SideFX releases Houdini 20.5: check out its five key features
SideFX’s keynote presentation on the new features in Houdini 20.5, the latest major version of its prodedural 3D and VFX software, which has just been released.
SideFX has released Houdini 20.5, the next major version of its procedural 3D software for VFX, game development and motion graphics.
Although it comes just eight months after the release of Houdini 20.0, and was originally intended as a quality-of-life update, it has evolved into something much bigger, thanks to its major new feature: the Copernicus image-processing context.
A successor to Houdini’s old compositing framework, it’s also a much broader toolset, bringing with it new capabilities, including material-authoring workflows reminiscent of Substance 3D Designer, and the capability to create non-photorealistic looks.
The release also includes significant changes to Houdini’s KineFX character rigging system and APEX Animate tool, and a new MPM solver for multiphysics simulation.
There are also updates to 3D modeling and asset development, the Solaris look dev toolset and Karma renderer, the machine learning features, and the SideFX Labs tools.
Below, you can read our pick of the five main new features in Houdini 20.5, plus a brief round-up of the changes to the other toolsets.
1. Copernicus: material authoring, compositing and post effects (Beta)
By far the biggest new feature in Houdini 20.5 is Copernicus, its new GPU-accelerated 2D and 3D image-processing framework.
Although it’s a successor to Houdini’s existing system of compositing nodes (COPs) – and is ultimately intended to replace the COP network – it’s a much broader toolset.
In SideFX’s keynote presentation on Houdini 20.5, the recording of which is embedded at the top of the story, VP of Product Development Cristin Barghiel describes it as:
“A complete new approach to image processing … 2D and 3D working together seamlessly to give you the best of both worlds.”
In fact, in the initial release, Copernicus’s main focus is not compositing, but image manipulation and texture synthesis.
The keynote video shows a material-authoring worflow reminiscent of specialist tools like Substance 3D Designer, with users able to build textures using a combination of procedural shapes and hand-painted masks, and preview them on 3D geometry.
However, SideFX also pitches Copernicus as being capable of creating rough ‘slap comps’, integrating rendered 3D elements into live-action background plates.
The workflow blurs the lines between rendering and compositing, with Houdini running the Copernicus network while rendering to disk, rather than as a post-process.
As well making it easier to preview effects in context, that opens up new possiblities for stylizing rendered output, including creating non-photorealistic and toon-shaded looks.
Copernicus also supports the OpenFX standard, so it should be compatible with third-party effects plugins: the keynote showed Boris FX’s Sapphire tools inside Houdini.
The toolset is written in OpenCL, so it should be hardware-agnostic, delivering near-real-time performance on NVIDIA, AMD or Intel GPUs.
You can see its capabilities in more detail in SideFX’s keynote presentation on Houdini 20.5: SideFX devotes a full 45 minutes to it at the end of the video at the top of this story.
2. KineFX rigging: tags, rig components and APEX scripting (Beta)
KineFX, the character rigging framework introduced in Houdini 18.5, continues to evolve, with SideFX now describing its character rigs as “truly procedural”.
Key changes in Houdini 20.5 include the option to assign tags to joints in the skeleton.
The tags then control how rig components are assigned to the skeleton.
Since Houdini includes a range of pre-built components, including IK, IK/FX blending, spline, blendshape, delta mush and constraint systems, that greatly streamlines the process of building rigs: in the keynote presentation, SideFX described the workflow as creating IK set-ups “pretty much out of the box”.
It also makes it possible to transfer components procedurally between characters, even those with completely different bodily structures.
The video above shows a set of common components being switched dynamically between character rigs ranging from a standard biped to a bird and a quadruped.
Users can also build their own custom rig components, either through the existing node-based workflow, or the new APEX Script interface.
It provides a “Python-like” code interface for controlling APEX: the high-performance framework for evaluating node graphs, including rigs, introduced in Houdini 20.0.
3. APEX Animate tool: physics-based posing and animation layers (Beta)
There are also new features in Houdini’s animation toolset, which SideFX now refers to its feature overview as the ‘Apex Animate tool’.
For establishing key poses, the new ragdoll pose mode (shown above), makes it possible to pose characters with accurate real-time physics.
There are also new options for mirroring poses.
For animating interactions between characters and props, a new system of transient constraints, makes it possible to dynamically change parent-child relationships: the keynote included a demo of a juggler transferring balls from one hand to another.
And for non-linear animation, Houdini 20.5 introduces a new system of animation layers.
The change makes it possible to modify an existing motion – including applying procedural dynamics like ragdoll physics – without affecting the original animation.
4. Simulation: new MPM multiphysics solver
For simulation, Houdini 20.5 introduces a new MPM (Material Point Method) solver.
It is capable of recreating the behavior of a range of real-world materials, including liquids and elastic materials, but particularly granular fluids like sand and snow.
Different types of materials can interact with one another, and with rigid bodies in a scene: the video above shows water wetting sand as solid objects move through it.
The new solver is GPU-accelerated – SideFX describes it as providing much better interactive performance than similar solvers in other DCC applications – and it is written using OpenCL, so it should be hardware-agnostic.
The existing Vellum solver, which the MPM solver complements – it isn’t intended as a replacement – has been updated to support the output of the VDB Collider node.
When simulating liquids, VDB collisions result in more accurate wetting effects, and when simulating granular fluids, more accurate friction and ‘stickiness’.
5. Solaris: new Quick Surface Material
Solaris, Houdini’s shot layout, look dev and lighting toolset, gets a number of changes: primarily user-requested workflow improvements.
For day-to-day workflow, perhaps the most significant is the new Quick Surface Material node, which makes it possible to edit materials on scene objects inside LOPs, Solaris’s Lighting OPerator nodes, rather than having to switch to and fro with a material library.
The Stage Manager node, for managing the layout of a shot, has also been “completely revised”, to streamline the interface and add new functionality.
Updates to other key toolsets
Changes to general user experience include UX recipes: the option to save and reuse sets of parameter values or network items like nodes, dots and sticky notes.
The Vulkan viewport introduced in Houdini 20.0 gets a number of changes to improve visual quality, with Vulkan becoming Houdini’s new default viewport renderer.
The 3D modeling toolset gets a new Planar Inflate node, which can be used to recreate objects like cushions, and there are updates to the Clip node and point cloud tools.
For digital sculpting, the Sculpt node has been reworked to support a non-destructive workflow, and add new brushes, stroke types and masking controls.
Character FX are now more deeply integrated with character rigs, and there are new tools for setting up hair, fur and feathers, and muscles and soft tissue.
For rigid body dynamics, a new RBD Car Rig SOP (shown above) converts car geometry to a dynamic rig with constraints for the suspension and motors.
For crowd simulation, a new Crowd Procedural LOP reduces the amount of unique skinned geometry generated, improving performance of large crowds.
The Karma renderer gets a number of quality and performance improvements, particularly to Karma XPU, and a new Sky Atmosphere system.
The machine learning toolset is still early in development, but there are new example-based ML nodes for creating machine learning setups entirely within Houdini.
For pipeline integration, Houdini 20.5 supports the VFX Reference Platform CY2024 spec, and there are updates to the Houdini Engine plugins for 3ds Max, Maya and UE5.
Outside the core application, SideFX Labs gets a number of new experimental tools, including those from Project Dryad, SideFX’s ongoing project to create a semi-automated system for generating large-scale natural environments in Houdini.
Price and system requirements
Houdini 20.5 is compatible with Windows 8+, macOS 11.0+, and Linux distros.
The software comes in several editions. The full edition, Houdini FX, costs $4,495 for a node-locked licence; $6,995 for a floating licence. Houdini Core, which lacks advanced simulation tools, costs $1,995 for a node-locked licence; $2,995 for a floating licence.
You can find full pricing details, including rental, on SideFX’s website.
There is also a free Houdini Apprentice educational edition and a lower-cost, rental-only Houdini Indie edition. Both save in separate file formats. See a comparison table.
Read an overview of the new features in Houdini 20.5 on SideFX’s website
Read a full list of new features in Houdini 20.5 in the online release notes
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