Houdini 16 Masterclasses

Houdini 16's new terrain tools are built on heightfields. Heightfields in Houdini are groups of 2D volumes displayed in the viewport and at render time, as a distorted grid. In this masterclass, we delve into what these are, and how you can use them beyond terrains.

New in Houdini 16 is the ability to block-off a group of nodes to be compiled. This unlocks the ability to multithread for-each loops, but requires some attention to detail. This masterclass runs through the do-s and don't-s of compiled SOPs.

This masterclass covers new shading features in Houdini 16. The focus is on aspects that enable visual effects which weren't possible before. For example realistic absorption and dispersion. Nested dielectrics are covered in depth. These allow for correct rendering of interfaces between transparent media with hardly any setup work.

In this overview video, we step through the basic workflow of adding muscles to an animated creature and applying them as a skin deformer. This particular workflow does not require any dynamics simulation. We start by creating simple muscle forms using Houdini’s Muscle Tool Shelf. We’ll learn how to adjust shape and placement, attach them to your character rig, and how to enable automatic secondary animation (jiggle). Finally, we’ll look at how the shelf tools easily set up your muscles as a skin deformer leveraging Houdini’s Muscle Displace operator. Muscles in Houdini are versatile, easy to use, interconnected tools. Houdini’s muscle system has been designed to serve both FEM (dynamics simulations) and non-FEM (skin deformer) workflows while using a unified set of digital assets. With the foundational information presented in this video, you’ll be ready to rig up a creature with simple muscles and you’ll be prepared to take the next steps: creating custom muscles, and using muscles in simulations with Houdini’s Tissue System.

Houdini 16 moves shading and shader building into a new unified context called Material Networks. This masterclass goes over everything you need to use the new context and build custom shaders in it. The result is a Custom Shader with the outputs required for mixing with built-in shaders.

Houdini 16 includes the new modular Autorigs system. This masterclass provides an introduction to the tools and demonstrates a complete workflow starting with an imported character mesh all the way to a Digital Asset that is ready for animation.

This masterclass will show how to reduce reflecting waves with the waterline and boundary layer tools, and additionally, how the boundary layer can be extended to river upressing, in addition to, new effects like creating a crown splash and directable fluid to fill a character and how sliding viscous fluid can create more believable behaviour.

This masterclass introduces the new workflow and techniques from the ground up. We look at the structure and overall design of fur object node, a new set of procedural SOP tools, dynamics and rendering.

Houdini's Ocean tools have been significantly redesigned for Houdini 16, offering more control over the look and timing of oceans, render-time evaluation of ocean spectra, and improved tools for integration with FLIP simulations. This masterclass starts by examining the meaning of an ocean "spectrum", then explores the new additions in Houdini 16 and how they can create "infinite" oceans with particle-based foam, as well as embedded FLIP simulations using an Extended Surface workflow.