Character Masterclasses

Houdini 16 includes the new modular Autorigs system. This masterclass provides an introduction to the tools and demonstrates a complete workflow starting with an imported character mesh all the way to a Digital Asset that is ready for animation.

In this overview video, we step through the basic workflow of adding muscles to an animated creature and applying them as a skin deformer. This particular workflow does not require any dynamics simulation. We start by creating simple muscle forms using Houdini’s Muscle Tool Shelf. We’ll learn how to adjust shape and placement, attach them to your character rig, and how to enable automatic secondary animation (jiggle). Finally, we’ll look at how the shelf tools easily set up your muscles as a skin deformer leveraging Houdini’s Muscle Displace operator. Muscles in Houdini are versatile, easy to use, interconnected tools. Houdini’s muscle system has been designed to serve both FEM (dynamics simulations) and non-FEM (skin deformer) workflows while using a unified set of digital assets. With the foundational information presented in this video, you’ll be ready to rig up a creature with simple muscles and you’ll be prepared to take the next steps: creating custom muscles, and using muscles in simulations with Houdini’s Tissue System.

This masterclass introduces new fur & hair grooming features in Houdini 16.5. The new features are first introduced individually, then put to good use in an examples project that simulates wet fur, with the fur being driven by velocities of a flip simulation. This also shows manipulation of wire simulation attributes as well as modifications to the hair generation in wet areas.

This masterclass introduces the new workflow and techniques from the ground up. We look at the structure and overall design of fur object node, a new set of procedural SOP tools, dynamics and rendering.

This masterclass provides an overview of several new features and improvements for crowd simulations in Houdini 15.5. This includes: new versions of the crowd DOP nodes, foot locking, improvements to locomotion and terrain adaptation, and advanced controls for transitions between animation clips.

This masterclass provides an overview of several new features and improvements for crowd simulations in Houdini 15. This includes: tools for creating additional layers for an agent, ragdoll simulations, material stylesheets, and many workflow improvements.

New Planar Patch from Curve tools in Houdini 17 open the possibility for simple tailoring. This masterclass goes over the process of designing a dress for Tommy, showing how the Vellum Drape node can be used to build clothing panel-by-panel.