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Software Description:
Side Effects Software has announced the release ofHoudini with onion skinning, new shader buildingtools, crowd ragdolls and Houdini Engine. This new version enhancesmodeling, rendering and animation tools to meet the needs ofgeneralists, animators, lighters, and game makers while the VFXtools become faster, more scalable and more efficient at handlingbig data.
Model
Houdini has traditionally offered strong procedural modelingsometimes at the expense of its interactive workflow. Withimprovements made in Houdini, modellers are now able to workintuitively in the viewport with the new tweak edit workflow, edgesliding, soft selection highlighting and new tools such asPolyBridge and PolyExpand 2D. For working with hi-res models, newretopology tools make it easy to build low-res geometry by drawingright on top of high-res geometry.
Render
Rendering in Houdini is faster and richer with improvements to theMantra renderer such as checkpointing and render view feedback.Shader building has been enhanced with a new shader library, arebuilt Shader FX menu, layered materials and a cartoon shader.
Houdini also includes an implementation of Disney’sphysically-based Principled Shader which is designed to provideartistic flexibility with a minimal set of controls. In addition, alibrary of royalty-free PBR Ready Textures will be available onsidefx.com for use with Houdini’s shader building tools.
Material stylesheets create a production-level workflow forcreating and managing material overrides that work well withAlembic files and packed geometry. Easily set up random texturesand variances in material settings to give a unique look to acollection of similar items such as crowd agents.
RenderMan
RenderMan and RIS shading support is fully integrated into Houdini.RIS shaders are available in the RIS Shader Network SHOP andHoudini’s VOP context provides a native environment for buildingRIS shaders with OSL support.
“Pixar and Side Effects have worked together to create a firstclass experience for lighters,” says Chris Ford, Business Director- RenderMan, Pixar Animation Studios. “Houdini offers interactiveshader building tools which make it easy for artists to achieve thelook they desire.”
Houdini comes with a complete set of RenderMan BxDF, Pattern, andIntegrator RIS shaders as well RIS light shaders and Camera, LightProbe, and Rolling Shutter RIS projection shaders. There is also anew RIS render node which allows the RIB and RIS render nodes tohave cleaner interfaces specific to each mode.
Animate
The animation workflow in Houdini is better than ever with onionskinning, a pose library panel, an improved character picker paneland enhancements to the dope sheet. This makes it easier to poseand keyframe characters in Houdini.
New lightweight female and male rigs provide sample characters thatartists can use to explore the animation tools in Houdini. Houdinialso includes dual quaternion support for deforming twistinggeometry and preventing volume loss.
Houdini for Games
The modeling improvements in Houdini will be particularly usefulfor game artists who use Houdini to build procedural assets for usein game editors such as Unity and Unreal. The PolyExpand2D toolmakes it easy to compute straight-skeleton and is ideal for roadgeneration.
Houdini also includes texture baking and viewport support for UDIMtextures, world-space normal maps, UV mesh boundaries andoverlapping UV regions. Game makers can now import and exporttangent-space normal maps and convert bump and displacement maps tonormal maps.
Crowd Ragdolls
Ragdoll dynamics have been added to the Houdini crowd tools alongwith limb detachment, fuzzy logic and better crowd behaviour. It isnow easier to set up material and geometry variations and toolshave been added to set up explicit target locations. There is alsoan Agent Cam tool which creates a camera and attaches it to thehead of an agent for point of view shots.
Distributed VFX
Houdini will make VFX artists more productive and capable ofbigger, more dynamic FX. The new adaptive PBD lets artists focusgrain simulations on particles that are involved in collisions. Newviscous fluids tools such as Lava, Melt Object and Emit Steam giveartists quick access production-ready effects.
Fluid and PBD simulations can now be distributed to multiple nodeson your farm to create and manage bigger sims. Distribution allowsartists to work beyond the capability of any one computer and theresults fit together seamlessly when rendering. A FLIP fluidsimulation with a billion particles or more is now easilyachievable.
Houdini Engine
For artists working in other applications such as Autodesk® Maya®,Cinema4D®, UE4® and Unity®, the Houdini Engine makes it possible toopen up Houdini Digital Assets in these apps. Houdini works in thebackground to cook the node networks inside the asset and theresults are delivered to the viewport of the host application.
Houdini Engine has been designed to separate the API front end fromthe compute back-end. This allows for multiple sessions per host,multiple threads per host, greater stability and can be integratedwithout library conflicts. This thin client has made it possiblefor independent developer Hideki Suzuki to complete his 3DS Maxplugin.
Houdini includes improvements to the Maya plug-in such as supportfor ramp parameters while the Unity plug-in now has support forpaint input.
Installer Size: 895 MB
Download Links > Houdini FX v16.5.268 x64 + Crack