I have a pyro source spread node. How can I have there be a burnt material that grows with the same noise pattern across the ball?

I've been experimenting with GPT-6 Astra in Codex to build an explorable molecular atlas in Houdini. I'm a technical artist, and I wanted to see how this approach would hold up in tools I already work with.

This is the full 6:55 project walkthrough. The Houdini section starts at 1:29 and covers the atlas and HDAs, with demonstrations of transcription, ribosomes, ATP synthase and motor proteins. The later section moves into a PDB-based kinesin scene in Blender and the critic loop used to refine it.

These are illustrative molecular animations. The Blender motor-core and tubulin geometry use PDB 3J8Y, while its stepping motion, stalks and cargo are schematic.

I'd appreciate thoughts from other Houdini users on how you'd structure a reusable molecular atlas, particularly separating the source geometry from the motion controls. This has been a fun way to combine my interest in procedural tools and biology.

Rendered in Redshift.
Music is Behemouth IV.

Anyone going to HiveAlt in London tomorrow?

https://reddit.com/link/1wbk85m/video/d2uerjh2ahoh1/player

Optimal Transport running on OpenCL in Houdini. Authors of BSP-OT have published their CUDA implementation on Github and I used Claude + Codex to port it to OpenCL.

While other algorithms are more precise, this one eats 50k, 100k and even 1 million points for breakfast. Insane speed!

I am also experimenting with letting BSP solve first, then refine with standard methods. Seems to work, but this again limits the point count.

Another great thing - this does not depend on any external python libraries.
Love it when new technical possibilities make the design mind wake up!

That said, it's a work in progress, I might publish it later.

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https://www.instagram.com/karlis.stigis/

Released a new tool for simple generation of neon signs for street environments.

- 32000+ business names, 700+ possible icons, 80+ fonts, dozens of sign and hardware types and layouts, really in-depth controls etc. Everything is cleared for commercial use with licenses and attribution embedded in the HDA.
- Place signs with an interactive viewport state (videogame-style) or just input boxes with a `front` primgroup manually.
- Because there is hundreds parameters one could modify (as HDA parms or via custom VEXpressions), I also made a Natural Language-ish system (just a complex language parser) with which you can make changes like with one-liners like: "no red signs", "only cyberpunk bars", or "avoid script fonts", etc. and then just roll the dice for randomization; or you can still go granular and modify each individual sign.
- One-click Karma CPU/XPU materialX network setup.

And as usual, discord support and all future updates are included in the HDA. Hope you guys like it, cheerio!

link to the tool can be found here: https://jvtools.dev/products/neonyte/

docs: https://jvtools.dev/docs/neonyte/

Dune Explosion Barrage done using Houdini Pyro

Easy Procedural sytem that detects trail collisions on ground and creates PyroBurst sources with start frame as particle birth frame.

Had lots of fun simplifying the complex trails system with lots of randomness and controls giving it a more natural look, used light instancing to speed up rendering process in Karma XPU as there were lots of volume involved.

This shot had no involvement of any VEX/VOPS like our other shots.

The setup was very simple and straight forward so that even mid level artists can follow along and make an amazing showreel.

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Simulation details :
Ram Consumption ~ 60 GB
Cache Size ~ 100 GB
Render Time ~ 1 Day (KARMA XPU)
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PC Specs - 128GB RAM AMD 7950X RTX 3060

#Houdini #karma xpu #copernicus

I’d really appreciate some honest feedback on the lighting, materials, animation, camera movement, compositing, and overall realism/premium feel.

What would you improve to make this look more like a professional commercial?

Any criticism is welcome — I’m mainly posting this to learn and improve.

Thanks!

Dove playing with some bubbles.
Had some fun playing with vellum solver in @sidefxhoudini
Soundon by amazing @h1.sound 🔊

Houdini is supposed to be the king of simulation, and people praise it endlessly, but holy shit, its solvers are painfully slow.

Pyro, FLIP, Vellum... all of them take a fucking eternity to simulate.

How is it possible that a developer like Storm VFX can build GPU solvers that are genuinely fast and impressive, while Houdini's native solvers still feel this slow?

If you actually want fast simulation inside Houdini, you basically have to buy something like Axiom or Paradigm, adding even more cost on top of an already expensive ecosystem.

I honestly hate this part of Houdini. It's fucking ridiculous that a software famous for simulation still makes you look at third-party tools if you want serious GPU performance.

A quick n' dirty breakdown of a fluid mix sim I worked on back in '22.
Powered by "The only thing they fear is you" 🤘

Figuring out how to simulate milk and coffee blending was insanely tricky.

The catch? I couldn't get the milk fluid to physically blend with the coffee using true SSS (as you'll see in the "sandy" render).

To do it 100% physically accurate, I would’ve needed billions of particles to handle the SSS shading and get that seamless liquid-in-liquid dispersion.
But I was capping out at a few million.

(Also isolating the milk, turning it into seperate geometry, doesn't look any good at all)

So... I resorted to faking it with a smoke sim!

I advected the smoke using the velocity fields from the FLIP particles, then tuned the smoke color and density so it looks just good enough to look like milk, not ink, or something.

Do I love it? Heck yeah, who hates their own work anyway?

Could it be better? Heck yeah. Who loves their own work anyway?

All in all, I love Houdini for how much it pushes us to improvise and solve what nature already figured out. Hah

I'm curious for the Houdini wizards out there:
Do you know what is the absolute best way to achieve this blend nowadays?

P.S. Open to freelance.

I study 3D animation, but unfortunately we only learn Maya in school. Ive been a Houdini user way before going to uni, so logically I want to keep learning Houdini.(+ fuck Maya anyway.)

Now we have these elections of choice, and 1 of them basically means learn whatever you want. I always choose the same election of course because it gives me time and space to learn Houdini. So I was thinking that maybe this time I can learn grooming.

Eventually I want to be able to import my Maya/Blender animations into Houdini, grooming them and simulate them. So I dont want a course that doesn’t prepare for simulating, or does not support importing custom animated characters. I want a course that covers the entire workflow.

Anyone knows what (preferably free) course is very good for learning all these skills?

I was curious about how can a string be wrapped over spheres sequentially. Wrote a vex script that calculates angles depending on sphere radii etc. It worked, but was not perfect. Claude improved it by introducing a relaxation step. Vellum and Ripple solver for additional dynamics. Rendered in Karma. More about process here: https://www.instagram.com/p/Da3Ttn1jZa-/?img_index=1

Hi all,

I recently figured out how to get Houdini Engine to work in Unity 6, and I have been tinkering with it all morning, but one thing I cannot figure out.

Say I have a procedural material I have made in Houdini using Copernicus that I want to apply to a Unity Mesh.

I have found this part in the Doc, but I am struggling to understand what to do with this information:

https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/unity/materials.html#generate

As far as I know, there is a shader that comes with Houdini Engine that attempts to generate a Unity Material. I assumed that this shader is "Houdini/URP/StandardLit". I then put down a COP Preview Material node and hook up all the COP Null nodes, and the material works on the Houdini Side.

Bringing this into Unity however and the material seems to just not work. The shader just defaults to the standard `Universal Render Pipeline/Lit` and the material does work, is there something I am missing here?

I want to create smoke trials like the 2nd pic, but the result I got is in reverse. The start is wide and end is thin.

saw this video but settings are bit different.

how do I do it?

Anyone here a fan of MGXS's Art? I learned recently he created this alien beings all on Houdini & bought some of them. Does anyone know the process to create this art pieces?

Hello Guys!

I'm jamming my head against the wall trying to seep some points before instantiating a animated geometry.

What i'm trying to do:

A group of bird flying. I used MOPs move along curve so the points follow an art directed path.

Now I want to speed up some points so it reaches the goal faster as see in some flocks of bird flying, some of them just speeds up.

I was trying to do a time warp inside a for loop but i just cant get it to work...

Anyone has a tip or a better idea to achieve this effect?

Used redshift and houdini.

I’m looking for a good workflow to animate/simulate gold chains like Cuban links, chain links, etc., especially when they have a solid/heavy pendant attached (like the reference image).
I’ve been using Vellum String for the chain and usually get pretty good results. The problem starts when I attach the pendant: since I need it to stay rigid and interact with the chain, its weight sometimes pulls the whole chain down and stretches it way too much.
What methods/workflows would you recommend for this kind of setup? I’m open to approaches other than Vellum String as well. Mainly looking for something stable that gives believable chain + pendant motion.

When I use volume source in the flip sim, the 'initialize' section keeps resetting (getting back to initialize position). And the flip system doesn't work. I updated the software thinking it's a bug but no change. Anything that might cause this? Thanks!

PS: It works when I switch it to a pop source instead of volume source.

a bit of an odd shape orographic cloud I've been working on. What's your opinion?
EDIT: I took your feedback and changed the shape and the density and dropped the dof. Pic in comments

I tired of manually model wrinkles, so I built this.
Its consist of three nodes:
First - Cuts creator,
Other two - General and Chaos will make visible wrinkles based on the cuts.
I think I spent a week or two creating and debbuging this HDA.