Hello,
is it plausible to do highly responsive character animation in Houdini? Everything i read about it is that viewport speed is not responsive enough for animating characters. The tools for rigging is great, but can't find many examples of character animation. Maybe there are some performance updates on Houdini 18 that i am not aware of?

Moin,

as it is common with 1-post-users, you really need to give more detail.

For some people, a cube is a character because animation gives it “a soul”. For others, a character starts with 30 million points. What do you consider “a character”? What type of animation are you talking about (moving a cube from a to b can be pretty fast)?

I'd claim that the viewport by itself isn't the biggest hurdle. Slowdowns in Houdini have many very different causes - if you were, for example, to use the /obj level “chop” system @friedasparagus developed, you'd see incredible high performance in Houdini's standard viewport. That is to say, your rig defines a good part of your animation performance. The way you use proxy geometry versus life deformation is part of that - and so much more.

As a rule of thumb - this applies to many if not most 3d suits, actually - the more you can replace deformation by rigid transforms WHILE ANIMATING (and then convert to deformation for “playblasts”), the faster your workflow will be. The more you can simplify your rig (replace scripts by simple transforms), the faster your workflow will be. The more you can “cheat” (proxy geometry, sprites etc as placeholders), the faster your workflow will be.

My 2 cents.

Marc

Hello Marc,
thank you for your reply, I will check out the possibilities and see if it works for me, i will check the CHOP setup you mentioned.
I work with characters that are between game and movie level detail.