LogInIntroducing major updates to KineFX, new muscle simulation tools, Solaris and Karma upgrades, and much more.
SideFX has officially released Houdini 21, a major update to their flagship procedural 3D software, introducing hundreds of new features and improvements across the pipeline and enhancing the application's KineFX, CFX, Copernicus, LookDev, terrain, and modeling toolsets.
H21's KineFX also comes with an animation catalog, the option to tear off a synced viewport, skin controls that let animators directly select and pose highlighted areas on the character, new constraint tools, and a new motion mixer that allows clips to be blended, layered, and rearranged without being locked to a single timeline, the Autorig Builder, which offers a fast interactive workflow for setting up quality character rigs, and new rig templates.
Another notable addition in Houdini 21 is the upgraded muscle simulation system, enhanced with the addition of the Otis solver – a specialized, GPU-accelerated soft tissue simulation tool built for high-performance muscle and tissue dynamics – and the new muscle transfer toolset lets artists easily move full muscle and tissue setups from one character to another. The update also introduces the Otto muscle and tissue simulation recipe, a new skin deform tool, and fascia simulation.
Copernicus, Houdini's 2D and 3D GPU image processing framework for real-time image manipulation, has also been updated, now featuring a live video tool, the scatter shapes tool, and a cables system, curves that let you add detail to textures by defining precise paths for patterns, highlights, or surface variations, the phaser noise tool, a library of grunge maps, pre-built material presets, and the ability to integrate Copernicus networks directly into real-time engines.
Other upgrades include:
Solaris & Karma
- New shot builder tools
- Updated render gallery
- Updated scene graph tree
- New Karma ray switch shader
- Karma XPU now supports mixing up to 16 surface shaders of the same type
- New outline feature in Karma CPU
- Alpha support for rendering Gaussian splats in Karma XPU
- Updated fur shader
VFX
- Thruster effect tool
- ML-based pyro upres tool
- New vehicle destruction tools
- Neural point surface tool
- New MPM tools and nodes
Terrain & Modeling
- New erosion toolset
- Copernicus integration for easier height field modifications
- ML-powered terrain tools
- Improved quad remeshing tool
- New UV flattening tool
- GPU-accelerated texture baking
And much more!
You can visit SideFX's official website to learn more about Houdini 21. Don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.