I was asked the other day about fixing a little issue with MOPs Orient Curve, a node that really hasn’t changed much in MOPs since it was first launched way back in 2018. Most of the reason it hasn’t been revisited is because a few versions ago SideFX created their Read more
I’ve already written two prior posts about managing the environment in a way that’s mostly geared towards Houdini artists: one about the houdini.env file, and another about Houdini package files. Both of these posts are still valid, but going by the number of messages and emails I still get from Read more
Rigid Body Dynamics (RBDs) in Houdini have gone through a lot of changes in the last decade, and one side effect of all that rapid development is that there’s a lot of confusing legacy stuff left over in both Houdini and in outdated educational materials that I keep seeing new Read more
A fairly common problem I see motion graphics artists struggling to figure out in Houdini is how to animate objects procedurally, but have them collide realistically while moving. They want to be able to art direct the animation of objects using broad strokes, a pretty common pattern for mograph, but Read more
I wanted to make a post about a really common misconception regarding Houdini’s geometry context (SOPs) versus its dynamics context (DOPs). Houdini’s documentation does explain a bit of basic information about DOPs, but not necessarily in the most readable way for Houdini newcomers who are first introduced to the software Read more
Casey Hupke asked an interesting question today: “how can I get a Color SOP to automatically update its node color to match the picked color?” This reminded me of some other pipeline work I’d done in the past to customize existing nodes in Houdini; for example, adding a few spare Read more
This article is way too long, so here’s the Table of Contents: Introduction Ugh, this instancing thing again. The old article is a bit outdated now, and it doesn’t touch on some important stuff about varying instances, especially material properties, so I’m writing an update. I wrote the last guide Read more
The big draw of The Conservatory, other than the very neat rain shader, is the plants. I spent a long time researching different candidate plants that would roughly fit into the same tropical environment, with a decent range of morphologies that would help fill out the space. That meant a Read more
After many months of tinkering after work, The Conservatory is finally “done”. I’m sure there’s more I could do with it, and I might go back and tweak a few things here and there, but to save my own sanity I probably need to just put it down and take Read more
I did an old post on this many years ago, and while it was a handy method it A.) required CHOPs and B.) didn’t account for all of the possible non-transform parameters you’d be dealing with on a camera, like the focal length. I’ve been writing up some handy buttons Read more