what's new
Houdini 17 Banshee
Houdini 17 Banshee introduces powerful new physical simulation tools such as the Vellum multi-solver for fast cloth, a new organic white water solver and material-based destruction workflows. In addition, significant enhancements can be found in Houdini’s interactive modeling and procedural UV tools, erosion models for terrain, character rigging and animation, a brand new 3ds Max plug-in for Houdini Engine, and much more.
H17 SNEAK PEEK
H17 LAUNCH EVENT
VELLUM
Fast Cloth
The new VELLUM cloth solver is OpenCL accelerated and easy to set up and control. This XPBD inspired solver supports multi-layered, panelled and draped cloth and includes dynamic constraints for stitching, branching and tearing. A Simple Cloth tool lets Houdini Core users set up a simulation using cloth, collision geo and gravity and wind forces.
Cloth Workflow
VELLUM
Multi-Solver
VELLUM is a fast unified solver for cloth, hair, soft bodies and grains. Using Houdini FX, you can create simulations that incorporate all of these effects for creating unique results.
SOFT BODIES
PLASTICITY
GRAINS
GROOMING
Including VELLUM Hair & Fur
Grooming hair in the viewport is significantly faster providing a better workflow for artists. These tools incorporate the Vellum hair solver for fast simulation and there are new shelf tools for generating Hair cards for gamers.
VELLUM Hair & Fur
Grooming Tools &
Hair Cards for GameDev
MATERIAL-BASED
DESTRUCTION FX
Material-based Destruction Tools make it easier to set up and art direct destruction shots by providing tools for pre-fracturing materials such as concrete, glass and wood while automatically building constraint networks that tie the whole system together.
CONCRETE | GLASS | WOOD
SOFT CONSTRAINTS
CONVEX DECOMPOSTION
WHITE WATER
FLUID SOLVER
The White Water Solver has been rewritten to achieve a more organic, foamy, look with realistic cellular patterns and repellant forces and a more accurate relationship to the source FLIP sim.
PYRO FX
Sourcing and Retiming
Houdini can now use OpenVDB as a Pyro FX source providing a more efficient and flexible solution that makes it easier to create the right look for your fire and smoke. Retime is a powerful tool for stretching out or slowing down fluid sims, RBD sims and volumes with effective interpolation and blend options for creating clean results.
SOURCING
RETIMING
INTERACTIVE
Modeling
Interactive Modeling includes a new PolyDraw tool which lets you use interactive “Topo Build” tools anywhere in your scene, free from dense reference geometry; fast construction plane alignment and positioning; rotation snapping; view and construction plane memories; and new geometry alignment tools.
ALIGNMENT
MESHING
PYTHON FRAMEWORK
UV WORKFLOW
Fully Procedural
New UV tools define a fully procedural workflow that starts with automated seaming then moves on to accurate flattening and super efficient layout of the resulting UVs.
TERRAIN
Advanced Erosion and Hierarchical Scattering
Terrain now includes advanced erosion tools with more control over details such as fluvial lines, river banks and debris and new hierarchical scattering for more efficient placement of elements into landscapes.
EROSION
DISTORTION
SCATTERING
CHARACTER
New Timeline, Keyframe Workflow
and Facial Autorigging Tools
Character Animation & Rigging has been improved with a newly designed Timeline (i.e. playbar) that supports a more animator-friendly keyframe workflow and facial auto-rigging tools for a complete top-to-bottom auto-rigging solution.
Animation Workflow
Facial Auto-Rig
Pose Space Deformation
HOUDINI ENGINE PLUG-INS
3ds Max | Maya | Unity | UE4
Houdini Engine is now more versatile with a brand new 3ds Max plug-in that integrates with the host application's stack interface, and a Unity plug-in 2.0 that works with prefabs, packed primitives and Houdini's Terrain tools. There have also been important enhancements to the Maya and UE4 plug-ins.
3DS MAX PLUG-IN
UNITY PLUG-IN
GAMEDEV
PRODUCTION TOOLS
The list of GameDev shelf tools continues to grow while incorporating new Houdini 17 features into how they work. Meanwhile, GLTF Import and Export was added to provide an efficient, interoperable asset delivery format that compresses the size of 3D scenes and minimizes runtime processing.
GAMEDEV TOOLS
GLTF IMPORT/EXPORT
And Much More...
NARROW BAND FLIP
Flip Fluids now include the ability to advect custom fields inside the narrow band while improving speed and memory efficiency in scenarios such as simulating a river.
CROWDS
Crowd tools now include full-body IK with dedicated VEX function support, Vellum cloth, hair and soft body support, and smoother clip blending and transitioning.
NVIDIA DENOISER SUPPORT
Mantra now utilizes Nvidia’s Optix Denoiser to render faster with lower settings and still create high quality output images.
CRAG TEST GEOMETRY
The Crag joins the Pig Head, Squab, Rubber Toy and Tommy as the newest piece of test geometry that can be used to test out new tools.