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Software Description:
Side Effects Software has announced the release ofHoudini 15 with onion skinning, new shaderbuilding tools, crowd ragdolls and Houdini Engine 2.0. This newversion enhances modeling, rendering and animation tools to meetthe needs of generalists, animators, lighters, and game makerswhile the VFX tools become faster, more scalable and more efficientat handling big data.
Model
Houdini has traditionally offered strong procedural modelingsometimes at the expense of its interactive workflow. Withimprovements made in Houdini 14 and now 15, modellers are now ableto work intuitively in the viewport with the new tweak editworkflow, edge sliding, soft selection highlighting and new toolssuch as PolyBridge and PolyExpand 2D. For working with hi-resmodels, new retopology tools make it easy to build low-res geometryby drawing right on top of high-res geometry.
Render
Rendering in Houdini 15 is faster and richer with improvements tothe Mantra renderer such as checkpointing and render view feedback.Shader building has been enhanced with a new shader library, arebuilt Shader FX 2.0 menu, layered materials and a cartoonshader.
Houdini 15 also includes an implementation of Disney’sphysically-based Principled Shader which is designed to provideartistic flexibility with a minimal set of controls. In addition, alibrary of royalty-free PBR Ready Textures will be available onsidefx.com for use with Houdini 15’s shader building tools.
Material stylesheets create a production-level workflow forcreating and managing material overrides that work well withAlembic files and packed geometry. Easily set up random texturesand variances in material settings to give a unique look to acollection of similar items such as crowd agents.
RenderMan 20
RenderMan 20 and RIS shading support is fully integrated intoHoudini 15. RIS shaders are available in the RIS Shader NetworkSHOP and Houdini’s VOP context provides a native environment forbuilding RIS shaders with OSL support.
“Pixar and Side Effects have worked together to create a firstclass experience for lighters,” says Chris Ford, Business Director- RenderMan, Pixar Animation Studios. “Houdini 15 offersinteractive shader building tools which make it easy for artists toachieve the look they desire.”
Houdini 15 comes with a complete set of RenderMan BxDF, Pattern,and Integrator RIS shaders as well RIS light shaders and Camera,Light Probe, and Rolling Shutter RIS projection shaders. There isalso a new RIS render node which allows the RIB and RIS rendernodes to have cleaner interfaces specific to each mode.
Animate
The animation workflow in Houdini 15 is better than ever with onionskinning, a pose library panel, an improved character picker paneland enhancements to the dope sheet. This makes it easier to poseand keyframe characters in Houdini.
New lightweight female and male rigs provide sample characters thatartists can use to explore the animation tools in Houdini. Houdini15 also includes dual quaternion support for deforming twistinggeometry and preventing volume loss.
Houdini for Games
The modeling improvements in Houdini 15 will be particularly usefulfor game artists who use Houdini to build procedural assets for usein game editors such as Unity and Unreal. The PolyExpand2D toolmakes it easy to compute straight-skeleton and is ideal for roadgeneration.
Houdini 15 also includes texture baking and viewport support forUDIM textures, world-space normal maps, UV mesh boundaries andoverlapping UV regions. Game makers can now import and exporttangent-space normal maps and convert bump and displacement maps tonormal maps.
Crowd Ragdolls
Ragdoll dynamics have been added to the Houdini 15 crowd toolsalong with limb detachment, fuzzy logic and better crowd behaviour.It is now easier to set up material and geometry variations andtools have been added to set up explicit target locations. There isalso an Agent Cam tool which creates a camera and attaches it tothe head of an agent for point of view shots.
Distributed VFX
Houdini 15 will make VFX artists more productive and capable ofbigger, more dynamic FX. The new adaptive PBD lets artists focusgrain simulations on particles that are involved in collisions. Newviscous fluids tools such as Lava, Melt Object and Emit Steam giveartists quick access production-ready effects.
Fluid and PBD simulations can now be distributed to multiple nodeson your farm to create and manage bigger sims. Distribution allowsartists to work beyond the capability of any one computer and theresults fit together seamlessly when rendering. A FLIP fluidsimulation with a billion particles or more is now easilyachievable.
Houdini Engine 2.0
For artists working in other applications such as Autodesk® Maya®,Cinema4D®, UE4® and Unity®, the Houdini Engine makes it possible toopen up Houdini Digital Assets in these apps. Houdini works in thebackground to cook the node networks inside the asset and theresults are delivered to the viewport of the host application.
Houdini Engine 2.0 has been designed to separate the API front endfrom the compute back-end. This allows for multiple sessions perhost, multiple threads per host, greater stability and can beintegrated without library conflicts. This thin client has made itpossible for independent developer Hideki Suzuki to complete his3DS Max plugin.
Houdini 15 includes improvements to the Maya plug-in such assupport for ramp parameters while the Unity plug-in now has supportfor paint input. The UE4 plug-in continues to be in beta but itsplanned release date is mid-November 2015.
About Side Effects Software
Established in 1987, Side Effects Software is a world leader in thedevelopment of Houdini, our advanced 3D animation and specialeffects software for use in film, commercials and video games. SideEffects Software has been recognized three times with Scientificand Technical awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts andSciences. Houdini is used by numerous leading digital contentcreation facilities including: Blizzard Entertainment, Blue SkyStudios, Digital Domain, Double Negative, DreamWorks Animation,Electronic Arts, Framestore, Guerrilla Games, Pixar AnimationStudios, Rhythm & Hues and Sony Pictures Imageworks.
Installer Size: 681 MB
Download Links > Houdini FX v15.0.244.16 x64 + Crack