Chris Rydalch

goldleaf

About Me

Member of R&D team at SideFX, working to improve Solaris and Karma workflows in Houdini. Spent the previous 10+ years in FX, crowds, animation, character fx, and pipeline departments for feature animation.
EXPERTISE
Technical Director
INDUSTRY
Film/TV

Connect

LOCATION
Kansas, United States

Houdini Skills

Availability

Not Specified

My Badges

SideFX Staff
Since Sep 2007
Intern Alumni
2011

My Tutorials

obj-image Beginner
Creating USD Assets with Component Builder
obj-image Intermediate
Keyframe Functions, Extrapolations, and Box Handles
obj-image Intermediate
IFD Workflow Basics
obj-image Beginner
Mantra Light Instancing Basics

My Talks

obj-image HIVE
What's New in Solaris with Houdini 21
obj-image HIVE
Composing Materials With USD and Solaris
obj-image HIVE
Creating USD Assets with Component Builder

Recent Forum Posts

How to import group with usd create component sop node? Aug. 28, 2026, 9:08 p.m.

The closest equivalent in LOPs/USD of SOP geometry groups, is GeomSubsets [www.sidefx.com]. You can turn primitive groups into geomsubsets, this is an option on the SOP Import/SOP CReate; points/edges aren't yet possible on the USD side (it's getting closer, I believe). Hope this helps!

Unable to adjust the camera focus plane in Karma / Solaris C Aug. 12, 2026, 1:56 p.m.

What are you Shift+LMB clicking in the scene? I can imagine if a parameter were locked on the node, that might interfere with the state adjusting the focus distance correctly? It sounds like a bug, but I'm unable to reproduce it in a simple scene.

[H22] SOP > USD workflow question Aug. 12, 2026, 1:49 p.m.

Yeah you use a SOP import to get the geometry into LOPs. The new nodes are just working to improve the UX for structuring scenes in SOPs before they end up in USD.