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TOTAL DURATION: 1h 39m 30s

Welcome to Houdini. In this lesson you will start from scratch to model, render, animate, and simulate a soccer ball, also known as a football in many parts of the world. You will create a classic bouncing ball animation using the principles of squash and stretch, apply textures and materials, add lights and cameras, and explore the use of dynamics to simulate a group of soccer balls.

These tasks will introduce you to many different parts of Houdini as you create your first Houdini scene, explore the interface and discover some of its most important tools. You will learn how to work interactively in the Scene View and how to use the Network View to manage your nodes as you refine your model and build your animation rig. You will also set up materials and textures on the Solaris Stage then you will render using Houdini’s built-in renderer Karma, and finally create a Rigid Body Simulation.

This lesson includes a Step by Step PDF document to help guide you.

CREATED BY

rmagee
ROBERT MAGEE

Robert Magee is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at SideFX who has been working with Houdini for 20 years. He has created lots of learning material and demos designed to help artists understand how going procedural with Houdini can benefit their work.

More from Robert Magee

COMMENTS

  • Laura-89 1 year ago  | 

    Hi Robert. I am stuck on getting the sphere (create) tab. When I type in sphere, my options are Sphere (polygons), Sphere (primitives) and VDB to spheres...... I'm autistic and the PDF doesn't specify which one to choose. Also when watching the video, we don't actually see which sphere tab you click on. Please help.

  • Laura-89 1 year ago  | 

    It's ok. I figured it out. Go me haha! There was a sphere tab along the top, so I dragged it across and it gave me what I need :)

    • rmagee 1 year ago  | 

      Glad you found it. Next time include the Section # and Step # or the video # and timecode in the video - it makes it easier to pinpoint where you are in the lesson.

  • LukeP 1 year ago  | 

    That k you for doing this Rob.

  • Laura-89 1 year ago  | 

    Houdini keeps crashing every time I try to change to Karma XPU :(

  • Lookdev Studio 1 year ago  | 

    My soccer ball's UV project it isn't correct.

  • GuyFawx 11 months, 4 weeks ago  | 

    Hey Robert thanks for these tutorials I just wanted to give you a heads up and your probably already aware but this video ends at 9:15 and still goes on for about another 2 min of black. Dont fix it if you dont feel like it just wanted to give you a heads up in case thats something that would bother you. Thanks again for the tutorials keep them coming

    • GuyFawx 11 months, 4 weeks ago  | 

      Video six is the one i was referring too

    • rmagee 11 months, 3 weeks ago  | 

      Thanks - I fixed it on Vimeo

  • Angelman609 11 months, 2 weeks ago  | 

    Hello Robert, thanks for the tutorial!
    Everything seems to be ok except that when I render my scene it comes without the Motion Blur. I double checked the render settings and can't find why.
    Any chance you know what's going on here?
    I appreciate you help :)

  • Angelman609 11 months, 1 week ago  | 

    I fixed it, it's all good now.

    Thanks.

  • hanksan 11 months, 1 week ago  | 

    Thanks for another great tutorial series! Karma XPU is very slow on my dual GPU setup. Is there a setting I need to adjust or does Houdini just work on single GPU cards?

  • henkeblomman 11 months, 1 week ago  | 

    For some reason, I can't place the shadow thing. Like it just doesnt show up when i press shift + LMB

  • mu_kuie 10 months ago  | 

    Hey Robert!

    Any ideas why the display marker I've created doesn't show in my viewport?

    • vladHrd 9 months, 1 week ago  | 

      I have the same problem. Have you found any solutions?

      • Regiegab 8 months, 1 week ago  | 

        Hi! I had the same bug but after I set the Class to "Auto" and then back to "Primitive" it is working now

        • fajarchou 1 month ago  | 

          THANK YOU SO MUCH, ITS VERY HELPFUL BRO

  • hrgiger 8 months, 4 weeks ago  | 

    Thank you for the great lessons!
    Took me a while to figure out that Onion Skinning doesn't work if you have Vulkan set as your backend instead of OpenGL.

    • RigidCat 7 months, 1 week ago  | 

      Thank you! Wasted a lot of time wondering why.

  • brad-NBO 8 months, 2 weeks ago  | 

    In the For Each Node lesson, I found I had to change the Visualizer's Style from Text to Element Index for the primitive numbers to display.

  • shiva.pavaday 8 months, 2 weeks ago  | 

    As a beginner….the speed at which you navigate is way too fast. Don’t even get a chance to see what you are selecting. For a simple ball…it’s enough to demotivate someone. Even slowed down, your words don’t tie in with the action. So you select things in advance so when the instruction is received you’re already clicking onto the next procedural step.

    • shiva.pavaday 8 months, 2 weeks ago  | 

      My bad…didn’t realise this was just an intro……my apologies

  • Regiegab 8 months, 1 week ago  | 

    Hi! I had the same bug but after I set the Class to "Auto" and then back to "Primitive" it is working now

  • chippu 7 months, 1 week ago  | 

    chapter-4 (1.08) I don't see any soccerball texture i do have bricks, woods & some other stuffs. what should i do?

  • vicentewilson 6 months, 2 weeks ago  | 

    In the "Welcome to Houdini" lesson, you will model, render, animate, and simulate a soccer ball. What are the key animation principles you will apply to create a classic bouncing ball animation, and how do these principles enhance the realism of the animation https://sportsgamesaz.io?

  • LuzidVision 6 months, 1 week ago  | 

    Import of SHOP materials is not supported. Ignored material /obj/soccerball_geo/uvquickshade1/shop_definition/texture_material.

  • LuzidVision 6 months, 1 week ago  | 

    yet another crash after trying to link the first material

  • LuzidVision 6 months, 1 week ago  | 

    Enabling full deformation onion skinning also leads to guaranteed crash

  • luciaphong1 4 months, 3 weeks ago  | 

    In Chapter 9, I used a sublayer to introduce the USD soccer ball. However, I noticed the logo on the ball was positioned strangely, so I used a transform to rotate it. But if I rotated it along the x-axis, the ball's motion path became incorrect. So, is there a way to rotate the soccer ball at this step without changing its motion path?

  • hello.windholm 3 months, 3 weeks ago  | 

    Subject: For-Each Begin node error: "Linked SOP isn't generating any pieces"
    Hi, I'm getting this error on my Block Begin node in a For-Each loop:
    "Linked SOP isn't generating any pieces.
    Either wire an input to this node or to the second input of the linked SOP.
    This could also be an invalid attribute specified on the linked SOP."
    My network setup is roughly:
    platonic1 → attribcreate1 → subdivide1 → sphere1 → ray2 → foreach_begin1 → polyextrude1 → foreach_end1 → Merge
    The first input (blue) of foreach_begin1 is connected from ray2.
    The second input (yellow, Piece Source) is currently not connected.
    Piece Attribute is set to "piece" (or default), but no @piece or @class attribute is being generated upstream.
    When I check the Spreadsheet on ray2 or downstream nodes, I have geometry (points/primitives), but the For-Each doesn't seem to find any pieces to iterate over.
    Things I've tried:
    Cooked the node multiple times
    Added Connectivity SOP upstream to create @class/@piece
    Temporarily bypassed the loop (ray2 → Null → Merge) — geometry is there
    Changed Piece Attribute to other names, but still no pieces detected
    It feels like the Begin node is not recognizing any splittable pieces from the linked SOP (ray2).
    Could you help me understand:
    Do I need to explicitly connect something to the second input of the Begin node?
    What is the correct way to generate pieces for a For-Each Primitive loop in this kind of setup (platonic → subdivide → ray → extrude per face)?
    Is there a common mistake I'm missing?
    Thanks a lot for any advice!

  • inddjspy 2 months, 1 week ago  | 

    Thanks a lot Robert. Awesome!!

  • Pablo8485 1 month, 1 week ago  | 

    Shift-Click on vertices to pin them is not working and hasn't worked on the last two attempts at starting this tutorial

  • ObsidianMedia 1 month ago  | 

    Anyone else having the Problem not being able to Pin Vertices?

  • michaeljaquish 1 week, 4 days ago  | 

    Add me as another person not being able to pin vertices.

    • michaeljaquish 1 week, 4 days ago  | 

      It's an issue with Vulkan. To fix it, switch to the "deprecated" OpenGL viewport shader.
      Edit > Preferences > 3d Viewport
      Switch Renderer from Vulkan to OpenGL, save your file, restart Houdini and reopen your file. You should be able to set the UV Pins now.

  • Vanilthas59 1 week ago  | 

    Hi, I got a problem with the for-each part, and is that when I set the for-each block exactly as in the video, it does not behave as in the video. Would share the results with you, but I can't do it here.

    • Vanilthas59 1 week ago  | 

      Solved! The problem was just in the Inset value of the PolyExtrude. Adjust it to prevent any primitives' collisions

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