Houdini in Archviz workflow

[Ink Visual]

Hi,
I was just curious if anybody in here was trying to incorporate Houdini into their archviz workflow. Recently I have been working on the big mountainous terrain and went through couple of programs dedicated to terrain creation
(worldmachine, gaea etc) although I haven't been completely satisfied with the results. I kept looking further and ended up using new Houdini heightfield tools. I must say I'm pretty amazed by the workflow and ease of use.
Considering that terrain tools are only a tiny percent of what Houdini's offering, adding water/smoke simulations, procedural modelling etc, all for the price of 269$ annually for indie license, it makes it pretty amazing tool even for freelancers.
I'm not yet sure how smooth is exchanging data between Houdini and Max as I didn't have a chance to test it all out, but I'm pretty positive about the experience so far.
What are your thoughts?

[melviso]

Houdini is definitely the future. There are so many things it does perfectly well and helps speeds up the workflow process through procedural means. There is even an apprentice version that can be used to start learning it. I wish I had the time to start learning but I don't.
It currently has all the features of Maya/3dsmax now after being for the vfx side of things initially.
For archviz, it would be out of this world, modeling, cloth effects, smoke, water, particles, and these are all node based. The possibilities are endless.