Houdini 20.5

Credits

The following people helped develop Houdini

Aaron Hong, Aaron Severn, Abhishek Madan, Abigail Brady, Adam Jeziak, Aditya Raghavan, Adrian Saldanha, Adriano Bertucci, Ahmed Hassan, Aimee Johnson, Alan Mach, Alex Gurevich, Alex Lee, Alex Orgill, Alex Shelkovnykov, Alex Wai, Alexander Kaminsky, Alexander Shah, Alexandre Sirois-Vigneux, Ali Fatoorechi, Alicia Bremer, Alina Ivchenko, Alvin Dai, Amit Dubey, Amy Csiki, Ana Lee, Anatole Le, Andrew Alzner, Andrew Clinton, Andrew Rae, Andrew Wong, Andriy Mnih, Andy Styles, Angel Alladina, Angel Zhang, Anthony Tu, Arash Tirgari, Arjun Nair, Arshiya MollaZainali, Ashkan Yousefi, Asim Raza, Attila Torok, Aurora Huang, Barbara Macdonald, Bardia Sadri, Berj Bannayan, Bill Spitzak, Bob Cober, Bob Su, Bob Wei, Bradley Henke, Brendan Van Ryn, Brian Cort, Brian Sharpe, Brooke Amaranth, Calin Casian, Calvin Gu, Cameron White, Carol Wang, Cathy Penner, Charlie Fisher, Charlie Wang, Charles Bullingham, Chris AtLee, Chris McSpurren, Chris Rydalch, Chris Thompson, Christina Zhang, Christopher Grebeldinger, Christopher Janowksi, Christopher Knappers, Christopher Speller, Christopher Walker, Clement Yip, Cody Spahr, Coen Klosters, Craig Zerouni, Crawford Doran, Cristin Barghiel, Dale Ducharme, Damian Campeanu, Damien Pernuit, Dan Lee, Daniel Hau, Daniel Lemmond, Daniel McCormick, Daniel Yaroslavski, Daniel Zhang, David Cha, David Hua, David Jacewicz, David Pritchard, David Robert, David Wong, Dawei Sun, Debbie Tam, Denise Eng, Derek Norn, Derek Wu, Derrick Moser, Dian Xiang, Diana Huang, Dmytro Shynekvych, Edward Lam, Egor Larionov, Elaine Zhong, Eran Guendelman, Eric Huang, Eric Lawless, Erick Dransch, Erwin Heyms, Esther Trilsch, Ethan Dobrowolski, Filip Burlacu, Florence So, Frankie Rodriguez, Furqan Muhammad, Gabriel Robles Del Hierro, Garman Herigstad, Gary Lin, George ElKoura, Gerome Mortelecque, Glenn Tsang, Graham Thompson, Greg Hermanovic, Guan(Alex) Wang, Guillaume Laferriere, Hai Huang, Hálfdan Ingvarsson, Haydn Keung, Henry Dean, Henry Wen, Ian Kerr, Igor Skliar, Ilia Romanov, Inchang Huh, Isaac Luo, Ivan Livinsky, Jack Huang, Jack Zhao, Jacob Clark, James Bartolozzi, James Roberts, Janakitti Ratana-Rueangsri, Janani Satkunarajah, Janette Hiew, Jason Cousins, Jasper Chapman-Black, Jay Steele, Jeff Lait, Jeffy Mathew Philip, Jeffrey Chadwick, Jeffrey Feng, Jeffrey Li, Jeff Wagner, Jenna Memmolo, Jennifer Clarke, Jenny Blacklock, Jerry Wong, Jessica Davy, Jijun(Jay) Xiao, Joab Souza, Joe Drew, Joey Zhou, John Courte, John Lynch, John Mariella, John Mather, Jonathan Gardner, Jonathan Lawlor, Jonathan McGee, Jordan Bale, Judith Crow, Juhyun Daniel Lee, Julia Pakalns, Julia Qian, Justin Bisceglio, Justin Chan, Justin Glass, Kai Stavginski, Keith Acheson, Kelvin Zhu, Ken Xu, Kenny Clark, Kevin Gao, Kevin Hu, Keyar Hood, Khashayar Khalkhaly, Kim Davidson, Kosuke Katsuki, Kristofer Lindberg, Kyle Fung, Laura Culp, Lauren Bhagwandat, Leo Chan, Leo Wang, Lesly Northam, Liam Palmer, Lila Huang, Ling Yun Guo, Lisa Chen, Lisa Kelly, Liza Keith, Lorena E'Vers, Luca Pataracchia, Lucas Palmer, Luiz Kruel, Luke Franceschini, Luke Moore, Luke O'Connor, Magdalena Georgescu, Malav Mehta, Marc Horsfield, Marc-André Belzile, Mark Alexander, Mark Davies, Mark Elendt, Mark Huang, Mark Mayerson, Mark Tucker, Mark Zadel, Matt Chaput, Matthew Deane, Matthew Mirvish, Matthew O’Toole, Matthew Warner, Max Zheng, Maxwell Elendt, Mayank Singh, Mehul Gupta, Michael Ahn, Michael Buckley, Michael Eden, Michael Firmin, Michael Goldfarb, Michiel Hagedoorn, Mihnea Stoica, Mike Taylor, Mohammad Nabizadeh, Monika Janek, Morne Chamberlain, Mykola Konyk, Nadav Koller, Naoki Satou, Nathan Dunsworth, Nathan Philippon, Ned Datiles, Neil Dickson, Neil Girdhar, Nicholas Higa, Nicholas Sunderland, Nick Petit, Nicolas Nebel, Nivasini Anan, Noam Sutskever, Oleg Samus, Omar Zarifi, Ondrej Kos, Paul Breslin, Paul-Mark Difrancesco, Paul Salvini, Pavlo Penenko, Peter Bowmar, Peter MacMurchy, Peter Vale, Peter Yu, Rafal Jaroszkiewicz, Rafeek Rahamut, Rajat Goswami, Ramin Kamal, Ravindu Angammana, Rayhaan Tanweer, Remi Fat Cheung, Riley Jackson, Rinat Abdrashitov, Rishi Menon, Rob Bairos, Rob Pieké, Rob Stauffer, Rob Suderman, Robert Magee, Robert Pringle, Robert Vinluan, Rodian Paul, Rudi Chen, Ryan Annis, Ryan Goldade, Ryusuke Sugimoto, Sai Gurrappadi, Sam Leung, Samuel Haves, Sanand Patel, Scott Keating, Sean Lewkiw, Sean Purcell, Seelan Vamatheva, Sevag Gharibian, Shahan Nedadahandeh, Shingo Shimizu Sidney Li, Silvina Rocca, Simon Parent, Sophia Pietsch, Sophie Ma, Spencer Tom, Srinath Ravichandran, Stanley Huang, Stephen Tucker, Steve Dugaro, Steven Ong, Sunjay Varma, Sunny Lan, Syed Bokhari, Syed Zahir Bokhari, Taylor Petrick, Terry Zha, Theresa Wolf, Thomas Goffelli, Thomas Lai, Thomas Schlick, Tim Dresser, Tina Yee, Tobias Steiner, Tom Benoist, Tom Lee, Tom Yang, Tomáš Skřivan, Tonia Tong, Tyler Nowicki, Valerie Berney, Van Aarde Krynauw, Varun Gupta, Victor Bui, Ville Koskela, Vijin Ravindran, Vincent Ma, Wayne Wu, William Brown, William Campbell, William Harley, Xue Cui, Yang Zhong, Yele Bonilla, Yi-Shiuan Chen, Yin Zhao, Yu Gu, Yunkai Xiao, Yusef Zia, Zeming Liu Zhuo Wei Li, Zubin Wadia. Thank you! 👏

Houdini 20.5

Getting started

Using Houdini

  • Geometry

    How Houdini represents geometry and how to create and edit it.

  • Copying and instancing

    How to use copies (real geometry) and instances (loaded or created at render time).

  • Animation

    How to create and keyframe animation in Houdini.

  • Digital assets

    Digital assets let you create reusable nodes and tools from existing networks.

  • Import and export

    How to get scene, object, and other data in and out of Houdini.

  • MPlay viewer

    Using Houdini’s stand-alone image viewer.

Character FX

  • Character

    How to rig and animate characters in Houdini.

  • Crowd simulations

    How to create and simulate crowds of characters in Houdini.

  • Muscles and tissue

    How to create and simulate muscles, tissue, and skin in Houdini.

  • Hair and fur

    How to create, style, and add dynamics to hair and fur.

  • Feathers

    How to create highly realistic and detailed feathers for your characters.

Dynamics

  • Dynamics

    How to use Houdini’s dynamics networks to create simulations.

  • Vellum

    Vellum uses a Position Based Dynamics approach to cloth, hair, grains, fluids, and softbody objects.

  • Pyro

    How to simulate smoke, fire, and explosions.

  • Fluids

    How to set up fluid and ocean simulations.

  • Oceans and water surfaces

    How to set up ocean and water surface simulations.

  • MPM

    How to simulate different types of solid materials (such as snow, soil, mud, concrete, metal, jello, rubber, water, honey, and sand).

  • Destruction

    How to break different types of materials.

  • Grains

    How to simulate grainy materials (such as sand).

  • Particles

    How to create particle simulations.

  • Finite elements

    How to create and simulate deformable objects

Pipeline

  • Executing tasks with PDG/TOPs

    How to define dependencies and schedule tasks using TOP networks.

  • HQueue

    HQueue is Houdini’s free distributed job scheduling system.

  • Houdini Engine

    Documents the Houdini Engine C, Python APIs, and Houdini Engine plugins

  • Machine Learning

    Houdini provides a platform for machine learning which supports synthetic data generation, preprocessing, training models, exporting trained models, and deploying trained models

Nodes

  • OBJ - Object nodes

    Object nodes represent objects in the scene, such as character parts, geometry objects, lights, cameras, and so on.

  • SOP - Geometry nodes

    Geometry nodes live inside Geo objects and generate geometry.

  • DOP - Dynamics nodes

    Dynamics nodes set up the conditions and rules for dynamics simulations.

  • VOP - Shader nodes

    VOP nodes let you define a program (such as a shader) by connecting nodes together. Houdini then compiles the node network into executable VEX code.

  • LOP - USD nodes

    LOP nodes generate USD describing characters, props, lighting, and rendering.

  • ROP - Render nodes

    Render nodes either render the scene or set up render dependency networks.

  • CHOP - Channel nodes

    Channel nodes create, filter, and manipulate channel data.

  • COP - Copernicus nodes

    COP nodes provide real-time image manipulation within a 3D space.

  • TOP - Task nodes

    TOP nodes define a workflow where data is fed into the network, turned into work items and manipulated by different nodes. Many nodes represent external processes that can be run on the local machine or a server farm.

  • APEX - APEX nodes

    APEX nodes provide operations for building up the functionality of APEX graphs, which are used in KineFX to create character rigs and perform other geometry manipulation.

Scene building, Karma rendering, Image processing

  • Solaris and Karma

    Solaris is the umbrella name for Houdini’s scene building, look development, and Karma rendering tools based on the Universal Scene Description (USD) framework.

  • Copernicus

    Houdini’s 2D and 3D GPU image processing framework.

  • Compositing

    Houdini’s compositing networks let you create and manipulate images such as renders.

Mantra rendering and shading

Reference

  • Menus

    Explains each of the items in the main menus.

  • Viewers

    Viewer pane types.

  • Panes

    Documents the options in various panes.

  • Windows

    Documents the options in various user interface windows.

  • Stand-alone utilities

    Houdini includes a large number of useful command-line utility programs.

  • APIs

    Lists all the reference documentation for the ways you can program Houdini.

  • Python scripting

    How to script Houdini using Python and the Houdini Object Model.

  • Expression functions

    Expression functions let you compute the value of parameters.

  • HScript commands

    HScript is Houdini’s legacy scripting language.

  • VEX

    VEX is a high-performance expression language used in many places in Houdini, such as writing shaders.

  • Properties

    Properties let you set up flexible and powerful hierarchies of rendering, shading, lighting, and camera parameters.

  • Galleries

    Pre-made materials included with Houdini.

  • Houdini packages

    How to write and combine multiple environment variable definition files for different plug-ins, tools, and add-ons.

  • hwebserver

    Functions and classes for running a web server inside a graphical or non-graphical Houdini session.