Set Your Creativity Free in 3D
Start Strong And Unleash Your Talents
For the first time ever, even self-taught Houdini rookies can
work with the software right out of the box. Be productive
much faster than ever before.
Boundary-Busting Visual Effects
Get control over every point, pixel and keyframe. Confidently
tackle the most challenging shots, working with Houdini's new
Fluid dynamics. It integrates perfectly with rigid body, cloth
and wire solvers and with Houdini's renowned particle system.
Work Fast, Smart, Flexible
Easily step back and make changes - even late into the
production cycle. Houdini's flexible networks of nodes can be
rewired and modified any way you desire, letting you quickly
present multiple iterations to your client.
Take Control Of Tools And Assets
All users, including artists, can build tools and assets using
Houdini 9's simple, interactive workflow. Encapsulate your
hard work into Houdini Digital Assets - then leverage it by
referencing your assets reliably into multiple scenes, and
seamlessly editing and updating.
Extend Your Reach And Impact
Often, more than one renderer is needed to get the job done.
In addition to a production-proven, built-in renderer called
Mantra, Houdini delivers strong hooks to other renderers
such as Pixar's RenderMan. And with a built-in compositor,
you can swiftly get your render passes approved
Production-Ready, Right Out Of The Box
Houdini is well known in the CG industry for its solutions to
difficult effects shots. Learn how quick and easy it can be to
integrate Houdini into your pipeline.
Side Effects Houdini 9 Key Features
Nodes and Assets
As an artist and animator, you use your CG tools to bring life to your ideas. Along the way, you make creative decisions that are necessary to achieve your goals. A lot of these decisions involve experimenting and reworking ideas to get them just right. In Houdini, each of these decisions is recorded as a node that is wired up to other nodes. The resulting network provides a blueprint of your creative process and a framework for making revisions.
Modeling
Houdini's modeling tools can be used by modellers to create characters, sets and props or by visual effects artists to give particles and fluids shape and form. For traditional modelers, Houdini provides a robust set of tools that work with a wide variety of geometry types. For visual effects artists, Houdini's node-based workflow makes it easy to set up surfaces that are generated on the fly based on an underlying effect.
Animation
Whether you are bringing characters to life or creating high-powered visual effects, the ability to freely animate anything and everything is critical. Houdini not only lets you animate any parameter but with transition nodes such as switch and blend you can easily animate back and forth between completely different networks. The resulting motion can then be processed through Houdini's procedural motion editing system called CHOPs for even greater control.
Character
From cartoon characters that squash and stretch to hyper-realistic digital creatures, character rigs continue to get more and more sophisticated to meet the growing expectations of audiences. Houdini provides a robust character solution that can be used as part of a visual effect or as a larger animation pipeline.
Lighting
Houdini's lighting workflow provides a flexible and powerful environment for creating lights, building shaders and defining the look of a shot. Light and material shaders are created using Houdini's procedural node-based shader builder featuring dozens of shader operations.
Rendering
At the back-end of any CG project is where you render all your lights, geometry, and effects. With Houdini, you can rely on a robust built-in rendering solution called Mantra or full support for a wide variety of third party rendering options. Whatever route you choose, Houdini is the ideal environment for bringing together your render layers and reliably feeding the farm.
Compositing
While you likely rely on an outside team of compositors to layer effects onto live action plates or tweak render passes, it does not hurt to do a little compositing as part of the lighting and rendering of your shots. With node-based compositors offering the most robust solution when working in production, Houdini's approach carries over well to this area of production.
Particles
From dust to debris to flocks of birds, particles offer a strong foundation on which you can build any effect. Houdini is most famous for its node-based particle workflow that lets you define a set of rules using interactive tools.
Dynamics
Create realistic motion that meets the creative needs of your director using Houdini's integrated dynamics tools. Built so that different solvers can talk to each other, you can simulate using any combination of Rigid Body, Fluid, Cloth and Wire solvers to create boundary-busting effects.
Scripting
Scripting and programming play an important role in setting up production pipelines and tools. With Houdini's node-based workflow and Digital Asset technology many tasks normally reserved for the programming team can now be handled by artists. Beyond that there are a number of robust scripting and programming tools available in Houdini with Python playing a key role.
Houdini Nodes and Assets Feature List
Artist-friendly User Interface
- H9 Use Houdini's toolshelf to create one or more nodes.
- H9 Navigate to different networks interactively using new selection mask types
- H9 Use tool bar to access tools such as move and rotate
- H9 Context senstive RMB-menus used throughout
- Work with easy to understand node networks to access different parts of your scene
- Make creative decisions using node-specific handles
Network Management
- Create new nodes directly in network view
- Connect and disconnnect nodes using network wires
- Set display flags on any node in a network
- Set bypass flag on a node to turn off its influence
- Set up switch nodes to choose between two or more input nodes.
- Collapse nodes to create nested network inside a subnetwork node
- Organize networks and nodes with network boxes
- Set up network grids to help lay out nodes
- Color nodes to provide visual feedback
- Add comments to nodes to share information with colleagues
- Display network dependencies to see how nodes connect to other nodes at different network levels.
Digital Assets
- Encapsulate nodes into Digital Assets that can be reused or shared with colleagues
- Use Digital Assets to build props, characters, and a wide variety of custom tools
- Reference Digital Assets from Operator Type Library (.otl) files on disk that can be easily updated
- Build high-level controls and handles to make assets easy to use by artists
- Houdini provides a graphical interface to build, modify, add parameters and manage assets
- H9 Tight coupling between Digital Assets and the shelf tools provide a powerful and customizable workflow
- H9 Download toolshelves filled with digital assets from the Houdini Exchange section of the Side Effects website
- H9 FX Tools are the first production-ready assets developed at Side Effects Software
Takes
- Keep track of creative decisions by storing parameter changes using takes
- Easily switch between takes to review the development of your ideas
- Delete parameters from a take to remove their influence
- Layer takes hierarchically or branch off to explore options
- Merge Takes with other takes to collapse the results
- Set up render output nodes to only rende a specific take
Houdini Modeling Feature List
Polygon/Subdivision Modeling
- Robust polygonal toolset that includes many traditional polygon tools such as PolyExtrude, PolyBevel, PolySplit, PolyKnit, Subdivide, Fuse, and Smooth
- Edge loop selection
- Surfacing tools such as Revolve, Loft, Skin, and Rail that work with both polygonal and NURBS geometry
- Edit points, edges, faces, and vertices with ease using Houdini's new tool shelf
- Render your polygonal objects as a subdivision surface and take advantage of Mantra's micropolygon rendering to create perfectly smooth surfaces from low-poly objects
NURBS Modeling
- Complete NURBS modeling toolset including loft, revolve, skin, rails, sweep, and trim tools
- NURBS are supported by Mantra's micropolygon rendering therefore surface tessellation is not needed at rendering time
Creating Geometry
- Classic primitive types including Line, Curve, Grid, Circle, Sphere, Box, Tube and Torus
- Houdini L-systems, ideal for simulating complex organic structures such as trees, lightning, snowflakes, flowers, and other branching phenomena
- Many specialized geometry generators such as Isosurfaces, Superquad, Font and more that let you define very specific geometry
- Instancing Tools. Align, Particle, Copy, Stamp, Trail, Sort
Utility Tools
- Cutting and Refining Tools: Carve, Intersect Curves and Surfaces, Trim, Subdivide, Convex, Bricker, Refine, Polyreduce, Cookie, Crease, Lathe, Polysplit, Edgedivide, Edgecusp
- Fitting Tools: Resample, Fit, Profile, Polyspline, Polypatch
- Cleanup Tools: Delete, Dissolve, Blast, Edgecollapse, Edgeflip, Smooth
- Conversion Tools: Convert, Trace, Tristrip
UV Editing
- Texture layer support using multiple per-vertex textures
- Advanced UV texture editor, Easy visualization and modification of vertices
- Powerful unwrapping such as multifaceted, polar, cylindrical, spherical, orthographic, cubic, and shrink-wrap.
- UVbrush which lets you drag, contract, and relax UVs in either the texture viewer or the 3D viewer
- Quick shade tool allows the temporarily application of a texture file to a surface that can be used to test UV editing.
- UV Pelt tool lets you unwrap a model's UVs using "cut" lines determined by edge selections to create the boundaries of the UV topology. This topology is then connected to a frame then stretched out to form the UV layout.
Metaballs
- Create Metaballs to provide a blobby system where each metaball can influence others based on their proximity to generate a final merged surface
- Put lots of Metaballs together as a great way to generate organic shapes
- Use Metaballs in complex systems such as muscles to push skin or as influencers in particle simulations
Deform Tools
- Advanced deforming tools including Lattice, Blend Shapes, and a non-linear Twist tool for adding Bend, Twist, Taper, Shear, and Squash and Stretch
Shaping Tools
- Edit tool for a wide range of reshaping tasks and the ideal environment for tweaking models
- Brush-based interface for Sculpting surfaces
- Other tools for reshaping your models include, Fractalize, Curve and Surface Clay, Ray, Creep, Magnet, Twist, Spring, Proportional Normal Displacement and Bulge.
VEX
- Use Mantra's native vector expression language to create custom tools for manipulating geometry
- Uses the CPU's vector engine(s) for extreme performance. In many cases VEX will out perform Houdini operators written with C++
Geometry Formats
- Houdini's native .geo or .bgeo files contain attributes such as UVs, capture weights or even shader assignments.
- .geo/.bgeo sequences can be exported to cache geometry then imported to add effects and/or render
- import and export industry standard geometry formats such as IGES, DXF, WavefrontTM, InventorTM, PostScriptTM, LightwaveTM, SDLTM, AdobeTM fonts, TrueTypeTM fonts; export RIB, DXF, WavefrontTM, InventorTM, VRML
Houdini Animation Feature List
Keyframe workflow
- Set keyframes on any parameter in Houdini
- Intuitive controls and shortcuts for keyframing, including cut, copy, and paste, allow animations to be created with ease
- Edit keys in either the Channel Editor, Dope Sheet, Table View or directly in the Playbar
- Use channel lists and channel groups as a great organizational tool for rapidly setting keys
- Blend Pose tool gives you set driven key behaviour with one or more drivers
- Auto Key toggle for fast blocking of key frames
- Audio can be inserted directly into the playbar for timing animation to a sound track
- Clamp playback speed to ensure an accurate frame rate
Path Animation
- Animation of an object along a curve with keyable parameters for position and roll
- Viewport handle control for position and roll of objects animated on a curve
- Edit and update the motion path after animation has been established
Flipbook
- Flipbook lets you quickly review the motion and timing of your animation by capturing an image of the viewport at each frame for playback in real time
- Output the animation as an image sequence or play it directly in Houdini's MPlay video window
- Sound files can be attached to test out how your shot is working with audio
Procedural Animation and Motion Editing
- Expressions can be written that provide more explicit control over the motion of a parameter without setting keyframes
- Link any channels together for complex inter-relationships and animation
- Create Channel CHOPs and put your keyframed animation into Houdini's Channel Operator level to edit the motion procedurally
- Create bounce, jiggle, springs, lag, area and slope that you can apply to pre-animated data channels to add heightend realism to any part of your character, deforming geometry, or particle system in Houdini
- Process motion in real-time utilizing time stamp technology built in to the motion editor
Sound Creation and Editing
- Full support for loading and processing audio at high sample rates
- Trim, shift, EQ, change pitch or calculate the spectrum of the incoming audio in real-time
- Synthesize your own audo using oscillators, ADSR filters and more
- Trigger sound effects based on any channel used as a trigger
Houdini Character Feature List
Auto Rig Tools
- H9 Default toon character that is fully rigged and ready to animate including many facial expressions
- H9 Quadruped Auto-rig tool
- H9 Autorig Deform rig comes with simple muscle system that cab be used to capture your geometry
- H9 Auto-rig body part tools that you can use to build your own custom auto-rigging tools
- Biped Auto-rig tools that let you set up a framework that matches your geometry then quickly generate an animation rig with proxy geometry and a capture rig for binding skin
Bones
- Bones can be easily parented, split and mirrored to set up complex chains
- Bones-on-curve tool lets you create evenly spaced bones in a specific shape
- Default bone geometry can be replaced by custom bone geometry or even proxy geometry from the character to help create fast rigs that are easy to work with
Kinematics
- Easy to define kinematic solvers for your bone chains
- Forward Kinematics let you animate the joint rotations of your character's bones
- Houdini's Pose tool gives selected bones a temporary
- end effector to let you quickly position a Forward Kinematic chain before switching to rotate handles to refine the pose True 3D inverse kinematics that include complete twisting controls
- Kinematic override gives you access to the Rest positions for all your bones during edits
- Follow Curve solver links the motion of a bone chain to the shape of a curve
- Path CVs can be rotated to twist the kinematic solution right down a chain
- Build stretchy spine setups by sizing bones with an arc length expression and set up an object for controlling the twist of bones down the chain
- Seemlessly blend between FK and IK
- Use a blend operation to interpolate between multiple IK solutions
Capturing Geometry
- Capture proceedurally by breaking down the capturing, painting of weights and deforming of the geometry into distinct nodes
- Bones can be used to capture surfaces using either a capture region method that makes it possible to update the capture geometry procedurally and the more well known proximity method
- Direct access to the capture pose through a kinematic override
- Paint capture weights on surfaces and save out the attribute information with the captured surface to re-use it in other files that share the same bone setup
- Capture weight blending makes it possible to add new bones and have the new capture blended with the existing setup
Deformation and Muscles
- Create realistic muscle deformations with skin sliding using metaball-based muscles
- Use muscle control handles to sculpt your muscles quickly and easily
- Intuitive Blendshape controls let you easily animate the interpolation between multiple targets
- Wire Deform a surface by capturing points with a curve and then animating it's shape
- Inflate tool utilizes muscle and bone geometry to shape and define your character's skin
Productivity Tools
- AttribComposite tool lets you easily composite capture weights painted by different riggers on the same model
- Attribute Mirror tool lets you quickly mirror capture weights and other attributes across your geometry
- Attribute Transfer tool lets you quickly transfer capture weight and UV information to other models
- Match Topology tool lets you match point numbers of two pieces of geometry with the same point count, and shape
Houdini Lighting Feature List
Lights
- H9 Easy shelf creation of mulitple light types including point, spot, distant, ambient, environment and area
- Ability to look through lights for easy positioning
- Interactive light handles allow artists to easily control light position, look-at position, and cone angle
- Light and object centric Light Linker pane for easy control over light, shadow, and reflection masks
- Define light passes as separate Takes within the same Houdini file, and automatically generate a script to execute batch rendering of the chosen passes
- Multiple area light shapes including Line, Grid, Disk, and Sphere
- Instance lights to geometric objects
Environment Lighting
- H9 Create an Environment light for fast, high quality Ambient Occlusion
- Image based lighting with support for HDR maps
Shadows
- Ray-Traced Shadows for physically correct shading, and transparent shadows
- Depth Map Shadows for fast, quality shading, and transparent shadows
Material Palette
- H9 Choose from a library of default textures
- H9 Import custom galleries and textures
- H9 Simple drag and drop application to surfaces
- H9 Set up local material properties to define custom looks for objects that share the same material assignment
- H9 Includes default customizable fluid materials such as smoke, flame, liquid, etc.
Shading
- Houdini's VEX Network allows the creation of complex custom shaders using a node-based workflow without programming knowledge
- Create sophisticated shaders either interactively or programmatically, then share the results with other users throughout the pipeline
- Creation of shaders in three different programming languages: RenderMan's RSL, Mental Images' mental ray, and Houdini's native VEX language
- Create RenderMan shaders interactively, using a node-based system, without writing code
VEX
- Use Mantra's native shading language to create Houdini operators: geometry operators, particle operators, composite operators, channel operators. e.g. convert a displacement shader to modify geometry with identical results
- Fully threaded
- Uses the CPU's vector engine(s) for extreme performance. In many cases VEX will out perform Houdini operators written with C++
- Visual programming interface (VOPs) that allows artists to construct complex shading networks without writing code>
Houdini Rendering Feature List
Mantra Render Types
- Micropolygon Rendering - A scan-line, ray-trace hybrid with support for ray traced reflections, refractions and shadows.
- Ray Tracing - Create high quality reflections, refractions, and shadows. Render instanced objects at lightning speed.
- H9 Physically Based Rendering - Create complex Global Illumination including multiple diffuse bounces with this new render engine in Houdini 9
- H9 Render fluid-based smoke and cloud effects using the new Volumetric renderer with deep shadow maps and motion blur
- H9 Render fur procedurally using guide hairs and painted grooming attributes
Rendering Controls
- Flipbook rendering for fast animation previews and animatics
- Render Region in viewport for quick, interactive feedback
- Render low polygon meshes as smooth subdivision surfaces with a single click
- Houdini Takes for multiple render passes
- Multi-threaded output with remote rendering capabilities
- Optional OpenGL accelerated rendering
- Artist control over level of super-sampling, shading quality and dithering
- Easy photon map generation for complex GI scenes
- Create complex render dependancy networks using render output nodes
3D Motion Blur
- Support for transformation, and deformation motion blur
- Velocity based deformation (changing topology on a per frame basis)
- Motion Factor reduces shading quality by the amount of motion blur present (render times with motion blur may be faster than non motion blurred frames)
- Multi-segment motion blur
- Control over center of motion blur effect
- Tight coupling between Houdini cameras and Mantra motion blur
Depth of Field
- True 3D Depth of Field
- Support for motion factor which reduces shading quality by the amount of Depth of Field present
- Interactive viewport control over focus distance and focus region
Shadows
- Ray-Traced Shadows for physically correct shading, and transparent shadows
- Depth Map Shadows for fast, quality shading, and transparent shadows
Mantra Procedurals
- Mantra procedurals are written with C++ to extend the renderer. Uses the same geometry libraries as Houdini's HDK
Subsurface Scattering
- Supports for point cloud textures which can be used to simulate subsurface scattering effects. The Scatter SOP is used to distribute these textures over a surface.
Third Party Rendering Support
- Unparalleled RenderMan support
- integrated Renderman shader writing,
- image previewing
- scripting capabilities
- Quickly integrate the latest features of RenderMan without waiting for the next release of Houdini
SOHO - Python Output Drivers
- H9 Extend Houdini's support for 3rd party renderers without having to write a single line of C++ code
- H9 Open, clear way for you to see exactly what's going on when Houdini generates an IFD or RIB file
- H9 SOHO provides access to each and every option and attribute supported by any RIB or MI generator through the use of render output drivers
- Full support for render layers using Houdini's takes
- Use multiple render output nodes as drivers for generating scene description files in various formats (IFD for Mantra, RIB for RenderMan, MI for Mental Ray, etc.), often using external programs
Light Wrangling
- e-couples shader strings from light parameters allowing an identical interface for all supported renderers
- Use and extend the existing light interface to support new renderers and render features using SOHO's Python front end
- Every light in Houdini is a Digital Asset that can be easily customized
Supported File formats
- Native formats: Houdini.pic format - a native Houdini Deep Raster format capable of storing any number of planes per pixel
- EXR, Abekas, Alias .pix, BMP, Cineon, JPEG, PRISMS .pic, RLA, Softimage .pic, SGI, Targa, Tiff, SGI
Houdini Compositing Feature List
General Info
- Test render passes then quickly prepare slap comps for review
- Strong interaction with Houdini's shading lantuage to create custom masks
- Deep raster support with 8/16/32 bit integer and white/black point support
- 32 bit floating-point channels
- Intelligent image access and caching structure optimized for film and IMAX resolution
- Fully multithreaded for any number of multiprocessors
- Based on tiled architecture that allows for partial image update for quick interaction
- Advanced memory cache with lossless compression to support large networks of high resolution images with low memory requirements
- State-of-the-art image viewer with additional timeline and graph modes
- Efficient, interactive workflow with handles for direct image and timeline manipulation
- Highly integrated with Houdini's Mantra renderer
Interactivity
- Viewport handles allow direct editing of operation parameters
- Timeline editing mode for interactive timing changes
- Expression support for virtually all parameter values
- Graph/histogram mode (pixel, hue, sat, value) for advanced image analysis
- Pixel inspection mode (pixel value, in RGB & HSL, and location)
- Difference mode for comparing two images in 6 different ways (diff, subtract, highlight, blend, horizontal split, vertical split)
- Handles may be bound to any parameter by the user
- Several performance modes are available to speed up interactive edits (resolution reduction, interactive resolution reduction, and partial image cooking)
- Timeline editing mode for interactive timing changes
- Expression support for virtually all parameter values
- Graph/histogram mode (pixel, hue, sat, value) for advanced image analysis
- Pixel inspection mode (pixel value, in RGB & HSL, and location)
- Difference mode for comparing two images in 6 different ways (diff, subtract, highlight, blend, horizontal split, vertical split)
Tools
- Color Curve adjusts the R,G,B and/or A channels based on a user-defined curve.
- Hue Curve adjusts the saturation or luminance of the image based on hue adjustments made with a user-defined curve
- Defocus operation defocuses an image similar to a real camera defocus
- Unpin operation allows you to extract an arbitrary quadrilateral area out of the input image and stretch it to fill the full resolution of the output
- Degrain operation attempts to remove grain without affecting detail
- Corner Ramp tool provides a default 4-corner ramp with the ability to specify arbitrary ramp points
- Emboss tool provides simple bump-map lighting
- RotoShape supports multiple bezier rotoshapes per node. Features include selection handling, point insertion and NURBS curve support
- Masks out areas of footage using a plane from a mask input
- Composite footage using specific functions such as over, under, atop, inside, outside and more
Tool Properties
- Collapsible pixel operations - most pixel based operations can be combined into one operation, which results in better performance, less memory usage, less white/black clipping and better image quality due to fewer quantizations
- Constant tile detection - tiles which are constant valued are optimized for most operators and take far less memory (common in mattes and alpha)
- Maskable operations - operations which affect pixel values may take a mask to define areas of effect for the operation
- Frame scoping - most operations have a frame scope which allows the operation to be restricted to certain frames, or frame ranges
- Plane scoping - most operations have a plane scope which restricts the operation to the scoped planes, or scoped components (i.e., Color, Alpha, Color.red)
- Inline plane generation and compositing - all generators may be used to generate additional planes in a sequence, or to modify an existing plane in a sequence (add, sub, mult, min, max, average)
- Deep raster operations - use Z-depth, surface point, normal or any VEX shader variable to control your compositing. Take advantage of the many COPs that use Deep Raster information, such as Lighting or Z-composite.
VEX
- VEX Generator and VEX filter COPs allow you to write scripts to do custom effects
Image Formats
- PIC (native), RAT (native), CineonTM, OpenEXR, PNG, TIFF, GIF, SGI, WavefrontTM, Targa, AccomTM, JPEG, QuickTimeTM, MovieMakerTM LumaMatte, SwitchAlpha, Border
Houdini Particles Feature List
Particle Creation
- Set up complex particle simulations with ease using the Houdini 9 shelf tools
- Emit particles from any type of geometry including points, surfaces, and volumes including metaballs
- Birth particles from deforming geometry even if the topology varies from frame to frame
- Particles can be generated from collisions or split off based on any user-defined event
Particle Control
- Full complement of dynamic forces such as gravity, wind, drag, rotational velocities with local controls for turbulence for each force type
- Set up attraction, following, flocking and orbitting to create complex particle motion
- Particles can collide with static and deforming surfaces then react in a number of different ways such as dying, bouncing, sticking and sliding
- Use expressions and Houdini's powerful VEX programming language to control particles
- Surfaces and point clouds can both transfer and receive attributes from particles that help define behavior
Particle Rendering
- Instance and copy geometry to particles
- Point Rendering lets you assign color then render large numbers of particles with motion blur very efficiently
- Volumetric Rendering lets you assign metaballs to your particles to define regions of density which can then be rendered as true lit volumes
- Built-in support for texture-mapped sprites directly in the particle network
- Viewer pane support for viewing texture mapped sprites in real time
- Use Particles to Build and Deform Geometry
FX Shelf Tools
- H9 Install a library of ready-made effects such as contrail, heavy smoke, bubbles, and rain.
VEX
- Use Mantra's native vector expression language to create custom tools for manipulating particles
- Uses the CPU's vector engine(s) for extreme performance. In many cases VEX will out perform Houdini operators written with C++
Houdini Dynamics Feature List
Rigid Body Dynamics
- Easily animate objects coming into and out of Rigid Body simulations
- Add dynamic constraints such as hinges, pins, and springs using simple shelf tools
- Gain additional control using a variety of external forces like gravity, fan, drag, vortex, or fluid force
- Rigid Body Glue lets you hold together pre-fractured geometry until a collision occurs
- Animated surface deformations can interact with other objects during a simulation
- Work with per-point attributes such as friction and bounciness using a brush-based workflow
- Use impact values to create effects such as crushing geometry or to reveal dirt maps on colliding surfaces
- Unified dynamics environment makes it easy to set up solvers that influence each other to create highly realistic simulation
- Keyframe an object between active (simulated) and inactive (keyframe animated) to take manual control of a simulated object, then put it back under the control of the simulation
- Use Squishy dynamic object to create soft body like deformations
- Create waves and ripple simulations quickly with the ripple dynamic object
Fluid Dynamics
- H9 Create fire, smoke and liquid simulations with a powerful level-set solution
- H9 Simulate in either 2D or 3D using real life influences such as surface tension, viscosity, and visco-elasticity
- H9 Combustion models support fuel igniting and releasing heat and gas
- H9 RBD objects can float in any fluid simulation and can act as a source for fuel and smoke
- H9 Smoothed particle hydrodynamics solver that lets you easily create fluid effects with detailed splashing
- H9 Per particle access using Houdini's particle editing and rendering techniques provides you with total artistic control
- H9 Particles can be surfaced with special tools designed to take into account both the particle motion and the colliding geometry
Wire Dynamics
- Control wires and wire points with attributes such as thickness, length, rigidity, and curl
- Work with jointed networks of wires like trees or knotted ropes
- Easily constrain wires to one or more of their defining vertices then animate the constraint turning off for even more dynamic results
- Simulate long and short hair using groomed guide hairs constrained to deforming skin
Cloth Dynamics
- Cloth collisions work with RBD objects, wire objects, cloth objects and particles
- Constrain the cloth to vertices on any static, moving, dynamic or deforming surface
- Create highly complex simulations of large data sets
- Output resulting simulations to Houdini's Channel Operators to refine the final look
Houdini Scripting Feature List
Scripting Interface with Python Support
- H9 Houdini Object Model (HOM) is an application programming interface (API) that lets you get information from and control Houdini using scripting languages such as Python
- H9 Houdini includes 2 non-graphical interfaces; Hscript and Hython. Each of these work with 2D and 3D Assets: 2D image files, 3D geometry files (OBJ, IGES, BGEO, etc.), Houdini Digital Assets, Houdini scene files, custom facility tools, etc.
- Use command line tools as pipeline infrastructure tool
- Move, modify and extend assets with command line tools
VEX
- Custom nodes can also be built using Houdini's Vector Expression Language (VEX)
- Use VEX to create geometry nodes, particle nodes, shading nodes, composite nodes, and channel nodes
- VEX is fully threaded and uses the CPU's vector engine(s) for extreme performance. In many cases VEX will out perform Houdini nodes written with C++
Programming
- Custom nodes can be programmed using the Houdini Development Kit
- HDK is a C++ programming interface
- The HDK can also be used to create commands, interfaces or entirely new applications
Houdini 9 System Requirements:
Operating System
- Windows: Tested on Windows XP and Vista (32 and 64 bit)
- Linux: Tested on Fedora Core 6, RHEL 4, Ubuntu 7.10 and Debian 3.1 and 4.0 (32 and 64-bit)
- Requires administrator privileges to install.
- GL-enabled desktops are not currently supported.
Memory
- 1 GB required
- 2-4 GB+ recommended
- Multiprocessor systems should be configured with additional RAM
- Houdini supports multiprocessor compositing and rendering
Processor
- Recent generation 32 or 64-bit AMD or Intel processor (requires SSE or higher)
- Houdini supports MMX and Streaming SIMD (SSE2) where present
Disk Space
- 500 MB required for installation
Input Devices
- 3 Button mouse required
- Scroll wheel used where present
- Wacom tablet recommended for Houdini's brush-based tools
Graphics Card
- Workstation-class OpenGL graphics card (such as NVidia and ATI)
- Graphic Card drivers: NVidia: 169 or higher, ATI: 8.44 or higher.
- Minimum resolution: 1024 x 768; Recommended resolution: 1920 x 1200 (widescreen)
- Color depth of 16-bit+ required with 32-bit+ ("true color") recommended
- Requires support for OpenGL 1.2 or later; Takes advantage of OpenGL 2.0 support if available;
- Hardware-accelerated OpenGL required for optimum performance
- Performance may suffer with complex scenes on non-workstation graphics cards and on laptops
- Houdini does not require support for Direct3D (all viewports and interfaces use OpenGL)
Other
- Sound card and speakers/headset required for audio
- Class C network (TCP/IP) recommended for floating licenses
- Network support required for offline simulation, batch processing and rendering
- Internet browser required for connection to www.sidefx.com (Houdini Exchange and Forum)
- Video encoder required for creating AVI/QT/etc.
Houdini 9 Houdini Master, combines superior performance and dramatic, new ease-of-use functionality to deliver a powerful and accessible 3D animation experience to CG professionals everywhere.
With a new user interface designed to match the UI standards of the CG industry, you can enjoy performance that significantly reduces timelines and enhances flexibility for your production pipeline.