eikonoklastes

There is a massive "little" feature that they have added in Houdini 20, and that is keyboard mapping. No, not assigning shortcuts, but mapping keys on a U.S. QWERTY keyboard (for example), to corresponding keys on an international keyboard, or keyboards with different key layouts. This is a big deal for me, someone who uses a Dvorak keyboard layout, and have had to traditionally painfully trawl through the Hotkey Editor to map each shortcut key to the correct key for my layout. Now, I can just define a "key map" that tells Houdini what the translation from Dvorak to QWERTY is, and without touching the Hotkey Editor, everything just works automagically! Very, very happy with this change. Read more about it here: What’s new Hotkeys (sidefx.com)

Tool-specific Shortcuts that were previously hard-coded, are now configurable! Thank you, SideFX. All these can be changed now, for any tool.

Significantly cleaned up Tab menu in SOPs: v19.5 vs v20

Some very handy shortcuts to manage the shape of a ramp:

Bezier handles in the ramp parameter editor:

You can now paste comma-separated values into multi-dimension parameters directly houdini_UmwJbJSZuN.mp4

Typing paths now auto-completes

Solaris: The Context Options Editor now defaults to blank, rather than being cluttered with scene default settings. Very nice.

Solaris: Extremely handy new Sublayer Style menu for all SOP-related nodes. The "Merge SOP Layer Into Existing Active Layer" option is particularly handy:

The Content Library has the actual scene files that they used to demo the new features. These are free to download and play with for anyone, including Apprentice users: Content Library | SideFX

The Geometry Spreadsheet now adapting into the Scene Graph Tree when you switch to Solaris is excellent. houdini_XAY5GHLrcr.mp4

Post all the little tweaks that you like, that didn't make it into the big-feature list. To start with, I like the new Dark Grey option for the view background. Very easy on the eyes:

Some of those animation features look unbelievable. I've also been asking for a render queue manager for a while now, and their new "cloning" system seems to deliver that, and allows for stuff I hadn't even imagined before. I'm definitely hyped for this release now.

Yes, it was done in Houdini. Yes, it was pretty much that. I used the velocity of the ball as the direction vector to calculate where the next plate will be. There are other controls built in - I can tweak the angle of the plate, and it will adapt correctly for either side. The proceduralism also extends to the audio processing. I can process the waveform to pick out the peaks and send that to the dynamics solver as the frames on which the plates should appear. I was also in the process of adding in the "horizontal" mode. This is something that I can keyframe on/off and determines whether the next plate is flat or if it is angled at the ball. I just ran out of time building it, and decided to hit render instead. Here is a preview of that: houdini_kNhVUmnUzI.mp4 I honestly don't know if it does. Dynamics is actually one of my weakest areas in Houdini. Thanks for the suggestions. From the above clip, you can see that I'm actually only using a single plate that I move around during the simulation. That keeps things extremely light in the solver, and what I do after-the-fact is use that audio peak data that I had stored earlier to extract the plate from each frame that it appears inside the solver (this is also automated - Houdini has an excellent feature to extract any geometry from any frame that you specify, and I just run a loop over all the frames that have the audio peaks on them). The material emission is also automated. I can generate a mask from the point of contact and use that to drive the emission value on the shader, no keyframing needed.

I've been waiting to sink my teeth into this, but it's been pretty stacked at work, and is going to stay that way for another month. Having said that, I did get the basic (fully procedural) system working. There's so much more potential to add to this. I haven't figured out the little "tunnels" that the original video had, but I do have a bunch of ideas to flesh this out some more. I suppose I could have used a less irritating soundtrack, but it is what it is. The system generates everything extremely fast (it takes about 10 seconds to sim the 1600 frames), so I could swap out the track easily enough. I usually post the Houdini scene, but I'm going to hold off until I get the chance to flesh the system out a bit more.

Roughly a year. It's been roughly a year since 19.5. Yes, a .5 does not sound like a major release, but when SideFX do it, the .5 releases are bigger than other DCCs full point releases (and 19.5 was no different).

Here's the full feature list, from the end of the video: Animation · APEX (All-Purpose Execution) architecture for fast rig creation and evaluation · APEX-driven rigging and animation toolset within KineFX: BETA · High-performance procedural rigging framework · Growing set of readily available auto-rigging tools · APEX rigging network editor with unique debugging capabilities · Efficient packed geometry format to encode entire animation scene · Dedicated animation environment for characters rigged with APEX · In-viewport access to all essential animation tools · Toolbar with animator-friendly sliders e.g. key blending and resampling · Many UX and functionality enhancements to animation graph view · Natively integrated motion dynamics and ragdolls · Powerful, one-click pivot setting for fast posing · Quick and seamless switching between IK and "fake" FK · Flexible, animator-friendly "velcro" constraint system · Animation bookmarks on playbar and in animation graph view · Selection Sets with easy control and access directly in viewport · Fully customizable python interaction and rigging controls · Hotkey and radial menus for quick access to functionality · Dem Bones Skinning Converter SOP · Auto-generated MikkT tangents and normals for glTF and FBX import · Joint scaling removal option for FBX export · Smoothing group support for FBX SOPs and ROPs · DCC export presets for FBX Animation Output and FBX Character Output · ML skinning with scripts, networks and training dataset In Content Library Feathers & Fur · High performance, GPU-accelerated feathering framework · End-to-end feather modelling, grooming, shading and rendering · Procedural and art-directable with state-of-the-art viewport tools · Fast creation of single feather template or entire plumage · Interactive noise and clumping controls for barbs and barbules · Finely granular controls for barb shape, distribution and orientation · Advanced feather technology for fast packing and detangling · Plumage setup ideal for out-of-the-box Vellum simulation · Feather Procedural for USD rendering: Karma & 3rd parties · Export-ready plumage for game engine deployment · Memory-efficient feather data representation · Shared guide grooming toolset for both feathers and fur · Designed to work seamlessly with the new Texture Mask Paint brushes · Fur shader with medulla support · Muscles & Tissue: GOLD · Franken Muscle technique for faster and more robust setup and simulation · Fast "coupled" Vellum solve for tet-stretch with superior volume preservation · Finer controls on muscle interconnectivity constraints · Enhancements to muscle flexing and activation · Easier way to attach skin to tetrahedral mesh · Improvements to skin sliding constraints Crowds · Constantly expanding toolset, now more artist-friendly at SOP level · Motion Path SOP to interactively modify one or more agent trajectories · Greatly improved collision detection and avoidance · Support for sticky collisions and projectile motion · Options to control clip-time behaviour e.g. Phase and Relative to Start Time · Ability to store clip transition graph geometry in agent definition · Easier way to retrieve specific agent shapes with Agent Unpack SOP · Pattern matching with Agent Edit SOP · Agent Pose from Rig SOP compilable for faster performance · Support for UsdSkel dual quaternion skinning Dynamics · Whitewater and bubbles support for existing SOP-level FLIP fluid solver · FLIP Volume Combine SOP to mix FLIP fields of different resolutions · Efficient multigrid preconditioner for pressure projection · Ability to generate non-intersecting bubble structures · OpenCL Ripple Solver SOP for shallow water and deforming 3D geometry · Projectile and Pendulum Motion SOPs for typical throw and swing scenarios · Fast and versatile RBD Sticky collision constraints e.g. for crowds · Cone twist constraints with drivable Car Rig setup in Content Library · Curved glass fracturing in RBD Material Fracture · Much faster graph colouring for tetrahedral meshes · Vellum wind occlusion/shadow for more accurate wind blocking · Finer masking controls for transition effects with Vellum Rest Blend · Ability to simulate Vellum fluids with 64-bit precision accuracy · Interactive pin handles in Vellum Brush for easy fold, drape and stretch · Volume sharpening of pyro fields for more realistic results · Density-based terminal velocity for more realistic pyro such as falling dust · Redesigned modular Karma pyro shader with convenient presets · Seamless volume looping with colour and velocity blending in SideFX Labs · Linear Solver SOP to perform many useful linear algebra operations · OpenCL Snippet operators for faster FX development akin to VEX Wranglers · OpenCL support for binding topology attributes and groups for R/W · Ability to write in-place VDBs with OpenCL · Gas OpenCL node Improvements Clouds · Artist-friendly toolset for skybox and hero cloud generation in SOPs · Billowy and Wispy Cloud Noise to help achieve highly realistic looks · Cloud-driven enhancements to Attribute Noise and Volume Noise Fog · Ability to quickly generate clouds from geometric shapes · Cloud Clip SOP with viewport handles to shape the extent of a cloud · Sky Box SOP: a one-stop shop to produce 3D cloudscapes very fast · Sky Field from Map to produce 2D cloudscapes using existing image · Dedicated Karma shader designed with modularity in mind · Optimized Karma CPU and XPU volumetric rendering · Easily adjustable cloud density for rendering Solaris · USD Material Catalog framework · Much Improved material assignment/linking UX · Growing support for MaterialX for shader development · Native MaterialX/Karma catalog of handy materials e.g. skin and car paint · Volume materials with presets for explosion, fire, smoke and clouds · Volume Ambient Occlusion SOP to bake out volume for much faster rendering · Ocean Procedural (foam, bubbles & real displacements) for all USD renderers · Improved Hair/Fur Procedural for all USD renderers · RBD Destruction LOP to transform pieces at render time via invoke graphs · Karma Physical Sky LOP with Karma Sky Dome and distant sun lights · Scene Doctor LOP to analyze, alert and repair problems in USD scene · Geometry Clip Sequence LOP to simplify workflows around value clips · Many enhancements to Snapshot/Render Gallery e.g. capturing all AOVs · UI/UX improvements to the Scene Graph tree menu & details · Better UX In the interactive Camera LOP state · Light/Camera viewport guides with new custom display tech under the hood · Distributed multi-frame and multi-shot rendering via "cloning" · Improvements to Husk procedural framework · Optimized Merge LOP performance · Enhanced USD and LOP support in TOPs · USD 23.08 and MaterialX 1.38.8 Karma CPU & XPU · Absorption and dispersion · Filmic tone mapping · Automatic ray biasing · Point cloud shader with fast lookup · Improved rotational motion blur · Physical sky system with dedicated dome light · Optimized deep camera maps (DCM) · Improved handling of internal reflections · Advanced fur shader based on medulla properties · Hex Tile shader to minimize edge tiling artifacts · Room Map/Parallax shader to give appearance of depth · All-purpose MaterialX pyro shader for smoke, fire, explosions and clouds · Improved memory performance for subdivision surfaces: OSD 3.6 · Render Stats framework with special GUI and custom reporting capabilities · Updated 3rd party denoiser support: Intel and NVidia · Extensive OCIO enhancements throughout Houdini · ACES colour space support · Full Cryptomatte support · Karma XPU: GOLD · All the shared Karma CPU & XPU features above, plus: · Robust multi-GPU architecture with failsafe out-of-core capabilities · Countless speed and memory optimizations · Nested dielectrics · Instance variation · Physical lens shader · Rounded edge shader · Light active radius support · Volumes as first class objects: AOVs, LPEs, light linking... · Efficient rendering of uniform volumes and frustum volumes · Support for additional AOVs, including Cryptomatte · Lighting: geo lights, portals, IES profiles, light filters, better sampling · Ability to mix MaterialX standard surface shaders · BSDF refactoring for much faster execution · Efficient loading and eviction of tiled textures · Highly optimized texture management · USD Coord5ys support · Full colourspace support · Deep outputs 3D Viewports · Support for background video · Redesigned custom guides framework · Option to always display the name of the current node or tool · Comprehensive set of customizable interactive HUDs in the viewport · Complete redesign of drag-and-drop parameter HUD sliders · More powerful and flexible hotkey override schema · Better hotkey binding support for international keyboards · Enhanced precision in selecting geometry · New Vulkan engine: experimental-only in this release PDG & TOP Task Management · Services now available to PDG Command Chains · Convenient, workflow-enhancing TOPS for Machine Learning training · Programmable methods for stopping and restarting specific service clients · Ability to write custom PDG nodes In C++ in addition to python · Rolling checkpointing format to periodically save & restore TOP graph state · Support for registering preflight handler to be invoked before graph cooking · High demand Processor TOPs e.g. OpenImageIO and Filter by Attribute · Performance and quality-of-life optimizations to Schedulers · Ability to control maximum memory usage of task processes · Recorded memory usage for all tasks that finished cooking · Many UI/UX enhancements to TOP Interactive environment · Additional API and env-var support for debugging PDG networks · Text Input TOP to complement existing Text Output TOP · SSL support In the Message Queue server · Colourspace controls and codec selection menu in FFmpeg Encode Video TOP · USD Analyze TOP to fetch metadata, dependencies and external refs · USD Render Scene TOP to render USD file on disk or a LOP network · Many TOP enhancements to USD Importing Houdini Engine / Plugins / HQueue Platforms · HEngine sample application to facilitate learning · HEngine support for dictionary attributes · Optimizations to attribute handling in HE engine · HEngine plugin support for UE 5.3 with World Partitions · UE Landscape Spline import and export · UE Skeletal Mesh and Animation import and export · Reference counted input system with condensed types and UI redesign · macOS Apple Silicon Support for UE 5.2+ · HEngine plugin support for Unity's Splines package via new Spline Input Type · Many Karma and USD integration enhancements to HQueue · Improvements to ROPs and TOPs in HQueue e.g. platform-specific HFS paths · Performance Monitor enhancements including startup time tracking · Full adherence to VFX Reference Platform CY2023 specifications · New Houdini video framework built on FFmpeg: v6.O,O · Broader OpenColorIO support including Python bindings · Python 3.10 default and 3.9 separate download Geometry & Terrain · Powerful and robust multigrid surfacing of massive point cloud data · Point cloud reduction and normal computation · Fast quad remesher with mirroring and guiding for non-CAD geometry: BETA · Improved Topo Transfer SOP for texture map baking and UX · Topo Flow SOP for 4D processing of scanned poses using optical flow · UX and functionality enhancements to curve drawing e.g. soft transform · Property editing of previously "stroke" drawn freeform curves · Group Inversion SOP to create complementary group of geo elements · Thickness measuring SOP using ray length or max fitting sphere · Poly Hinge SOP to extrude polygonal faces around a pivot line · Ability to flatten geometry procedurally · Viewport Drawables and HUD enhancements · Procedural and interactive 3D Texture Mask Paint toolset · Ability to import texture flies as 2D volumes · Option to use 2D volumes as input to Attribute From Map · Ability to create vector and integer volumes · Better gap closing/preservation in VDB from Polygons · Support for frustum-shaped heightfields · Ability to sharpen heightfields with Heightfield Blur · Advanced biome creation toolset, including roads and terrain, in SideFX Labs · ML terrain generation examples in Content Library · ...And a foundational SOP & TOP toolset for Machine Learning using ONNX

You could print the PDF. Alternatively an e-Ink reader might be easier on your eyes.

Thank you. Yes, for the balls I used the Shape Match constraints, that uses sphere-packing to simulate rigid bodies with Vellum. There is a global velocity damping setting for Vellum, but you can also apply per-point drag and speed limit forces to any geometry in any sim in Houdini, not just Vellum. In fact, any force/attribute can be per-point or per-object - that's where Houdini is pretty much unmatched. If you wish to inspect the file, the free Apprentice version will open it without any changes. It will just downgrade and save the file to the non-commercial .hipnc format, that then cannot be opened in paid versions (without setting the Houdini session to non-commercial).

That would likely need a different, more rigid, surface for the balls to roll on, considering that with this cloth the leading balls create a "wake" that will be affecting the paths of the other balls. I'll try to put together a pure RBD sim sometime soon. The per-ball density and scaling (with the same emission position and velocity) is very doable though.

This is my version of the very nice animation done by @MJV in this thread. Some notes: - I deliberately exaggerated the cloth bending effects in this one to differentiate it from an RBD sim. I realise that this makes a departure from the objective of the original, but I quite like how this turned out. - The cloth is fairly high density, I have not subdivided it after the sim. It took 5 mins to sim 480 frames, which is pretty good imho. A pure RBD sim of this would be significantly faster. - I animated the velocity damping from very high at the start, to allow the big ball to settle into place quickly (and also why the start of the animation looks unrealistic), to a very low amount once the smaller balls start getting emitted, so that they wouldn't be bogged down by the damping. - There is a variable stiffness on the cloth - it's very stiff at the borders, to simulate the tautness of it being pegged to the ring, and falls off to not very stiff in the middle, to simulate the lack of support there. - Vellum usually does not allow object emissions at intervals (the built-in options are Start Frame, Each Frame, and Each Substep). This being Houdini, a quick expression allowed me to override that to emit the balls once every second instead. - I am including the scene file here, but fair warning - I have not annotated anything, so good luck. It also includes the Solaris setup. Marbles.hiplc

Looking good. The motion blur looks a bit wonky to me though. The balls have a conical shape to them that seems inaccurate. What's curious is that the conical shape tapers to the right even if the balls are moving in opposite directions. Very nice. Looks very cool. You didn't really need a cloth sim for this at all though, right? It's essentially an RBD sim - the "cloth" could have been modeled?

Not quite. It uses Vellum Grains to pack the object with spheres and treat it as rigid. It's actually a pretty smart workaround to the problem, and scales well. Here is some more info: Shape matching (sidefx.com)

A Shape Match constraint will treat objects as (very close to) rigid in Vellum. houdini_Lkxk5yVVCb.mp4

I agree with you on Blender being set to potentially replace C4D, given that it's free and its toolset is growing pretty rapidly, but the ground reality is that there is a sizable chunk of solo users who — shall we say — "procure" C4D for "free" anyway. I don't see that changing any time soon. The main reason why there are so many Maya and Houdini postings is because they are the de facto apps for studios - not because of their toolsets (although they are both very good for what they do) but because of how well they scale (to farms) and integrate with existing pipelines, and how extensible they are. Blender is very good software, but it does not do those things in its current state (I'm sure that will change over time), and as such very few studios will want to use it on big productions. This landscape isn't set to change any time soon. There are no other major players with the kind of head start that Houdini and Maya have, and under Autodesk, Maya has been steadily falling behind as SideFX shores up deficiencies in Houdini in a big way. While Blender's progress has been amazing in the recent past, building these fundamental frameworks is no mean task. I don't doubt they'll do it, I just don't see it happening any time in the near future.