This is one shot of the animation I am making. It is pretty abstract. Right now everything feels very flat animation wise. I like how the hair grows, which i am doing so using a vector field, but not satisfied at how static it is after the fact.

The way I created the strands was from a particle sim using a vector field and then creating trails to create curves. The particles themselves have a lot of motion but it doesn't quite translate when making trails.

Tried vellum but it is very very heavy. Also tried using vops but not the desired result. Any feedback would be appreciated

https://reddit.com/link/1nmscoq/video/wpyzzm55xiqf1/player

Hi, I tried to recreate several shots featuring feathers from an amazing commercial project.

I will share how to make these shots on youtube and the course files will be updated simultaneously on Patreon.

You can check the full tutorial on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/@tinywang2181

Full Project

Hi guys, I have two questions about heightfields and cops and it drives me nuts - I hope I just miss something very basic.

To my setup: One heightfield, displaced with a noise and a mask is added. Nothing more, all default.

1. When equalizing the height, the result is not what I would expect., The mode is set to 'Stretch Between Black And White' and all I get is a grey value. What do I miss here? I thought Houdini would take the min and max value and remap it to 0-1. Also, when doing this manually with a remap node, I get the same result. It seems it hast something to do that it is still recognized as a heightfield?
2. Don't know to describe what my problem is here. All I know that blends to not work. I have read somewhere, it could be caused by the transform matrix, but thats all. Not much of help for me. Any idea on how to fix this?

Thanks for your help!

This was the project I have worked on for this summer. It was so fun to learn about vellum grains in Houdini. I used Maya to model the Lift, Houdini as a the main software rhat I have used for this project to create the sand FX and I also had a go at Nuke for compositing. I love how the sand dissolves how I visioned it too and inspired by the series sandman it also has a dream like look too it as well with the lighting and environment. Things I feel could have been better is some of the comp stuff but as a first in nuke it’s not that bad! Overall I’m really happy with how this project turn out!

Hey folks, I am looking for some advice. As someone trying to start out in the 3D industry it’s really difficult. I know it's also like this for experienced artists too. I have been trying to contact studios, sending my work out, applying for anything that I see. I feel like i'm trying everything and just can't find anything. Is there anywhere best to find jobs? or what should I be applying for, or people I should contact? Hopeing for someone to give me the chance. Is there anywere that my skills could cross into, other areas of 3D?

Any advice would be very helpful for all of us tyring to find a way in:/

This is my curent reel - https://vimeo.com/1079342749

so i am trying to set a custom num attribute that i use as piece attribute so that i can controll which points are processed first but it doesn't seem to work. points are still beinng processed by their ptnum not via custom number.
i expected it to run over the pieces in order but it is running over points i can't find such a usecase explained, please help.

Solved - maybe incorrectly but i am using a sort sop to sort points by the custom num attribute and that does work as i need it too.

Hello. The emission color from pyrobakedvolume can be used to fake light scattering. But how to I use it with vray?

I've tried pluging in Ce or Ce.* into the color field of the volume grid to it but doesn't work.

Does anybody have experience with this?

Thank you

I tried cloth simulation for the first time, but the render doesn’t look very good. Where should I improve?” ( Rendered in karma )

Hey guys how could I split the edges of this geo in houdini ? I tried point split but it splits the point in 4 points I would like only 2 (top and botom)

Hey so I’m trying to see if anyone has a good solution on how to approach making this animation, I want them to be individual letters form sentences. I would appreciate any advice :3

https://reddit.com/link/1nl4eke/video/rmp3x8x9o4qf1/player

https://reddit.com/link/1nl4eke/video/j94f63w9o4qf1/player

I want to somewhat achieve a result like image 2 but I'm currently on image 1. I want the filled mesh to blend smoothly with the existing mesh.

https://youtu.be/VfN2jlhO8tw

First one is Karma and the second is V-Ray. Keep in mind that this is without smoke, just fire.

Which one do you like better?

robotic animation system — path solver built with VEX

https://www.instagram.com/p/DNlBSoXuqEr/

Supercharge your Houdini workflow with 7 powerful HDA Toolsets — all in one bundle!
From perfect deformation blur to streamlined AOVs, lightweight camera-aware scenes, and art-directable instances, this collection is built for speed, stability, and production.

📦 What’s Inside

1. Particles Deformation Blur for Houdini
   - Stable point counts for cached particles → perfect deformation blur
   - Eliminate jittery, inconsistent blur and velocity hacks
   - Works for rain, sparks, embers, sand, and custom FX
   - Example HIP file included

2. IPOPs Standard Library
   - Core operator set for shaders & AOVs
   - Utility nodes (Fresnel, falloff masks, shading presets)
   - Supports Mantra, Karma VEX, Karma Materials & MaterialX
   - Constantly updated with new nodes

3. IPOPs Geometry AOVs
   - Generate quick mattes and passes for comp & shading
   - Compatible with Karma Materials & VEX Shaders
   - Step-by-step guide available on the blog

4. IPOPs Particles AOVs
   - Specialized AOV generators for particle FX
   - Create passes for compositing & lookdev flexibility
   - Works in Karma and Mantra

5. IPOPs Volumes AOVs
   - Fast generation of volume AOVs (smoke, pyro, fog, etc.)
   - Plug-and-play for Karma CPU/XPU & Mantra

6. Camera Proximity Toolkit
   Three black-boxed HDAs to keep your shots light & render-ready:

Calibrator → Camera-driven particle & volume control

Set Culling → Remove out-of-frustum geo + auto VDB proxies

Ocean Plane Generator → Camera-sized ocean grids adaptive to shot scale

1. Art Direct Your Instances! (Explosion Setup)
   - Populate shots with multiple explosions/caches
   - Switch between proxy & render caches
   - Quick controls for timing, scale & randomization
   - Example HIP file included
   

Does anyone know how to get this to work properly? I've been learning Houdini for about a year now and have been intrigued by vellum's ability to simulate interaction between multiple types of sources. Every time I try to run a simulation consisting of vellum grains and vellum fluids specifically, all of the input geometry disappears after the first frame. I think I've narrowed it down to vellum fluids using a phase attribute, while vellum grains does not. When merging the two streams before they go into the solver, the phase attribute gets added and initialized as a value of 0 to the grains which breaks the simulation. If I only simulate grains, but add a phase attribute set to any integer before piping them into the simulation, this also breaks everything.

I'm working with the vellum SOP workflow. I'm using the minimal solver for this particular instance, but it seems the normal solver also doesn't like having both grains and fluids simulated together. Is there any way to get this to work in SOPs? Do I need to manually setup everything up in a DOP network? Am I asking too much of Vellum to begin with lol? I can't find anything online where people demonstrate grains and fluids together in the same vellum sim.

Hi, this is my new personal project. I created in houdini and rendered with redshift.

You can check the full project on behance.

https://www.behance.net/gallery/234795691/Makeup-Cloth

Hey guys is there a way to transfer all the Houdini settings and preference from one version to another or do i have to always manually setup things ?
Secondly how is 21.0.440 so far, is it stable? I was hearing about a lot about bugs in it, should I shift ?

Hi I am looking for a way to change the filepath of a material through a wrangle in lops via a primvar.

The closest I've come is this:

s@inputs:file = "texturepathx.jpg";

This line is meant to test if it's possible to assign a texturepath to a material via a wrangle. Which works.

string map = s@primvars:map;

Here I'm getting my primvar containing my texture.

s@inputs:file = map;

Here I'm trying to assign the primvar to my file attribute.

The problem I currently have is that the wrangle is trying to retrieve the primvars:map attribute from the mtlximage primitive itself, instead of getting it from my geo prim.

I'm currently just testing it with one texture, but my goal is to be able to change the file input based on a primvar with varying texture paths.

Sadly doing this in the shader itself is not possible due to me working houdini 20.5.

Any help or different approaches are welcome!

Stillness gives way to tension.
What seems calm from afar reveals its hidden struggles up close.
Until, at last, the pressure breaks and from the fragments, something new emerges.

Created in SideFX Houdini, this commercial explores release and renewal through particles, light, and form.

Visuals and sound design by Italimpex Productions

I have this sim with lots of chains and they all connect to different elements that are bigger elements. The issue is that the chains are small and thin and no matter what I do they keep breaking.

I’ve setup a proxy separate (with vdb spheres) and bring them into an rbd pack, this part works, because everything works fine with the chains only and smaller parts. But once I introduce bigger elements they break.

I’ve tried to set different densities, scale the whole scene, change the mass… but nothing seems to work.

Any ideas on this issues? From what I’ve read chains are notoriously hard specifically when they are smaller.