This is an introductory video on rigging in Houdini, which will go over rigging as an overview, HDAs, objects vs geometry, parenting and hierarchies, bones and nulls, animation controls, constraints, rotation order/gimbal lock, naming conventions, mirroring and rigging, and animation scripts.

See next part here: sidefx.com/tutorials/rigging-series-01-hda-spine

This is one of a collection of videos. You can visit the collection page to view all of the lessons on a single page.

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COMMENTS

  • harryabreu 6 years, 3 months ago  | 

    Thank you very much Mr Goldfarb.
    For a long time I was waiting for this explanation.

  • Ippokratis Bournellis 6 years, 3 months ago  | 

    Hi,

    Thanks for this interesting tutorial, it is much appreciated.
    I noticed that, when demonstrating the final result, there are discontinuities between the body parts (e.g. arms and spine), when character parts are moved around.
    Are these gaps fixed along the way ?

    Kind regards.

    • Ippokratis Bournellis 6 years, 3 months ago  | 

      Ok, what I perceived as gaps are the result of using proxy geometry - actual mesh deformation will likely occur at a later stage.
      If sharing the scene files is possible it would really help less experienced users like myself.
      Overall, very interesting tutorial, thanks.

  • GaryHanna 6 years, 3 months ago  | 

    Can you do a how to export for game engines as other software has issues reading the Houdini FBX exports and there's too many bones or it can't read the skeleton period.

  • JohnDraisey 6 years, 2 months ago  | 

    A lot of good information is included in this video, like the difference between HDAs and OTLs, as well as objects vs geometry. I think everyone with Houdini 16.5 should watch this.

  • punkweazel 6 years, 2 months ago  | 

    You're the best Mr. Goldfarb.
    Just what I was hoping I'd find. Looking forward to the series.

  • James_Burg 5 years, 8 months ago  | 

    How easy is to export housini rigs into UNREAL ?

    • Ivo van Roij 5 years, 4 months ago  | 

      All a rig basically is, is telling geometry how to translate and rotate. You're creating animations through that, and those animations are what you would access in a game environment. However, the cool thing is that using HDA's and Houdini Engine, you can also just import this rig in Unreal and Unity. You won't be able to keyframe any of the animations, but at least you can see the model and adjust rotations live in engine. When export the scene as a FBX, resulting basically in the mesh and rig as well as any keyframed animations, then that's how easy it is.

  • Satish Goda 5 years, 6 months ago  | 

    This is a very very good conceptual illustration of the fundamentals of transformations and how they form the back-bone of rigging. Thank you very much.

  • mmayrhoferr 5 years, 6 months ago  | 

    Thanks for the tutorials Mr. Goldfarb. I do have a quick question: where would i find the setting to move all those in view messages for tools from the scene view to the status bar in the very bottom. I can't seem to find that. You are mentioning it at some point that you customized your session this way, and I would prefer it this way as well.
    all the best

    • mmayrhoferr 5 years, 6 months ago  | 

      nevermind, i missed it in the preferences.

  • timurkarev 5 years, 5 months ago  | 

    Can I use this rig for UE4 and Unity?

    • Ivo van Roij 5 years, 4 months ago  | 

      Theoretically speaking, yeah. All a rig basically is, is telling geometry how to translate and rotate. You're creating animations through that, and those animations are what you would access in a game environment. However, the cool thing is that using HDA's and Houdini Engine, you can also just import this rig in Unreal and Unity. You won't be able to keyframe any of the animations, but at least you can see the model and adjust rotations live in engine.

  • youreg39 5 years, 3 months ago  | 

    Typical of Houdini tutorials. Where are the work files?

  • Mumm 5 years, 3 months ago  | 

    Could we get the work files for this video series?

  • rpdacosta . 4 years, 8 months ago  | 

    Curious to the work files s well

  • MaxFar 4 years, 3 months ago  | 

    No tutorial files?

  • burakumincgi 3 years, 11 months ago  | 

    would be great to have the files available.. even better, this should be included in the software. simple male and simple biped don't have the best proportions for a generic human. there is basically nothing available online and not everyone can afford to spend 10 hours or more doing this. if you want people to start using houdini for rigging there should be more material available.

    • goldfarb 3 years, 11 months ago  | 

      this has been mentioned before and while I can see your point the goals of this tutorial series were not to simply provide people with a finished rig - it was to introduce Houdini users, and those new to Houdini to the rigging process.
      There are hundreds of Human meshes available for free or paid on the web and there are applications to create custom ones like makeHuman etc, with these and by following the tutorial you could learn how to rig in Houdini and end up with a rig that you can animate by the end.
      We have plans for much more rigging and animation tools/tutorials/resources for Houdini...so keep an eye out!

      thanks

  • vanderhyden 3 years, 9 months ago  | 

    To anyone who is about to begin this series, I want to say how informative and helpful this was to me. Thank you very much to Michael Goldfarb for putting this together. :)

    • goldfarb 3 years, 9 months ago  | 

      great to hear!
      I'm glad it was helpful.

  • jhonatan31415 3 years, 6 months ago  | 

    Finally those classes on Linear Algebra came to reality haahha

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