12k per seat?? Can I ask where you got that information, because I'm looking at the licenses right now and I can see a perpetual Houdini license for commerical use is 2k, whereas Maya is 1.8k for a year's subscription... And what of Houdini Engine for Maya/Unreal and Unity, GoZ Bridge?
having a broad overview of all the disciplines is good, it's not good to only know one thing you might have a job a little faster if you only focus on a single thing, but in long run it is better to have broader perspective so I wouldn't say you wasted your time with that in case you never heard of this:…