Kai Stavginski
KaiStavginski
About Me
Kai Stavginski has been a Senior Technical Director for SideFX Software since 2014. In that time, he's mostly been busy in the areas of shading and fur tools. He started in the industry as a generalist in 2004, spent some time as a rigger for an animated feature and then created VFX for major Hollyw... more
Kai Stavginski has been a Senior Technical Director for SideFX Software since 2014. In that time, he's mostly been busy in the areas of shading and fur tools. He started in the industry as a generalist in 2004, spent some time as a rigger for an animated feature and then created VFX for major Hollywood blockbusters for several years. He used Houdini to get the job done and now uses his extensive industry experience in his development work on the software itself. less
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Since Aug 2013
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Otis Solver Tissue Jan. 27, 2026, 2:38 p.m.
Hi,
lower resolution could potentially have this effect because the sim might converge better. I think you could counteract these effects by lowering stiffness though.
You can also try weakening muscle to tissue constraints, possibly even for specific muscles (They can be controlled from both Muscle Constraint Properties and Tissue Properties), although I'd start with an overall reduction.
One thing that was important with Otto is exclusion of any bones that are closer to the surface from the Bones Group under Tissue in Otis Configure.
It still comes down to balancing stiffnesses in the end though. For balancing something like solid layer stiffness against muscle attachments, its difficult to give exact recommendations because while the effect of solid stiffness should mostly be independent of tet count, muscle attachment stiffness scales with number of attachment constraints. I'd say the Otto values can be considered our recommended balance though for a similar character.
I would also recommend looking at the result of the final Skin Deform with sliding enabled, because that can change the feel of simulations quite a bit.
lower resolution could potentially have this effect because the sim might converge better. I think you could counteract these effects by lowering stiffness though.
You can also try weakening muscle to tissue constraints, possibly even for specific muscles (They can be controlled from both Muscle Constraint Properties and Tissue Properties), although I'd start with an overall reduction.
One thing that was important with Otto is exclusion of any bones that are closer to the surface from the Bones Group under Tissue in Otis Configure.
It still comes down to balancing stiffnesses in the end though. For balancing something like solid layer stiffness against muscle attachments, its difficult to give exact recommendations because while the effect of solid stiffness should mostly be independent of tet count, muscle attachment stiffness scales with number of attachment constraints. I'd say the Otto values can be considered our recommended balance though for a similar character.
I would also recommend looking at the result of the final Skin Deform with sliding enabled, because that can change the feel of simulations quite a bit.
APEX Broken Joints When Using Otto Muscle Transfer Recipe Oct. 21, 2025, 10:51 a.m.
This will be fixed in 21.0.511.
Feather bending Sept. 26, 2025, 8:43 a.m.
Should be fixed in tomorrow's 21.0 and 20.5 builds.