Browsing Tag
Houdini
132 posts
Real-time Chaos: Vantage now inside Maya and Houdini
Chaos Vantage enters the DCC viewport. With V-Ray 7 updates, real-time feedback, volumetrics and AI materials now reach Maya and Houdini.
Rendering the Inferno at RiseFX: The Lost Bus
128 shots, 15 sequences, and GPUs on the brink: RISE FX’s Oliver Schulz explains how his team built the burning world of The Lost Bus.
Houdini Equinox 2025 HIVE Session Recordings Online
The session videos from Houdini Equinox 2025’s HIVE event are now live! Covering Houdini 21’s car-destruction RBD tools, CFX for creatures, ML workflows and major production case-studies.
Free “BranchK” toolkit for Houdini adds hierarchy-deformation features
The free BranchK toolkit for Houdini gives environment artists hierarchical capture and deform tools, download and test now.
Houdini 21: Like good wine (Part1, VFX & Geo)
Houdini 21 polishes the chaos: production-ready MPM, neural surfacing, smarter Pyro, and Vulkan viewport upgrades: all taste-tested for real-world use. (Part 1 of ???)
Pixar’s RenderMan 27.0
Pixar’s RenderMan 27.0 lands with final-frame XPU rendering, multi-GPU scaling, deep compositing, and a production-ready Stylized Looks suite.
When Annabelle Grew Up: The Digital Domain Horror Pipeline
425 shots, one terrifying doll, and a CG mill town: Digital Domain’s Alex Millet explains how his team built the horror of The Conjuring: Last Rites and kept it real.
Momo: Of Time, Turtles, and Technical Wizardry
VFX Supervisor Michael Wortmann on how RiseFX built the fantasy of Momo: almost entirely on location, with 280 shots and the best turtle in the business.
SideFX’s new “How To Houdini” contest rewards the best Houdini 21 tutorials with FX and Indie licences, merch, and "exposure" in the community.
HFF Munich Hiring: Two Half-Time Heroes Wanted
HFF Munich’s VFX department wants two new tech minds—one for the pipeline, one for IT. Expect creative chaos, cool people, and excellent surroundings!
Trees in Autumn: SpeedTree Controller 3.0 Falls for Houdini 21
SpeedTree Controller 3.0 lets Houdini artists break, regrow and shade trees with Karma: new features, same procedural roots
Sharper, Faster, Smokier: FumeFX 7.1 for 3ds Max
FumeFX 7.1 delivers faster warps, Alembic point clouds, and smarter VDB handling in 3ds Max. Less waiting, more burning.
RiseFX on Heads of State: Explosions, Statues, and Digital Diplomacy
500 shots, one exploding limo, and statues aimed at helicopters: Rise FX brings high-stakes action to Heads of State with a new Riseflow pipeline.
Axiom 4 for Houdini: Faster GPU Pyro With Better Collisions
Theory Accelerated has dropped Axiom 4, the GPU-driven Houdini solver for smoke and fire that promises fewer artifacts, more speed, and a UI that doesn’t feel like it was designed during a caffeine shortage.
RenderMan 27: XPU graduates, RIS retires
Pixar ships RenderMan 27: XPU is ready for final frames, RIS is being phased out, MaterialX joins the toolset, and Stylized Looks evolve.
KitBash3D Cargo 2.0 lands with Houdini Solaris importer and 350 free assets
KitBash3D Cargo 2.0 ships with Houdini Solaris USD importer and 350 free assets. Free for personal use, commercial rights require paid plans.
EVE Turns Houdini’s VEX Pane Into a Rainbow-Bracked Autocomplete Powerhouse
EVE revamps Houdini’s VEX panel: autocomplete, error‑tips and rainbow brackets, because coding shouldn’t hurt (in theory).
Khronos Group, in collaboration with OGC, Niantic Spatial, Cesium (Bentley), and Esri, has formally added 3D Gaussian Splats…
MetaHuman Meets Houdini
TL;DR: Epic’s free “MetaHuman for Houdini” brings rigged, textured MetaHumans and procedural hair grooms into Houdini, with seamless Alembic export to Unreal Engine.
Houdini 21 Finally Lands: The Buzz Is Over, Time to Actually Use It
SideFX has released Houdini 21, adding rigging, CFX, VFX, lookdev, terrain, and Copernicus updates. The hype is over; time to test in production.
USDSkel: Optimized Character Rigging
USDSkel is an OpenUSD component that supports scalable, manipulable, and interchangeable skinned characters. Wanna know more?
Axiom 4.0 Sneak Peek for Houdini
First preview of Axiom 4.0 shows improved collisions, redesigned sourcing, and faster GPU-driven simulations for Houdini.
VenkysTurbulenceMicrosolver: Finally, Your Smoke Can Stop Looking Like Blobby Soup
VenkysTurbulenceMicrosolver adds adaptive, detailed turbulence to Houdini Pyro, cutting manual noise setup.
Houdini 21: SideFX pushes for production readiness across the CG pipeline
SideFX releases Houdini 21, promoting Apex, Vulkan, Otus, and major animation and rigging upgrades to production-ready status.
No need to water flowers in August: grow them in Houdini instead
FLOPs is a free, KineFX-based HDA toolkit for creating and animating realistic flowers in Houdini, released by Danny Laursen.
GSOPs 2.6: The Swiss Army Knife for Gaussian Splatting in Houdini
GSOPs 2.6 delivers free 2D/3D Gaussian Splatting editing, viewport rendering, mesh export, Karma and Solaris integration for Houdini 20.5.
Alexey Vanzhula’s Modeler 2025.2 rebuilds hotkeys, shading presets and moves to Qt6, offering a smoother hard‑surface workflow in Houdini.
Fibric: Stitching Curves into Cloth—Procedurally
Fibric introduces a Houdini SOP-based toolset for procedural clothing creation using curves, featuring UV-ready, quad-based geometry and real-time rendering with Karma XPU.
Digital Domain vs. the Nether Horde: Behind the VFX of Minecraft
When Warner Bros. enlisted Digital Domain to tackle the final battle in Minecraft: The Movie, they weren’t just signing up for blocks and shaders...
Pawn to VEX: Chess Comes to Houdini’s Viewport
Play chess in Houdini’s viewport using VEX-driven logic - no simulation needed, no rendering required.
Rise FX saves christmas?
When Red One dropped last this year, audiences got get a holiday cocktail of Jumanji-style action (The director…
Fusion 20: a deep look at the core
With its latest release, Blackmagic Fusion is positioning itself more aggressively than ever as a powerful and cost-effective complete package for node-based compositing and motion graphics. We check whether Fusion 20 lives up to the high expectations.
UDIM Planet: Free Globe Toolset Orbits Blender, Max, Maya, Houdini, Unreal and C4D
Free add-on "Figments UDIM Globe" maps UDIM textures to globe objects—UVs are auto-generated, PBR-ready.
SideFX Extends Houdini Labs: Free Procedural Bridge Tool Arrives
SideFX updates the free procedural bridge tool for Houdini, offering customizable, animatable bridge assets – ready for download on SideFX Labs.
Free Mech, Fully Armed: SideFX Drops Rigged & Ready Model for UE5
SideFX releases a free, fully rigged and animated mech model, optimized for Unreal Engine 5 and ready for animation, rigging and FBX workflows.
Join our workshop and discover how to simulate marine snow and oceanic particles for VFX - Master underwater simulations, ocean effects, and particle-based systems. Perfect for VFX artists and anybody who tripped over the phrase "Ocean dandruff".
FMX 2025: AI, Arcane, and a Light Stage Walk into a Conference
FMX 2025 unleashes Arcane secrets, Houdini hocus pocus, and a swarm of AI panels onto Stuttgart. Turquoise flags and login buttons now live!
ZibraVDB: Shrinking Volumes, Expanding Possibilities
ZibraVDB compresses OpenVDB files up to 100x, enabling real-time volumetric effects in Unreal Engine and Houdini for virtual production and game development.
The Grove 2.2: Cutting-Edge Tree Tech Goes Cross-Platform
The Grove 2.2 brings a radical tech boost with a new Skeleton tool, optimized simulations, and unified naming for Houdini and Blender.
Cinema 4D 2025.2: Feature Dump, Incoming
Cinema 4D 2025.2 delivers a host of new features—from enhanced camera modes to particle controls and Rocket Lasso Capsules—with extensive bug fixes.
Red Poppies, Bears and Open Source!
Polish war drama Red Poppies (Czerwone Maki) brings the Battle of Monte Cassino to the big screen with over 400 VFX shots, 120 of which were crafted by Polish VFX studio Imaginary Pixels. And the team relied on open-source tools?
Mufasa heads to MPC
The Prequel of a remake of a animated movie, based on a Shakespeare play... and still worth watching! We got a Chance to talk to Audrey Ferrara, MPCs VFX Supervisor for Mufasa
Stretch Your Geometry: Relax Deformer for Houdini Promises Smooth Latex-Like Results
A new Houdini deformer makes geometry bend like latex, offering smoother results for VFX artists — check the details and usability here.
Project Grot’s Houdini Tools: Ruins and Flesh for Free
Procedural ruins and flesh generation tools from Project Grot now available for Houdini users. Free to download—test them before they test your patience.
If you already know your New Years resolution to get "fit" will fail as miserably as always: Why not change the objective and build muscles in Houdini?
Procedural Texturing using Houdini and MaterialX
Learn how Houdini's MaterialX simplifies procedural texturing for VFX artists, with a focus on efficient shading and rendering workflows.
Andreas Weidman’s Project Greylight: Free Tools for Houdini Artists
Project Greylight by Andreas Weidman offers Houdini users free tools to streamline Solaris workflows, USD management, and integration with Unreal Engine.
“Grease Pencil” hPaint for Houdini
hPaint now extends Grease Pencil-like features for Houdini 20.5 in one easy to use HDA.
New Cloth Creation Toolset for Houdini: A First Look
Houdini Artits introduce a new cloth and curves creation toolset basend on the drawing of Curves.
Modeler 2025 Released for Houdini
Modeler 2025 brings a complete rewrite of the Houdini modeling toolkit, introducing new retopology features and enhanced usability for artists.
A beastly good choice
The in-depth investigation of a FullCGI production with Houdini KineFX, Grooming and V-ray in Solaris.
Here comes the new Houdini
SideFX releases Houdini 20.5 with new features such as the MPM Solver and Copernicus that revolutionise the VFX workflow.
USD, Solaris and Karma in Houdini 20 (and elsewhere…)
Solaris saw the light of day 4 years ago in Houdini 18. When I tried it out for the first time back then, it was still very bumpy and initially put me off. One crash followed another. If that happens today, then it's probably due to the graphics card driver, which is supposed to be up to date.
The time has come: the next part of the "Planet of the Apes" saga - now number four - will be released in cinemas on 8 May. And that's why we simply asked Weta how they - instead of the apes - built the environment.
C&R.me – post-production in the cloud
It's been a few years now since the term "cloud" has gone from buzzword to hype to working reality - but so far there are
very few tools that can do everything in the cloud. Sure, some tools have access or even their "own clouds", but wouldn't an "everything in the cloud" solution be better?
Houdini 20
The long-awaited update has finally been released and brings with it a whole host of new features. So many, in fact, that a special issue would be worthwhile. For now, here's an overview and an in-depth article on rendering by Olaf Finkbeiner in the next issue.
The easy Cloudrendering?
There are many, many companies offering cloudrendering services – and most tell you how you can tweak everything, you have all the control –
and therefor you also need a TD and DEEP pockets, because the first time the bill from the cloud infrastructure arrives, it’s going to be massive.
Our Universe of… Houdini?
Who would have thought that one of our favourite documentaries seen this year would come from Bristol?
Elementary!
You’ve surely seen the posters: There’s a new Pixar movie, this time asking “What if the Aristotelian elements have feelings?” The story plays out in Element City, where fire-, water-, land- and air-residents live together.
Direct Modeling (R)evolution für Houdini
For most people, the idea of modelling directly in Houdini causes them to break out in a sweat at the very least, and some are even said to have thrown the mouse out of the window in sheer horror. The reasons for this are understandable at first glance.
The Beauty
This year's FMX trailer is "The Beauty" - if you're thinking "that looks familiar", you're right. The 2019 project won a number of awards, including an Animago "Jury Prize"
of the Jury". So it's all the better that
we can now show this film to even more people!
Ballerina: CGI-Fantasie mit C4D, Character Creator und iClone
Behind every ballet performance are ... Character Creator, iClone and Cinema 4D?
... or still learning? With the latest edition of Houdini Foundations, the reference book by Houdini expert Robert Magee, artists learn the 3D programme Houdini from the ground up.
VERTAGT – VFX for a dystopian satire
What does the cultural programme actually look like in a dystopia? The short film Vertagt depicts the end-time scenario of a humanity that has not achieved its climate goals. What could our future look like - if human life still exists?
Black Adam!
The DC Universe has a new “Hero” – well, not really a hero, but you’ll have to watch the movie for that. What is one of the best entries into that universe though, is Digital Domains work in the beginning – the “Introduction” of Black Adam is a superpower-extravaganza, with super-speed, bullets everywhere, punching through walls and a healthy dose of electricity – and we asked DD’s Supervisor Nikos Kalaitzidis how that was done.
Strange New Worlds in Norway
When we talked about the Virtual Production of Strange New Worlds, we only talked about one side – the interiors and strange
planets. But Star Trek is called STAR Trek –
so who made the Spaceships?
The Wild Wild Witcher
Grabbing two Bafta (British Academy Television and Craft) Awards in 2022,
the second season of "The Witcher” has tons and tons of eye candy. Winning in the categories Make-Up & Hair and Visual & Graphic Effects, this colossal fantasy saga is filled to the brim with magic effects – but who did put the magic on the screen?
How to create materials faster in Houdini?
The lead game artist of mobile game developer Nordeus shows how 3D materials can be generated more efficiently with Houdini and Substance 3D Sampler.
How to transfer Houdini Curves to Unreal Engine 5?
In his twelve-minute video tutorial, technical artist Simon Verstraete shows how the Curves tool works in Houdini - and how to export it to UE 5.
SideFX Labs releases how-to video for Remesh SOP!
For Houdini users: Speed up remeshing? This two-minute video shows how it works. Plus: Many more Houdini tutorials!
How do Fluid Nodes work in Houdini 19.5?
Technology artist and Houdini user Simon Verstraete shows how it's done: His tutorial video provides an introduction to Houdini's Fluid Nodes - using a lively practical example with plastic toys.
Tech artist and Houdini expert Simon Verstraete presents his procedural city generator. This was created with: Unreal Engine 5, Houdini - and Point Clouds & Curve Nodes.
SideFX releases Houdini 19.5
Atmosphere at the launch event in Canada: Version 19.5 of the important VFX software is presented! Which functions increase the usefulness of this great tool?
Houdini publishes the Games Reel 2022
From triple-A to indie crown jewels: the latest Houdini Reel focussing on computer games brings them all together - the lead cars from Forza Horizon, the racing cars from Gran Turismo, and other gaming stars with injectors!
SideFX announces: Houdini 19.5
The launch event for the new Houdini - together with Game Workshops: Live and on site in Canada, or as a stream afterwards.
Houdini 19.5: I/O – UI – RBD -FLIP – PYRO – UX ..
There are no completely new features in the Houdini 19.5 update this time. Rather, there are fundamental revisions to the most important functionalities of Houdini: RBD Rigid Body Dynamics and Fluids Simulations. I/O, i.e. input & output, is another topic that extends across all tools. And as expected, there are some user interface standardisations and improvements - especially in the interactive tools. Let's dive right in!
Free asset package with small parts
For the model makers among you: This asset library for Houdini 18.5 guarantees Greeble-like feelings!
Generate books (shelves) with this Houdini add-on
For a mere 15 US dollars you can create procedural book shelves - with "Houdini's BooKit - Creative Procedural Library"!
Houdini | Tutorial Tuesday
Great terraforming in just 13 videos? The game artist from Belgrade makes it possible - with dust, fire and water!
Axiom 2.1 | Release
An explosion in the viewport! Is Michael Bay behind this? No, the latest version of the popular Fluid Solver for Houdini is just rattling around here.
Pride of the (Hungarian) nation: Artist from Industrial Light and Magic pulls up neo-Gothic architecture!
Edge Smooth OB | Release
For Houdini: This tool is just a stone's throw away from the next useful tool!
Motion Design Show | Saul Espinosa
Is there a Decepticon hiding behind this racing sled? A Terrorcon? Or just an Autobot?
Houdini-style predetermined breaking points
Review: In DP 03 : 2019, Rainer Duda confronts the predetermined breaking point Houdini 17 aka "Codename Banshee" - and breaks it?
Houdini 19 | Release
Sparks of functionality: Will the new Houdini ignite sooner than expected?
Houdini | Game Reel
A beach holiday for the eyes: Houdini ingratiates itself into game development pipelines.
USD | Article
From Chaos Group: Universal Scene Description - in the flow of time, or fishing in the mud?
For Houdini: counting grains of sand - just like on the desert planet.
Houdini 18.5 | Tutorial
Physical Lens and Focus Plane: catastrophically cryptic for you? Not anymore, because..
Weta Digital & SideFX | Economy
Houdini goes on holiday to Windy Wellington: partnership with Wetah.
Direct modelling: modelling without obstacles
Review: In DP 01 : 2020, our author Rainer Duda took a closer look at the steep learning curve of VFX powerhouse Houdini - and revealed how the curve can be smoothed out.
Tutorial | Houdini
With Sessions Sync: Start procedural tools in two applications in parallel.
Houdini becomes hyperactive
Once again, SideFX doesn't do things by halves. The new Houdini 18.5 is packed with classic updates, but also with completely redesigned tools.
Houdini simulations with this advanced course.
