Houdini 17.0
Getting started
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New features and changes in Houdini 17.
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The basics of working with Houdini’s user interface.
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How to use and customize the icons on the shelf at the top of the main window.
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How to use the network and parameter editors to work in Houdini.
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Example files showing how different nodes work.
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How to use the online help and document your own tools.
Using Houdini
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How Houdini represents geometry and how to create and edit it.
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How to use copies (real geometry) and instances (loaded or created at render time).
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How to create and keyframe animation in Houdini.
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How to rig and animate characters in Houdini.
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How to render images and animation from the 3D scene.
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How to assign materials and create custom materials for shading.
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Houdini’s compositing networks let you create and manipulate images such as renders.
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Digital assets let you create reusable nodes and tools from existing networks.
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How to get scene, object, and other data in and out of Houdini.
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Using Houdini’s stand-alone image viewer.
Dynamics
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How to create particle simulations.
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How to use Houdini’s dynamics networks to create simulations.
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How to simulate smoke, fire, and explosions.
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How to set up fluid and ocean simulations.
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How to simulate grainy materials (such as sand).
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How to create and simulate crowds of characters in Houdini.
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How to create, style, and add dynamics to hair and fur.
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How to create and simulate deformable objects
Nodes
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Object nodes represent objects in the scene, such as character parts, geometry objects, lights, cameras, and so on.
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Geometry nodes live inside Geo objects and generate geometry.
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Dynamics nodes set up the conditions and rules for dynamics simulations.
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VOP nodes let you define a program (such as a shader) by connecting nodes together. Houdini then compiles the node network into executable VEX code.
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Render nodes either render the scene or set up render dependency networks.
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Channel nodes create, filter, and manipulate channel data.
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Composite nodes create, filter, and manipulate image data.
Reference
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Explains each of the items in the main menus.
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Viewer pane types.
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Documents the options in various panes.
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Documents the options in various user interface windows.
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Houdini includes a large number of useful command-line utility programs.
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How to script Houdini using Python and the Houdini Object Model.
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Expression functions let you compute the value of parameters.
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HScript is Houdini’s legacy scripting language.
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VEX is a high-performance expression language used in many places in Houdini, such as writing shaders.
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Properties let you set up flexible and powerful hierarchies of rendering, shading, lighting, and camera parameters.
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You can script custom pane types using Python to create your own UIs.
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Pre-made materials included with Houdini.