3d and the world of Side FXs HOUDINI

HOUDINI
from SideFX have done it again, they first impressed with their insane particle simulations, mimicking smoke and fire in photo-realistic manners, and now their cutting edge mantra and procedural material generator keep blowing our minds.

Here is an example af a generated material

Now Houdini is a full blown 3d software comparable to Maya or 3ds Max, and one should not forget the diversity it offer.

MODELING | Houdini includes a wide variety of polygon, NURBS and subdivision surface modeling tools. Procedural techniques can be used to maintain a robust construction history and to create complex models such as environments.

CLOUDS & VOLUMES | The Cloud FX tools offer an artist-friendly way of building, sculpting and rendering cloud formations. This workflow utilizes sparse volume sculpting tools created as part of the OpenVDB open source initiative.

ANIMATION | Houdini has an animator-friendly workflow which includes a channel editor, dope sheet and interactive timeline. Set keyframes on any parameter or use Houdini’s Advanced Motion-editing tools for even more control.

CHARACTER RIGGING | Houdini’s node-based approach fits perfectly with the working methodology of a typical character rigging TD. Characters can then be wrapped up into a single Digital Asset node and delivered to the animation team.

LIGHTING | Houdini’s lighting workflow provides a flexible and powerful environment for managing lights, building shaders and defining the look of a shot. Environment and GI lights work well with Mantra’s physically-based rendering.

MANTRA RENDERING | With Houdini, you can rely on a robust built-in rendering solution called Mantra or create custom support for a wide variety of third party renderers. Mantra is particularly good at rendering volumes such as smoke.

COMPOSITING | Houdini includes a node-based compositor which is perfect for creating slap comps. Lighters can test out render passes before sending plates to artists working with other compositing apps.

HOUDINI DIGITAL ASSETS | Create Houdini Digital Assets for use in Houdini or other apps via the Houdini engine. Assets from Houdini FX can be opened up and manipulated in Houdini Base.

INTEROPERABILITY | Import and export to a variety of formats including Alembic, FBX, OBJ, OpenEXR and more.


...and dont forget it can still do dynamic simulations like the

We cannot wait to see what they come up with next, some say realtime global illumination?