Houdini 21.0 What’s new What’s new in Houdini 21

What’s new Modeling, geometry, and terrains

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Polygon Modeling

  • New Attribute Sort SOP that sorts a selected component of an attribute with ascending or descending order.

  • New UV Flatten from Points SOP computes UV maps that measure distance and direction along a surface, which can be useful for applying masking, decaling, and surface traversal operations that are based on these attributes.

  • New Edge Relax SOP moves points around so the edges between them match those specified by the second input.

  • New Separate Pieces SOP offsets individual pieces of geometry identified by a unique string or integer attribute so they no longer spatially overlap.

  • New Split by Point Attribute SOP detects changes in a point attribute across adjacent edges and inserts new points along those edges. This is useful for separating regions of a mesh based on classification, segmentation, or partitioning information encoded in attributes.

  • New Topo Slide by Curve References SOP slides geometry from one region of a surface to another, guided by curve-based landmark pairs. It supports a high-accuracy sliding method that uses Topo Transfer.

  • Poly Bridge SOP and Poly Extrude SOP can now generating UVs on sides.

  • Poly Extrude SOP improvements:

    • UI improvements for output groups.

    • Better handling in edge groups with Preserve groups, and more intuitive handling of groups in general.

    • Support for Polygon Soup primitives.

    • Can generate UVs on sides.

  • New Unsubdivide SOP that constructs a polygon mesh to approximate the input geometry when you apply the Catmull-Clark algorithm.

  • Ray SOP now has bidirectional option allowing testing rays in both forward and reverse directions. The Bidirectional Ray Result parameter lets you choose the closest or farthest hit.

  • The following SOPs now have a mask parameter: Peak SOP, Soft Peak SOP, Inflate SOP, Flatten SOP, Point Jitter SOP.

  • Group SOP has improved performance to find unshared edges.

  • Polyhinge SOP now has support for hinging (extruding) edge groups.

  • The UV Fuse SOP is now compilable (verbified).

  • The Polyreduce SOP now has a Limit Using Normal Deviation parameter that lets you limit the threhold for the normal deviation between a polygon in the input and any corresponding polygon in the reduced mesh.

  • UV Layout SOP can now automatically pack UV islands into a contiguous range of UDIM tiles.

  • Tet Conform SOP now has a toggle to disable the Max Tet Scale.

  • Mask by Feature SOP now has an option to turn off self shadows when calculating ambient occlusion.

General

  • New Hide Other Objects (World) mode added which stays in world space.

    • Hide Other objects renamed to Hide Other Objects (Local).

Sculpting

  • New Shot Sculpt SOP allows you to make corrections to an animation sequence using the toolset from the sculpt SOP.

  • Sculpt SOP improvements:

    • Option to sculpt along the surface distance instead of just the 3D distance

    • Improved mask interface and options to allow for creating and managing multiple masks.

      • New Blur and Sharpen mask options allow you to blur or sharpen the entirety of an active mask.

    • Option to turn on and off View Clustered Geometry which allows you to sculpt only the clustered section improving sculpting performance.

    • Additional brushes - Plow, Planar, Elastic Grab, Elastic Scale, Elastic Pinch, and Elastic Twist. These brushes are also available in the Shot Sculpt SOP.

Quad Remesher

  • Quad Remesh SOP now has localized manipulation of adaptivity using procedural or interactive methods.

Curves

  • New Extract Contours SOP allows you to extract the contour edges of input geometry as viewed from a given perspective camera.

  • Curve SOP improvements:

    • Curve state now supports branched curves.

    • Better support for branched curves. This includes creating, fusing, and splitting branches directly in draw mode from existing points or in the middle of curve segments.

Volumes

  • Volume Visualization SOP now generates a single volvis dictionary attribute rather than a cloud of volvis attributes. The viewport accepts either approach. Turning off Use Dictionary Attribute will restore the old behavior.

Heightfields and terrains

Content library examples

The Custom Terrace project explores the interplay between Copernicus and SOP-level Height Field tools. Download the file here.

The Moon Crater project crafts a lunar crater scene. Download the file here.

What’s new in Houdini 21