Houdini 22.0 Reference

Panes

Documents the options in various panes.

Pane types ¶

General ¶

Animation ¶

Animation editor
Graph view
Dopesheet
Table view
Channel list

Use the channel list to select the parameters displayed in the animation editor and timeline.
Animation layer
Motion mixer
Shot sculpt
Character picker

Rendering ¶

Take list
Material palette

Interactively assign materials to objects and primitives.
Light linker
Render scheduler
Shader view

Advanced ¶

Performance monitor
Python panel
PDG data layer panel
PDG path map

Manage the mapping of paths between file systems.
PDG ML training monitor

An interactive real-time data visualization tool for machine learning experimentation.

Other ¶

Asset browser

Manage assets downloaded from the asset store.
Constraint browser
Context view
Handle list
Tool palette
Houdini Engine SessionSync

Manage Houdini Engine SessionSync.

Reference

User interface ¶

Menus

Explains each of the items in the main menus.
Viewers

Viewer pane types.
Panes

Documents the options in various panes.
Windows

Documents the options in various user interface windows.

Programming ¶

Expression functions

Expression functions let you compute the value of parameters.
Expression cookbook

Tips and tricks for writing expressions to accomplish various effects.
Python scripting

How to script Houdini using Python and the Houdini Object Model.
VEX

VEX is a high-performance expression language used in many places in Houdini, such as writing shaders.
HScript commands

HScript is Houdini’s legacy scripting language.
hwebserver

Functions and classes for running a web server inside a graphical or non-graphical Houdini session.

Command line ¶

Starting Houdini from the command line
Stand-alone utilities

Houdini includes a large number of useful command-line utility programs.

Guru level ¶

Context options

Context options are similar to environment variables, except they are stored with the HIP file and it’s easy to use them in expressions.
Match Houdini camera lenses to the real world
Useful Internal Variables

Plugin installation ¶

Houdini packages

How to write and combine multiple environment variable definition files for different plug-ins, tools, and add-ons.

Houdini Engine ¶

Houdini Engine Python API

Python wrapper of HAPI API
Houdini Engine C API
Houdini Engine SessionSync

Utility that lets you run a session of Houdini Engine inside Houdini.