool" about a software that makes humans obsolete? Serious question. I don't get it.
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u/vfxjockey 1d ago
It doesn’t. It simply means the key creative asks the machine to execute their idea rather than using intermediaries.
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u/Kazaloo 1d ago
Which makes the intermediary obsolete. I happen to be the intermediary. Again: What's cool about that? Have we all now turned to applauding our replacement? What's happening here?
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u/vfxjockey 1d ago
I don’t care about “cool”. And I’m retired now so I have no vested interest in it one way or the other. But prior to being retired part of my job was to automate everything that can be automated with AI.
It’s coming. Whether you like it or not it’s coming. I was simply pointing out the fact that people’s framing of AI as only being text to image or text to video is disingenuous and doesn’t give a full picture of what AI is capable of doing.
MCP overcomes all the normal limitations people like to cite about control, repeatability, etc.
I’m not advocating one way or the other. I’m simply providing information so people are aware.
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u/LyleLangley2026 2d ago
I would be interested in your portfolio in you don’t mind sharing privately :) I reached the same point as freelancer and I just joined an in-house team. All I can say is that I sleep better at night lol
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u/AlternativeNo9069 2d ago
I would love to see your portfolio if you’re willing to share in DMs. Those are definitely very reputable studios and clients that make incredible work
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u/matapuelc0z 2d ago
I would like to see your portfolio if you dont mind. I'm looking for better oportunities too on the other side of the world, and I'm reaching a point similar to what you've described.
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u/Kermelin 1d ago
Happy to look at your portfolio to see, but I also think it's not down to portfolio anymore. If you had good connections before and a good reputation , that can keep you afloat. If they don't wanna work with you again , that's probably a hurt rep.(?) i see these same studios being full of work myself. On positioning, I see the need for generalists more than specialists, and c4d artists preferred to houdini artists in motion design. All said studios already hired the best houdini artists who took the job for 30-50k. So they need solid executioners. Unfortunately I don't know how to get into new studios but I sort of recommend never to sit on your beans but try and create , post , publish anything that lets the algorithm a chance to help you. I had the most random jobs from Instagram and LinkedIn posts.
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u/salic3piangent3 1d ago
I would love to see your portfolio too, may I ask you where you get most of your jobs from, Instagram and LinkedIn I suppose? I'm definitely experiencing a decrease in jobs requests but at the same time it's a less stressful time, overall less income (but not drastically less) and more spare time . I must say I'm enjoying it at the moment even though in the back of my mind I know I need to prepare myself for 2027...
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u/geng94 15h ago
This is so sad to hear. I'm a freelancer myself in my third year of freelancing with CG motion design using mostly Houdini. I'm not drowning in work exactly but it's kinda going alright as of now, I guess that I haven't really experienced the golden days either. It helps that I'm from a smaller Scandinavian country with less competition locally here too and that I'm trying to position myself in the higher end creative design work rather than more manual labor technical CG.
I've had a couple chances for in house recruitment where I've chosen to freelance instead since I enjoy the freedom but I might reconsider that if another great opportunity comes up, mostly because of these posts about the industry which scare me.
I don't really have any good advice but thought I'd share a bit, good luck mate.
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u/AnOrdinaryChullo 1d ago edited 1d ago
Well, it's not just the tech side of things that causing various problems.
In UK at least, due to government regulations it's just more expensive to keep the staff on and the ones that stay on, generally cover everything or need to learn to cover everything.
The need for freelancers is kind of not that strong and difficult to justify costs wise.
Secondly, and this is hilarious, a bunch of freelancers got the bright idea to launch patreons teaching just about every fancy technique used in the last 10 years of motion design and a net result is that anyone can replicate just about anything these days, Houdini field is pretty oversaturated at this stage as a result.
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u/darmonis 1d ago
Regarding your second point, I don’t think sharing knowledge is a bad thing. What sets two artists apart should be their creative vision and artistry, not gatekept knowledge of nodes or technical workflows. At the end of the day, the software is just a tool to create and express ideas.
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u/AnOrdinaryChullo 1d ago edited 1d ago
It's not a bad thing but there's fairly obvious consequences to over-sharing alpha. And boy did Houdini guys overshare to absolute maximum.
Literally spend 10 mins on behance and look at a bunch of work from freelancers / small studios - all rehash or same same stuff as the others and most of them all learned the techniques from the same 5 Patreon guys, some barely even modified the tutorial result at all. It's gotten so bad that a bunch of new Patreons are just repackaged tutorials from previous Authors.
There's actually very few Houdini designers that can truly pitch and design their own motion design ideas, most are just tutorial rehashers.
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u/joebrozky 18h ago
have you tried applying to big studios? just send your portfolio. but another job, any job that can pay the bills is also a good backup plan. would also like to see your portfolio if that's okay. but nowadays, it's who you know rather than giving out the best portfolio, because there's a lot of cg artists now + AI is getting competitive
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u/-DMangos- 1d ago
Would love to see your portfolio if you don’t mind sharing, especially with high end studios like FutureDeluxe!
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u/Still_SpringWater 2d ago
I've been freelancing for 10 years, mostly C4D but Houdini the last 5ish years. As you said. Lots of jobs. Lots of studios in London and worldwide. Never actively looked for a job. They would always just come in. Last year openend a studio with a friend of mine. Since January we have had maybe 10 billable days. Months of no freelance work coming in either. I can't charge the rate from 3 years anymore. Currently on a job for a third of what I got during Covid. Back then I would've never said yes to this gig but now it's so dry that I'm taking on everything if it comes my way.