PDG
PROCEDURAL DEPENDENCY GRAPH
PDG is a procedural architecture designed to distribute tasks and manage dependencies to better scale, automate, and analyze content pipelines for Film, TV, Games, Advertising and VR.
PDG is designed to describe these dependencies visually using nodes that generate sets of actionable tasks then distributes them to multiple cores on the same machine, the compute farm, or even the cloud. PDG provides a rich set of stock nodes to enhance productivity, and manages the dependencies smartly to minimize recompute upon changes.
TOPS
Introducing Task Operators
TOPs is PDG technology being applied to Houdini. TOP nodes integrate seamlessly with the rest of Houdini. This brings the power of PDG to FX workflows, but is not limited only to FX. Games, Motion Graphics and other workflows can also benefit, as can technologies such as Houdini Engine.
Intro to PDG
VFX TOP Workflow
PIPELINE TOOLS
Accessing PDG Technology
Houdini and its node-based workflow is often referred to as a pipeline-in-a-box. With PDG, you can break this box wide open to scale up to a bigger procedural pipeline. PDG lets you organize and schedule tasks then distribute them intelligently to your compute farm to work in parallel.
PDG works inside Houdini in TOP networks, or in a separate PilotPDG application. PilotPDG can process TOP graphs created in Houdini, or work with other applications that don't involve Houdini at all.
MANAGE
Pipeline Dependencies
PDG can describe large parts of your pipeline to ensure that assets are being loaded, processed and saved out efficiently. The fine-grained dependencies can ensure a minimum of compute upon a given change. The TOP nodes can play a number of different roles that will replace manual labour and scripts that can bog down a complex studio pipeline. You can even set up TOP networks that fetch other TOP networks to create multiple levels of abstraction within your pipeline.
Pipeline Workflows
AUTOMATE
Iterations & Variations
A key workflow in PDG is the wedging workflow that lets you quickly create multiple iterations of a design. This lets you output a contact sheet that can be used to evaluate the iterations to make the best choice or choose many prop variations to richly populate your scene.
Wedging
Prop Variation
ENHANCE
Houdini Workflows
Houdini artists can take their work to the next level with TOP networks enhancing existing workflows, to take advantage of the compute farm to parallel-process geometry networks and dynamic simulations.
SOP Integration
Crowd FX
INTERACT
with Game Engines
For Gamedev, Houdini Digital Assets can already be created to work inside Game Engines such as Unity or UE4. Now with PDG, you can set up visual procedural systems that capture the relationships between various assets, rather than treating each asset as independent from the others. When a change is made to part of a level, PDG can figure out which terrain tiles, vegetation assets, roads and buildings are affected, and make sure that only those are updated in parallel without re-cooking the whole level.
GameDev Workflow
MACHINE LEARNING
Data Synthesis, Augmentation, and Hyper-Parameter Space Search
Machine learning involves lots of trial and error with large datasets and correspondingly large compute to train with those datasets. With PDG, you can synthesize or augment lots of data to help train Deep Learning systems, and try multiple Hyper-parameters on ML models simultaneously.
Terrain Erosion
Terrain Sketching
BUILD
Extensive PDG Toolsets
TOP Nodes
COMMERCIAL PDG
Houdini FX
Task Operators in Houdini FX give artists access to PDG to create high level wedging and pipeline workflows for VFX projects.
BUY NOW
Houdini CORE
PDG is also available in Houdini Core and gives access to Task Operators to manage and distribute pipeline tasks.
BUY NOW
PilotPDG
PilotPDG lets you process TOP nodes and digital assets from Houdini or use other apps to graph non-Houdini workflows.
CONTACT SALESINDIE
EDUCATION
LEARNING
Houdini Indie
Houdini Indie can access PDG using Task Operators to distribute tasks to a small compute farm using up to three Houdini Engine Indie licenses.
SUBSCRIBE NOW!
Houdini Education
Schools will have access to PDG in Houdini Education and will be able to distribute tasks to the school compute farm using Education engine licenses.
LEARN MORE
Houdini Apprentice
PDG is also available in Houdini Apprentice for learning purposes but can only work with the local scheduler to process tasks on your local computer.
FREE DOWNLOAD!LEARN PDG
Learn how to leverage PDG's node-based workflow to build robust pipeline workflows using tutorials created by industry professionals and SideFX.