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KineFX gets a Motion Mixer, Animation Catalog, Autorig Builder & enhanced muscles. Copernicus adds GPU Pyro FX, reaction diffusion FX & texture baking. Solaris expands with Shot Builder, Live Rendering & Gaussian Splats & much more.

I am needing a Mac for testing HDAs that I am developing since they keep throwing errors when my boss tests them. I despise Apple as a corporation and will only use it for testing and compiling code, so it doesn't need to do anything but run Houdini, not looking to render nor sim on it, just open houdini and verify that the Python works.

I am looking at Macbook Airs since they are <200USD, but I need to verify that Houdini will even open on them.

"Welcome to the H20 SideFX Labs Tech Art Challenge which gives tech artists the chance to compete with the rest of the Houdini Community for cool prizes by creating Houdini Digital Assets in Houdini 20 for use in game engines, or as utilities inside Houdini itself."

"Join us for the Project Pegasus HIVE on Nov 28 and 12 PM EST. This will be a Youtube LIVE event.

Project Pegasus is an in-house tech demo designed to use Houdini's procedural workflows to create an open world 3D environment that integrates with the latest technologies in Unreal Engine 5. The project team lead by Ian Smith will be talking about upcoming tutorials that break down the process of creating the Pegasus world."

Houdini 20 is an absolutely amazing release!

Animation

• APEX (All-Purpose Execution) architecture for fast rig creation and evaluation
• APEX-driven rigging and animation toolset within KineFX: BETA
• High-performance procedural rigging framework
• Growing set of readily available auto-rigging tools
• APEX rigging network editor with unique debugging capabilities
• Efficient packed geometry format to encode entire animation scene
• Dedicated animation environment for characters rigged with APEX
• In-viewport access to all essential animation tools
• Toolbar with animator-friendly sliders e.g. key blending and resampling
• Many UX and functionality enhancements to animation graph view
• Natively integrated motion dynamics and ragdolls
• Powerful, one-click pivot setting for fast posing
• Quick and seamless switching between IK and "fake" FK
• Flexible, animator-friendly "velcro" constraint system
• Animation bookmarks on playbar and in animation graph view
• Selection Sets with easy control and access directly in viewport
• Fully customizable python interaction and rigging controls
• Hotkey and radial menus for quick access to functionality
• Dem Bones Skinning Converter SOP
• Auto-generated MikkT tangents and normals for glTF and FBX import
• Joint scaling removal option for FBX export
• Smoothing group support for FBX SOPs and ROPs
• DCC export presets for FBX Animation Output and FBX Character Output
• ML skinning with scripts, networks and training dataset In Content Library

Feathers & Fur

• High performance, GPU-accelerated feathering framework
• End-to-end feather modelling, grooming, shading and rendering
• Procedural and art-directable with state-of-the-art viewport tools
• Fast creation of single feather template or entire plumage
• Interactive noise and clumping controls for barbs and barbules
• Finely granular controls for barb shape, distribution and orientation
• Advanced feather technology for fast packing and detangling
• Plumage setup ideal for out-of-the-box Vellum simulation
• Feather Procedural for USD rendering: Karma & 3rd parties
• Export-ready plumage for game engine deployment
• Memory-efficient feather data representation
• Shared guide grooming toolset for both feathers and fur
• Designed to work seamlessly with the new Texture Mask Paint brushes
• Fur shader with medulla support
• Muscles & Tissue: GOLD
• Franken Muscle technique for faster and more robust setup and simulation
• Fast "coupled" Vellum solve for tet-stretch with superior volume preservation
• Finer controls on muscle interconnectivity constraints
• Enhancements to muscle flexing and activation
• Easier way to attach skin to tetrahedral mesh
• Improvements to skin sliding constraints

Crowds

• Constantly expanding toolset, now more artist-friendly at SOP level
• Motion Path SOP to interactively modify one or more agent trajectories
• Greatly improved collision detection and avoidance
• Support for sticky collisions and projectile motion
• Options to control clip-time behaviour e.g. Phase and Relative to Start Time
• Ability to store clip transition graph geometry in agent definition
• Easier way to retrieve specific agent shapes with Agent Unpack SOP
• Pattern matching with Agent Edit SOP
• Agent Pose from Rig SOP compilable for faster performance
• Support for UsdSkel dual quaternion skinning

Dynamics

• Whitewater and bubbles support for existing SOP-level FLIP fluid solver
• FLIP Volume Combine SOP to mix FLIP fields of different resolutions
• Efficient multigrid preconditioner for pressure projection
• Ability to generate non-intersecting bubble structures
• OpenCL Ripple Solver SOP for shallow water and deforming 3D geometry
• Projectile and Pendulum Motion SOPs for typical throw and swing scenarios
• Fast and versatile RBD Sticky collision constraints e.g. for crowds
• Cone twist constraints with drivable Car Rig setup in Content Library
• Curved glass fracturing in RBD Material Fracture
• Much faster graph colouring for tetrahedral meshes
• Vellum wind occlusion/shadow for more accurate wind blocking
• Finer masking controls for transition effects with Vellum Rest Blend
• Ability to simulate Vellum fluids with 64-bit precision accuracy
• Interactive pin handles in Vellum Brush for easy fold, drape and stretch
• Volume sharpening of pyro fields for more realistic results
• Density-based terminal velocity for more realistic pyro such as falling dust
• Redesigned modular Karma pyro shader with convenient presets
• Seamless volume looping with colour and velocity blending in SideFX Labs
• Linear Solver SOP to perform many useful linear algebra operations
• OpenCL Snippet operators for faster FX development akin to VEX Wranglers
• OpenCL support for binding topology attributes and groups for R/W
• Ability to write in-place VDBs with OpenCL
• Gas OpenCL node Improvements

Clouds

• Artist-friendly toolset for skybox and hero cloud generation in SOPs
• Billowy and Wispy Cloud Noise to help achieve highly realistic looks
• Cloud-driven enhancements to Attribute Noise and Volume Noise Fog
• Ability to quickly generate clouds from geometric shapes
• Cloud Clip SOP with viewport handles to shape the extent of a cloud
• Sky Box SOP: a one-stop shop to produce 3D cloudscapes very fast
• Sky Field from Map to produce 2D cloudscapes using existing image
• Dedicated Karma shader designed with modularity in mind
• Optimized Karma CPU and XPU volumetric rendering
• Easily adjustable cloud density for rendering

Solaris

• USD Material Catalog framework
• Much Improved material assignment/linking UX
• Growing support for MaterialX for shader development
• Native MaterialX/Karma catalog of handy materials e.g. skin and car paint
• Volume materials with presets for explosion, fire, smoke and clouds
• Volume Ambient Occlusion SOP to bake out volume for much faster rendering
• Ocean Procedural (foam, bubbles & real displacements) for all USD renderers
• Improved Hair/Fur Procedural for all USD renderers
• RBD Destruction LOP to transform pieces at render time via invoke graphs
• Karma Physical Sky LOP with Karma Sky Dome and distant sun lights
• Scene Doctor LOP to analyze, alert and repair problems in USD scene
• Geometry Clip Sequence LOP to simplify workflows around value clips
• Many enhancements to Snapshot/Render Gallery e.g. capturing all AOVs
• UI/UX improvements to the Scene Graph tree menu & details
• Better UX In the interactive Camera LOP state
• Light/Camera viewport guides with new custom display tech under the hood
• Distributed multi-frame and multi-shot rendering via "cloning"
• Improvements to Husk procedural framework
• Optimized Merge LOP performance
• Enhanced USD and LOP support in TOPs
• USD 23.08 and MaterialX 1.38.8

Karma CPU & XPU

• Absorption and dispersion
• Filmic tone mapping
• Automatic ray biasing
• Point cloud shader with fast lookup
• Improved rotational motion blur
• Physical sky system with dedicated dome light
• Optimized deep camera maps (DCM)
• Improved handling of internal reflections
• Advanced fur shader based on medulla properties
• Hex Tile shader to minimize edge tiling artifacts
• Room Map/Parallax shader to give appearance of depth
• All-purpose MaterialX pyro shader for smoke, fire, explosions and clouds
• Improved memory performance for subdivision surfaces: OSD 3.6
• Render Stats framework with special GUI and custom reporting capabilities
• Updated 3rd party denoiser support: Intel and NVidia
• Extensive OCIO enhancements throughout Houdini
• ACES colour space support
• Full Cryptomatte support
• Karma XPU: GOLD
• All the shared Karma CPU & XPU features above, plus:
• Robust multi-GPU architecture with failsafe out-of-core capabilities
• Countless speed and memory optimizations
• Nested dielectrics
• Instance variation
• Physical lens shader
• Rounded edge shader
• Light active radius support
• Volumes as first class objects: AOVs, LPEs, light linking...
• Efficient rendering of uniform volumes and frustum volumes
• Support for additional AOVs, including Cryptomatte
• Lighting: geo lights, portals, IES profiles, light filters, better sampling
• Ability to mix MaterialX standard surface shaders
• BSDF refactoring for much faster execution
• Efficient loading and eviction of tiled textures
• Highly optimized texture management
• USD Coordsys support
• Full colourspace support
• Deep outputs

3D Viewports

• Support for background video
• Redesigned custom guides framework
• Option to always display the name of the current node or tool
• Comprehensive set of customizable interactive HUDs in the viewport
• Complete redesign of drag-and-drop parameter HUD sliders
• More powerful and flexible hotkey override schema
• Better hotkey binding support for international keyboards
• Enhanced precision in selecting geometry
• New Vulkan engine: experimental-only in this release

PDG & TOP Task Management

• Services now available to PDG Command Chains
• Convenient, workflow-enhancing TOPS for Machine Learning training
• Programmable methods for stopping and restarting specific service clients
• Ability to write custom PDG nodes In C++ in addition to python
• Rolling checkpointing format to periodically save & restore TOP graph state
• Support for registering preflight handler to be invoked before graph cooking
• High demand Processor TOPs e.g. OpenImageIO and Filter by Attribute
• Performance and quality-of-life optimizations to Schedulers
• Ability to control maximum memory usage of task processes
• Recorded memory usage for all tasks that finished cooking
• Many UI/UX enhancements to TOP Interactive environment
• Additional API and env-var support for debugging PDG networks
• Text Input TOP to complement existing Text Output TOP
• SSL support In the Message Queue server
• Colourspace controls and codec selection menu in FFmpeg Encode Video TOP
• USD Analyze TOP to fetch metadata, dependencies and external refs
• USD Render Scene TOP to render USD file on disk or a LOP network
• Many TOP enhancements to USD Importing

Houdini Engine / Plugins / HQueue Platforms

• HEngine sample application to facilitate learning
• HEngine support for dictionary attributes
• Optimizations to attribute handling in HE engine
• HEngine plugin support for UE 5.3 with World Partitions
• UE Landscape Spline import and export
• UE Skeletal Mesh and Animation import and export
• Reference counted input system with condensed types and UI redesign
• macOS Apple Silicon Support for UE 5.2+
• HEngine plugin support for Unity's Splines package via new Spline Input Type
• Many Karma and USD integration enhancements to HQueue
• Improvements to ROPs and TOPs in HQueue e.g. platform-specific HFS paths
• Performance Monitor enhancements including startup time tracking
• Full adherence to VFX Reference Platform CY2023 specifications
• New Houdini video framework built on FFmpeg: v6.O,O
• Broader OpenColorIO support including Python bindings
• Python 3.10 default and 3.9 separate download

Geometry & Terrain

• Powerful and robust multigrid surfacing of massive point cloud data
• Point cloud reduction and normal computation
• Fast quad remesher with mirroring and guiding for non-CAD geometry: BETA
• Improved Topo Transfer SOP for texture map baking and UX
• Topo Flow SOP for 4D processing of scanned poses using optical flow
• UX and functionality enhancements to curve drawing e.g. soft transform
• Property editing of previously "stroke" drawn freeform curves
• Group Inversion SOP to create complementary group of geo elements
• Thickness measuring SOP using ray length or max fitting sphere
• Poly Hinge SOP to extrude polygonal faces around a pivot line
• Ability to flatten geometry procedurally
• Viewport Drawables and HUD enhancements
• Procedural and interactive 3D Texture Mask Paint toolset
• Ability to import texture flies as 2D volumes
• Option to use 2D volumes as input to Attribute From Map
• Ability to create vector and integer volumes
• Better gap closing/preservation in VDB from Polygons
• Support for frustum-shaped heightfields
• Ability to sharpen heightfields with Heightfield Blur
• Advanced biome creation toolset, including roads and terrain, in SideFX Labs
• ML terrain generation examples in Content Library
• ...And a foundational SOP & TOP toolset for Machine Learning using ONNX

"Join us for a full day of technical presentations covering some of the new Houdini 20 features – delivered by many of the artists, TDs and developers who worked on the software and demos for Houdini's latest version. It'll be a great day with fellow Houdini users – and lots of SideFX crew too. See you there!

This is a live event. Please make sure you can be in London England on October 26th before you register. All Presentations will be recorded and made available when Houdini 20 goes gold!"

"In this video series by Adam Swaab, you will learn how to bring in an animated scene from the OBJ/SOPs context, into LOPs and render it out with Karma and MaterialX. The point of this series is not to get into a technical breakdown of USD and USD concepts. Instead, it is a distilled set of videos that aim to simplify rendering in Houdini and demystify rendering for artists working solo or in a small pipeline.

After you download the project files, you will take the character - a mech - and an environment consisting of several mountain terrains, and learn how to set motion blur in LOPs, assign materials, add lights, add lens shader, how to do material variants, setting up rendering with TOPs, material BSDFs and much more in between. One more thing - we are rendering with Karma CPU. Let's get started!"

"Compile blocks offer the Houdini user the ability to optimize many SOP workflows. This Illume will look at Compile Blocks, when to use them and the benefits.

Agenda

• Compile Blocks and Invoke workflow
• Compile Block Examples
• Invoke Compile Block SOP
• Invoke TOP
• Layout LOP brushes
• Husk Invoke Procedurals
• HDAs vs Compile Blocks"

"Urban Bradesko has released the Theory Accelerated Studio, a learning platform designed to teach feature film quality FX using the Axiom GPU-based solver. The site has been launched with four free workshops with more to come. SideFX is proud to be a sponsor of this site to help ensure free access for the whole Houdini community. You can also find some of the workshops in the tutorial section of the SideFX website."

Lots of interesting talks and also some news about Karma:

“Karma XPU: A Houdini 20 Preview

Learn about the latest improvements to Karma XPU – SideFX's USD-based GPU/CPU renderer. New capabilities include subsurface scattering, demand-loaded sparse textures, nested dielectrics, uniform volumes, and more. Gain insights on Houdini's USD-based Solaris framework and how Karma XPU integrates with it. Uncover the technical details of how the SideFX team leveraged NVIDIA technology to power the industry's newest USD renderer.”