SideFX Shares a Sneak Peek at the Upcoming Houdini 19.5
The company showed some of the new tools and functions that are coming to the next version of Houdini.
SideFX, the developer of Houdini, shared a preview of the upcoming version of the software – Houdini 19.5. The sneak peek video released by the team showcases some of the new tools, functions, and features to be implemented with the next release. The update will bring significant improvements to Solaris, Karma CPU/XPU, KineFX, modeling and VFX workflows, crowd simulation workflows, and more.
Massive improvements are coming to Houdini's FLIP Source SOP, the software's Geometry Node that can be used to control simulations. According to the sneak peek, the update will improve the node's viscosity capabilities, allowing you to customize the thickness of liquids even better than before, add many convenient setups like lava, beach, wave, etc., bring customizable boundaries, and include a new Upresing feature that will allow you to balance low and high resolution sims to capture detail where needed.
Houdini 19.5 will also bring several new brushes to Solaris, including the Layout Line brush, the Layout Paint brush that will allow you to place USD assets with random scale, orientation, and distribution, the Layout Stack brush for vertical placement with optional spacing and randomized translation, and the Layout Comb brush to orient USD assets based on the direction of the cursor.
Several new features will be introduced to the software's grooming workflow. With Houdini 19.5, you will be able to generate simple fur and deform complex hair groom at render time, work on asymmetrical grooms with mirrored brush actions, and more.
And here's a list of some other upcoming improvements and features in the new version:
Solaris
- Scene importer enhancements
- Render region tool in 3D viewport
- OpenGL background display
- Ability to edit instance prototypes in place
- USD-related enhancements to PDG/TOPs
- Full Voronoi 3D support for shading
- Dedicated Motion Blur LOP
- Specialized hair/fur HDAs for procedural rendering
Karma CPU
- Better performance and memory management
- Coving
- Auto-crop post-process
- Texture baking
- Curvature VOP
- Rounded Edge VOP
- Karma Render Properties and USD Render to replace Karma LOP
- Support for temporal OptiX denoising
Karma XPU
- Bump mapping
- Volume velocity blur
- Random-walk SSS
- Point meshes and Catmull-Rom curves
- Simple light filters
- Improved texture filtering
- Coving
KineFX
- Evolving framework with current emphasis on motion data and physics
- Improved visualization and manipulation of motion clips
- New procedural and interactive tools for motion editing
- Character Blend Shape Channels SOP
- Many UX and feature additions to the Rig Tree panel
- Ragdoll setup and solver enhancements
- More user-friendly USD Skin Import SOP
- Enhancements to mocap streaming
Crowds
- Redesigned and expanded Agent LookAt capabilities
- Ability to define targets using Point Clouds
- Other agents in a crowd can be used as targets
- Skeleton auto-adjustments along the spine
- More flexible rest pose assignment and manipulation
You can learn more about Houdini 19.5 here.
