A general question..

Can anyone recommend a resource to learn about Houdini plugin develpoment or scripting?

Thanks,

There are 3 types of scripting in Houdini:

*) Hscript : this is basic scripting language that Houdini has for scene management and setup. This is easily learned from the manuals, especially if you're experienced with simple scripting already, be it cshell or scripting in other 3d software (Lscript,etc). There are also quite a few (cmd) scripts on http://www.odforce.net [odforce.net] that show off a few of the features of hscript.

*) VEX: This is a high performance language designed to process geometry, affect particles, perform composite operations, and very importantly shading (surface/displace/light/shadow/fog/photon). This is C-like and there are a few tutorials on http://www.odforce.net [odforce.net] about basic shader writing and other geometry operations. For this this is the VOP context in Houdini which allows VEX coding by laying down a flow-chart of nodes representing VEX functions. This is a great visual way of learning scripting and there are a few high-level functions in VOPs which are actually pretty complex at a low level. These nodes are subnets and you can drill down into them and discover the low-level functions which comprise them. This is a great way to learn VEX scripting.

*) HDK: The Houdini Development Kit (C++ development kit) is a paid license option, sadly. If you have not bought Houdini and paid for the devkit license, this might well be out of your reach. As far as learning it is comcerned there is an official SESI mailing list, some limited html docs supplied with the Houdini HDK, and if you ask SESI they can provide some examples from past HDK courses that they hold about once a year in LA. Feel free to post on the odforce forums any questions about the HDK because there are a few HDK developers that read it and may be able to help. Mark Story of Digital Cinema Arts (http://www.digitalcinemaarts.com) [digitalcinemaarts.com] has done some great public work with the HDK.

What aspects are you most interested in?

Cheers,
Jason

Simply for the sake of being confusing…

You could also add the following to the “programming/scripting” list:
Dialog Scripts
Custom Expressions
L-System Rules

Hmmm….I wonder if IFDs count too.

jim.

I guess OTLs too then? ;-) Some of these OTLs can get pretty clever and complex. Well, thats ol' Houdini- you're basically building a great big program all the time, aren't you?

Thanks guys that is just what I needed to get me started. I am for the most part a GL programmer. I have always found Houdini to be very intriguing but have never taken the time to get down to the nitty gritty…
Now is the time…cheers,

OH, sorry jason I just saw your question there at the bottom of your post…

I am interesetd in porting some of my Physically Based Artisit tools to Houdini so I can stop writing rendering blocks using the Prman API among other things. I am tired of doing it all myself and think Houdinin is the way to go in that I will still have a high level of low level control while gaining a whole bunch of features Did that make sense?

M

mistrot
OH, sorry jason I just saw your question there at the bottom of your post…

I am interesetd in porting some of my Physically Based Artisit tools to Houdini so I can stop writing rendering blocks using the Prman API among other things. I am tired of doing it all myself and think Houdinin is the way to go in that I will still have a high level of low level control while gaining a whole bunch of features) Did that make sense?

M

Hi there,

It sounds like what you want to do is going to require the HDK, which isn't part of the Houdini distro, it requires an extra fee ($4K!). Can you elaborate a bit about the types of tools you're thinking of writing? It sounds very interesting! BTW The more users asking for the HDK the better, it shows there's a need for customization (stating the obvious) and a great potential awaiting … let your voice be heard!


–Mark