Hi, I cannot find any sort of soft selection in houdini. I am looking for a way to apply an effect to a selection, and this effect being applied to each point or primitive depending on its weight, defined by “how much” it is selected.

I went to look for such a feature when trying to find the equivalent of a “cluster” in maya. It actually let you move/rotate a group of points after having assigned weights to them. I believe you can do something similar in houdini with the capture region and deform SOPs. I am still uneasy with them, but I believe that the capture region can only be moved at the object level, right? or can it be a the SOP level?

Several things to try for soft selections:
- Increasing the Soft Radius while using the Edit SOP (or tool)
- Using the SoftTransform SOP

For “clusters”, it is equivalent to using capture regions and deform. Capture regions can be moved at whatever level you choose. They don't even have to be inside bone objects per se. It's up to you to decide. Make note of the second input to the Capture SOP.