Overview
Advanced procedural modeling, animation, effects, simulation, rendering, and compositing software is available in Houdini.
The strength of Houdini is founded on methodical processes. When using Houdini, you build networks of interconnected nodes that outline the procedures necessary to complete a task. A node that generates a box, for instance, may be linked into nodes that extrude the sides of the box, split the polygons, and then change the location of the points. You now possess a great deal of power:
.You may return to earlier nodes in the network to make other choices, modify settings, or switch out assets. The adjustments automatically spread across the network, changing the outcome. You never have to start again and redo your work in order to modify a previous decision.
.It promotes quick prototyping. You don’t have to discard the research you undertake into concepts. easily improve the network to production quality by reusing portions of it or reconfiguring it.
.Houdini provides several capabilities for organizing incredibly huge and complicated scenes and supports generating/loading geometry and adding information at render time rather than holding everything in memory because it is based on procedural generation.
.Without writing any code, you may package together networks and turn them into new tools with their own interfaces. These tools are referred as as digital assets in Houdini.
Networks and nodes
With Houdini, you may operate in 3D view using standard tools without worrying about nodes or networks. To get the most out of Houdini, though, a knowledge of networks is crucial.
Houdini’s networks resemble a computer’s file system, with nodes acting as files and networks acting as folders. Nodes can include other nodes in subnetworks.
A few pre-made networks, including /geo (the “scene” network) and /out, are included in the root network (where render nodes go). The “type” of a network (such as “geometry network” or “dynamics network”) determines the kinds of nodes that can be added to it.
Characters, scenery, and lighting are all included in the scene level (/geo). Subnetworks containing geometry nodes that define geometry objects are known as geometry objects. In contrast to other software products like Maya and 3D Studio Max, where all nodes are on one level, this design has two levels.
Nodes that are merely subnetworks and don’t represent any scene objects can also exist at the scene level. The nodes constituting a simulation, for instance, are located inside a Dynamics subnet at the scene level when the simulation is set up.
The user interface for Houdini is organized into many sorts of panels, including the parameter editor, network editor, and 3D viewer. Although each window might concentrate on a distinct network, by default they are all configured to follow the same network.
Each node has a user interface that consists of parameters that you may adjust in the parameter editor pane to alter the node’s functionality.
The inputs and outputs of nodes. By connecting the output of one node to the input of another, you may establish connections between nodes.
Depending on the sort of network, wiring might signify several things. It often indicates that the data produced or processed by one node is sent to the following node. However, connecting object nodes creates parent relationships at the scene level.
Dimensions and qualities
Different forms of geometry, including polygons, NURBS, and Bézier, as well as geometric primitives like circles and spheres, are supported by Houdini. Each “piece” of geometry of any of these categories is referred to as a primitive in Houdini. A primitive could be a polygon face, a polygonal curve, or a metaball, for instance.
This is not the best phrase because certain “primitives” can be edited. For instance, polygon faces have vertices and points.
A large portion of the data that makes up a scene is hidden data saved on models, primitives, points, and vertices as attributes. Houdini, for instance, shows points in space at the location indicated by their P (for position) property.
Using the geometry spreadsheet, you can always see the exact attribute values for geometry in Houdini.