MUSCLES
Unleash your character's strength with Houdini’s advanced muscle simulation system — the ultimate toolset for animators, creature TDs, and VFX professionals who demand anatomical precision and dynamic realism.
Muscles in Houdini 21 | Otis Solver
The new Otis solver is a specialized, GPU-accelerated soft tissue simulation tool designed for high-performance muscle and tissue dynamics. It delivers FEM-like material quality but runs significantly faster, making it ideal for complex character simulations. To help artists get started quickly, it comes with a full set of production-quality muscles and tissue setups ready for use.
Soft Tissue
H21 The new Otto muscle and tissue simulation recipe lets character effects artists quickly achieve high-quality, natural motion by running muscles and tissue together in a single, unified simulation with minimal setup.
Skin Deform
H21 The new skin deform tool with built-in skin sliding can be applied after muscle and tissue simulations, providing more natural, global deformations and supports distribution on the farm for faster, efficient processing.
Fascia Simulation
H21 The new fascia simulation generates a low-resolution tet mesh that naturally holds muscles together while preserving their soft, realistic behavior, reducing excessive jiggle and enabling cohesive, stable muscle and tissue motion with minimal setup.
Collision Detection
H21 The solver’s robust collision detection and response ensures stable, natural results in challenging areas like knees, armpits, and the torso, allowing muscle and tissue simulations to handle complex interactions cleanly and reliably out of the box.
Muscle Adjust Volume
H21 The muscle adjust volume tool helps CFX artists improve muscle simulation quality by managing intersections, enforcing minimum thickness in thin areas, and refining models, ensuring clean, predictable results across any character setup.
Muscle Activation
H21 The activation system automatically generates tension lines per muscle, eliminating tedious manual setup while providing greater control and customization through dedicated properties and parameters for more efficient, flexible simulations.
Configure
H21 The Otis configure system automatically sets up muscle-to-muscle and muscle-to-tissue constraints, ensuring natural deformation and transferring muscle motion effectively to the tissue and skin without altering the approved character model.
KEY FEATURES
Some key features include rigid spacers, retargeting using topo transfer, Franken muscle and tissue sliding.
MUSCLES IN PRODUCTION
Fall of the House of Usher | WeFX
Toronto-based WEFX is a high-profile visual effects studio that was founded in the summer of 2020 who specializes VFX for film and TV. In this Houdini Connect we take a look at how they generated photorealistic chimpanzees - from studying chimp anatomy and fur to perfecting animation and muscle simulation using Houdini.
FrankenMuscle
The Muscles & Skin system allows you to bring in modeled polygonal geometry, generate a multilayered simulation that mimics realistic muscle movements and skin effects from that geometry, and then export the simulation to your high-resolution geometry for integration into your shots.
Muscle Nodes
Here some of the nodes to look out for when working with Muscles in Houdini. These nodes let you add and configure muscles to work with your character or creature. Some of these nodes also support soft tissue simulation.
LEARNING RESOURCES
This comprehensive masterclass series is for both new and seasoned Houdini users. The masterclass covers geometry preparation for your muscles and bones, thorough walk-throughs of all the Houdini muscle nodes, and advanced specialty topics.
Soft Tissue with Otis
Essentials
Advanced
MUSCLES ARE AVAILABLE IN:
Houdini CORE* | Houdini FX | Houdini Indie | Houdini Education | Houdini Apprentice
* SOP LEVEL VELLUM-BASED TOOLS | NO OTIS SOLVER