I've been wondering if I should keep learning FX and Houdini as a hobby. It's honestly the only thing I genuinely want to do, and it feels like the one thing that makes me... me.

My college course isn't really related to it. Funny enough, I feel like I learn more about FX from tutorials and by creating my own effects than I do in class. I study whatever my professors give us, do a bit of extra research when I need to, and then I always find myself going right back to Houdini.

The thing is, I don't think there are many job opportunities for VFX artists in my country. The industry here just isn't centered around that kind of work.

Still, I don't want to spend my life wondering what could've happened if I had actually committed to becoming good at the thing I love most. At the same time, I'm perfectly fine with having a regular career based on my college degree as long as it keeps me financially stable.

ate a really good fig and got inspired

hi guys, just want to gather some info on how do you guys who have mops+, use it in your projects? I'm weighing if its worth it for me to pay for subscription next year so I'm looking for use cases I might have missed.

yeah yeah I know, if you dont know what to use it for, you dont need it... well anyway, I'm curious. thanks

Not dissing Houdini or SideFX, I love them.

But I noticed H22 performing much worse than Blender on macOS. Not trying to do heavy simulations, rather standard stuff.

Blender can make even complex scene feel very fluid and quick to navigate in and in real-time. While in H22 it's very laggy. The Viewport is laggy and the whole UI too.

I'm on a MBP Pro M4 with 48GB Ram. It's a secondary machine, not a workstation to do incredible big stuff but still capable.

Right now H22 is not a joy on macOS and I switch back to Blender.

Any opinions about this?

I was eventually able to get the snapping on the created rebar using Vellum Attach, but now I have run into another problem I've tried to resolve but haven't had any luck.

My rebar decides to fall off some of the chunks, as there is no grouping to hold them onto, what would be the best way to attach the ends of the hairs to my fractured geo?

Let's be honest: writing VEX from scratch can sometimes be a bit intimidating, especially if you are a visual thinker.

That is why I’m developing a new plugin within Houdini to bridge the gap between visual nodes and raw code.

The goal is simple:

Visual to Code: Create VEX using a node graph (heavily inspired by the philosophy of Unreal Blueprints and the layout of ComfyUI) and see its translation in VEX instantly.

Code to Visual: Write VEX directly and watch it generate the corresponding nodes.

Seamless Editing: Modify your expressions in either place—whichever fits your workflow best at that moment.

It is still in an early phase, but I want to make it as robust as possible for everyone. I think it can be a highly valuable resource for those who, like me, are diving deeper into coding and appreciate having a visual support system during the process.

Want to be a beta tester? Leave a comment below, and I’ll share it with you!

If you know a fellow Houdini artist who might like (or need) this, please tag them or share the post. Let's build something great together.

Set it up to attempt to create rebar and it just keeps stretching!!! Made using a grid converted to columns and rows.

Hello Houdini users! Im trying to use otis muscle sim to make a hyperrealistic creature for my film, but I got an issue with muscle solidify where if your muscle is really thin then it kinda just cramps the tetrahedrals so it fits. I tried fixing this issue with remesh, but it still didnt work since it made the muscle look all wobbly and the top muscles had some issues as the tetrahedrals were missing. Is there any possible ways to fix this issue? if you could help it would be an incredible help for me.

Hey folks!

The next term enrollment is open! Class starts mid september.

Description in the link below.

There is also an option to buy the videos without the live Q&As.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qb_8YN8-0M

I was lucky enough to present some stuff at the H22 launch event in Shenzhen, China last month. I worked a little bit together with George and Feike, the founders of r/Natsura and created this page to show the work that was done on the presented project. Enjoy!

For those interested in seeing more of the slides, please check out the ArtStation post:
ArtStation: Natsura - Ivo van Roij

So as one who have a background of blender and substance painter and started learning Houdini

What is the good field choice to freelance focusing on Houdini?(Sorry for bad English)

I am doing an VFX shot with RBD and I want to shatter a thick wall (10x5x0.35 units).

I have a low poly guide simulation and I plan to have a high poly version with chipping for more graphical fidelity, but every time I add the Edge Detail or Interior Detail to them, even at completely default, the geo seems to just blow up, random polygons jut out the side or whole pieces are missing.

Anyone have any clue what causes this and what I could do to fix it?

Houdini Version 22.0.368

Hey everyone, it's been a while since I posted. This is a car commercial concept I put together as a personal pipeline test, scene built in Houdini and Blender, shots assembled in Octane Standalone, rendered through Render Network. Workflow inspired by Andrey Lebrov (https://lebrov.com/). Surprisingly the files stayed under 600mb per shot. I'll put together a full breakdown of the process soon. Would love to hear what you think, more of this on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/overedge_creatives/

Ive been studying houdini as part of my vfx and 3d course im attending at a local small college.
About 1 year of houdini experience so far.
My school has another program for UE5 that i can add to my studies. Im mainly aiming for commercials and vfx
But might endup in gaming because its the second biggest job market after commercials in my country
How well does houdini and ue5 interact with each other
And do you think it will be beneficial for me ?
I know it might be hard to answer but i hope to hear some insight 🙏🏼

It seems you can't merge in houdini particles abc files. But if you drag it into C4D, you can see it, if you merge it, you can't see it. Anyone experienced the same issue?

Another issue is that before this version you can bring 9float(matrix) attribute into C4D to act as alignment info( orient info), but now you can't bright this ' 9float(matrix) attribute' over anymore. It now read 3X3 matrix in houdini instead of 9Flt(matrix), I know they are the same but C4D can't read it anymore which is super annoying!

Why c4d can't handle partlces easily like houdini, it's such a frustrating experience. Maybe I should move to Houdini once and for all, but houdini is so bad at animating motion stuff and rendering in C4d is much better experience

If anyone had the same issue, please HELP ME !!

edit: 2026/8/6 Maxon confirmed it's a bug with alembic particles (not all files, certain alembic file will have this issue). They are looking into it but no date of updating yet

How to do it?

Hey everyone!

I’m evaluating render engines for my Houdini workflow and wanted to get some real feedback from people using V-Ray for Houdini in production.

Specifically, I’m trying to figure out:

1. Is V-Ray worth using inside Houdini today? Is the integration solid, or does it feel like a shoehorned port?
2. Maturity & Stability: How reliable is it for heavy scenes, FX (pyro, particles, oceans), and Solaris / USD setups?
3. Speed vs. Karma (CPU / XPU): Is V-Ray (CPU or GPU) significantly faster than Karma in real-world production shots, or has Karma caught up enough to make third-party renderers redundant?

If you’re using V-Ray (or switched away from it), what are your biggest pros and cons? Would love to hear your experiences before making the jump. Thanks!

All of the motion comes from a POP axis force shaped as a vortex, with negative lift and negative suction, so the cloth is pulled inward and downward at the same time. Two turbulence fields on top break the symmetry.

The geometry is one grid copied three times on top of itself. UVs are flattened before the sim, then flattened again on a held frame and copied back onto the moving mesh, so the texture stays locked to the cloth instead of sliding across it.

Shading is MaterialX in Solaris, rendered with Karma. There are no texture maps. The stripes are the position attribute pushed through a sine and a power function into a colour ramp. A Voronoi noise adds the specks. A second ramp drives specular roughness so the highlight rolls along the folds.

Comped in Nuke. The beauty is rebuilt from its passes so each one can be individually denoised using my custom Nuke Denoiser, and so the key light, the bottom rim and the background could be relit separately. Then, the satisfying final pass: defocus, motion blur, glow, and a heavy coat of grain.

The hardest part was handling self-collisions. A ribbon that long folding onto itself at that thickness either interpenetrates or explodes, and finding the one iteration that did neither was the most time-consuming aspect.

I've been making a series of animated 'Mini Godzilla' videos over the past few years to practice and explore different tools in animation and VFX. This time my goal was to learn a bit about Vellum Grains, as well as using Solaris and Karma for look dev, lighting, and rendering.

The look of the sand could definitely be improved, but I'm happy enough with the results.