Introduction to Houdini

1 GETTING STARTED: ROLLERCOASTER TOUR

The basic principles underlying creating 3D graphics on a computer are very similar
no matter which program you might be using. Essentially, the artist must use the
interface provided to communicate with the program what elements should be cre-
ated and how they should behave. This communication enlists a combination of
math, physics, computer programming, and many other inputs that let the artist, via
the program, tell the computer what to create.
Houdini’s architecture is built around the concept of procedural animation. The
software evolved out of production over fifteen years, with the idea that no matter
what the project, there are always more changes to be made and this consideration
must be a part of the process. This tour is an introduction to this method of working
in Houdini. Once you’ve grasped this fundamental approach, the rest should flow
nicely.

1.1 OPERATORS, PARAMETERS AND VIEWERS

In Houdini, you build all of your information with a method of building networks
of operators, that are represented as nodes. Houdini provides you with an interac-
tive worksheet for building these flow charts or trees of operations and the ability
to see the result of each operation at any time in the viewer. To illustrate the dis-
cussion, we’re going to use the finished rollercoaster file as an example.
Locate the final_rollercoaster.hip file and double click on the icon to open. You
should see the following on your screen:

Operators

Viewer

Operator Parameters

You may have heard Houdini artists speaking OPs. These terms, SOPs, CHOPs,
COPs, etc., refer to this method of working with operators and parameters.
Whether you are setting up a scene, creating a particle system, or compositing
images, in Houdini you can always manage the task with this method of operations.

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1.2 COOKING

Each operator has a set of parameters that can be modified at any time. As Houdini
scrolls through the frame range, it processes the information stored in each and
every operation that is linked into the network, calculating and building the result at
that frame. This process of calculating the information over time (or as each frame
passes) is called “cooking”.

Cooking in Houdini

1) At each frame

2) Houdini “cooks” all the parameter

information of all the operators

3) Based on the information in

the operator networks, Houdini
creates a visual result in the viewer
3

1 2

The value in this system is that until you render your scene, all of the parameters are
essentially alive, waiting to be processed in the cooking. This means you can go
back and make changes throughout the process, allowing for flexibility, experimen-
tation, and the ability to deal with the reality of constant changes that usually hap-
pen in production.

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1.3 OBJECTS EDITOR

This editor is the final stage where all of your elements are placed, and the lights
and cameras are set. Other tasks in the object editor include character, atmospheric
and rigid body dynamic setups. If you take a look at your object nodes, notice the
different objects. You’ve got a few cameras, lights, and the various items that make
up your scene, such as the coaster track and the coaster car.

NAVIGATING
Notice the interface is currently divided into three panes. At the top left hand corner
of each pane is an icon representing the type of pane it is. (For a further introduc-
tion to this aspect of the interface, see next HOUDINI_HELP.pdf.)

At the upper left hand

corner of each pane
is an icon indicating the pane type

For now, locate the icon and corresponding panes, and try out the following naviga-
tion tips.

1. To move your cursor around in the viewer, hold down your Wand [ ] \
keys.

In the viewer pane:

W = View Mode

W [ = rotate

W ] = dolly/zoom

W \ = track

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2. Now, hold your cursor over the network pane, and use your ] \ keys.

In the network pane:

] = dolly/zoom

\ = track

3. Now, zoom in and locate the operator node called coaster_car. Place your [
directly in the middle of the node and click to select the operator. Notice the
green highlight showing the operator is the currently selected node, and the yel-
low highlight shows it is selected. (Other selected nodes will have the yellow
highlight as well.)

[ click in the middle of the node to select.

The green highlight indicates the currently selected node.
The yellow highlight indicates the node is selected.

4. Notice when you selected the coaster_car operator, its associated parameters
show up in the linked parameter window.

The selected object’s parameters

show up in the parameter pane

Notice the parameters

deal with object transformation
allowing you to place the object in the
scene.

Additional folders deal with shading,

rendering, and physical properties
for Rigid Body Dynamics.

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5. To adjust the parameter values, you can double click in a parameter box and type
in a value. You can also \ click to undo the last update.

Double click to type in a value:

\ click to undo the last update

6. Type the T key to jump to the next parameter box.

7. You can adjust the values with the interactive slider by ] clicking in the param-
eter box.

] click in the parameter box

to get the slider ladder.

Drag up or down to choose the

amount by which you’ll adjust
the slider.
Drag right for positive, left for
negative.

8. Locate the Position parameter and notice it is colored, and all the other parame-
ters are not. This indicates that there is a channel existing in that parameter. If no
channel exists in a parameter, the given value will remain constant throughout the
frame range. Green indicates there is a keyframe on the current frame, cyan indi-
cates the channel, but no keyframe.

Color in a parameter box

indicates an animated channel.

Green = keyframe on channel

Cyan = channel but no keyframe

9. [ click to the left of the position parameter. You should see the parameter tog-
gle from the numeric value to an expression. Adding expressions to a parameter
is as easy as typing it in, and Houdini lets you toggle between the numeric and

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expression values.

[ click to the left

of the parameter =
lets you toggle between
numeric and expression values

10. Locate the playbar at the bottom of your screen. Select the playback button and
watch the animation. You can toggle between numeric and expression values in
the Position parameter to see the numeric value change.

You can also scrub through the frames by dragging the slider.

Select the Playback key to view the animation.

11. You can view through the different cameras and lights in the viewer by select-
ing them from below the viewer. Notice that once you W [ ] \ in the
viewer, the size of the viewer jumps away from the camera aspect ratio and the
view is indicated as “no camera”.

Select a camera through

which you can view the scene.

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1.4 OBJECT SPACE: ALL THE WORLD’S THE STAGE

In Houdini, creation tasks are divided into the different editors where the tools for
that type of creation are accessible. Though you’re always still working with opera-
tions, parameters and viewers to see, the list of operators and types of parameters
will change depending upon the editor in which you may currently be working.

The different editor types in Houdini

offer the viewers and operators
that correspond to that type of creation.

The object editor = World Space

for placing, lighting and viewing the
elements in your scene.

The Object editor can be considered “World Space”. It is here that you can place the
elements in your scene, with lighting and cameras. As was mentioned above, the
object parameter folders of all objects generally deal with issues of placement (the
transform folder), shading, and rendering.

1. Click to select a camera object and notice the difference in the parameters
offered from those of the basic object parameters.

Select a camera object. Notice all the

parameters have to do with camera type
operations: (View, Crop, Roto, etc.)

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2. Now select a light object. Notice the parameters deal with lighting.

Select a light object. The parameters

all have to do with lighting.

So where does the actual modeling of geometry happen?

For this, Houdini takes you “inside” of each object to create in “local object space”
vs. “world space”. This editor is called the SOP editor, or Surface Operations.
This is where you’ll find all of the operators that deal with modeling and creating
surfaces. Once you’ve added a new object into your scene at the object level, you
can then “enter” the object to access all of the SOP tools.

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1.5 THE SOP EDITOR: LOCAL OBJECT SPACE

To take a look at the SOP editor, you must select an object and then go inside of it at
the SOP level.

1. Locate and select the path object in the network view. From the top of the pane
menu, select the arrow to “enter” or “jump down” into the object.

1) Select the 'path’ object

2) Select the arrow to ‘jump down’ into

the object to the SOP editor.

2. You should see the interface change. The blue coloring of the top menu changes
from blue to green. The network contents change from object nodes to SOP
nodes. The parameter pane switches to correspond to the currently selected SOP
node.

The color changes from blue (objects) to green (SOPs).

The network contents show each operator that creates

the ‘path’ object, and the parameters correspond to the
currently selected SOP.

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3. Notice the viewer pane didn’t change with the other panes. This is because the
viewer pane is not linked to the others. Find the circle in the upper right hand cor-
ner of the viewer pane, and assign it to number 1. The pane is now linked to the
others, and you’ll see the viewer pane will switch accordingly.

Select 1 to link the viewer pane to the other panes (which were already set to 1)

4. The scene in your viewer may not be the same as mine in the above image.
Because you’ve “entered” into the local object space, you are able to view that
object isolated, or also with all the other objects in the scene. In other words,
there is a button to toggle between the world view, or the local object view.

Toggle between local/world view

‘see one/all’.

You can also select and interact with the other objects in the scene, even when
in local mode, however, you can \ click on the button to activate world selection.
A yellow highlight will appear around the ‘see one/all’ button when selecting from all objects is on.

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5. Now you should just see the path object by itself. Type W h to home your
view on the path object.

6. Now you can [ click directly in the middle of each operator and view its cor-
responding parameters. Notice the changes of the different parameters for the
various tools.

The parameters change according to the selected and corresponding operator (or tool).

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7. Now you can navigate around and jump into the other objects and take a look at
their contents. Select and take a look at the different objects in the scene from the
menu above the panes.

[ click on the object name

and select other objects
from the menu

The panes will switch to

jump into the selected
object.

1.6 POPS: PARTICLE OPERATIONS

Now that you have been introduced to working with OPs, params and viewers, and
you have a feel for navigation, we’ll take a quick tour through the rest of the editors
in Houdini.
From the menu above the panes, switch from SOPs to POPs.

Switch from SOPs to POPs.

As you may have guessed, POPs stands for particle operations. Here you have all
the tools you need to generate particle simulations. These particles are used to cre-
ate many kinds of effects that simulate natural phenomena such as rain, smoke, and
dust. Even though you must switch into the POPs editor to generate the simulation,
you’ll find that the whole system is integrated. This means that you can generate
particles from and have them interact with any objects in your scene.

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1. Take a look at the POPs interface. Look familiar? You’ve got a viewer, a net-
work pane with your operators, and a parameters pane. In this case, the viewer
lets you see guide geometry that either represents the objects from your scene that
you may be using to birth particles, or the actual guides that represent the POPs
you might be using.

POPs = Particle Operations

Operator

Viewer

Operator Parameters

1.7 SHOPS: SHADER OPERATIONS

1. Now switch from POPs to SHOPs. (We’ll skip over Materials and TOPs as these
are older editors and newer editors for creating materials have begun to replace
them.) SHOPs stands for shader operations.

Here you can load in and manipulate Houdini shaders, which are written with
VEX (Vector expression language), and can be rendered with Mantra, Houdini’s
renderer, or even Renderman shaders (to be rendered with Renderman). If you
have not and are not going to be writing shaders, there is a library of existing
shaders from which you can choose, and you can even load in shaders down-
loaded from the internet.

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SHOPs = Shader Operations

Viewer
Operators

Operator Parameters

2. Once again we have the viewer, operators and parameters. The difference here,
is that the viewer gives you a preview of the shader you’ve selected. Notice in the
network pane, instead of nodes the shaders are in a list. In any of the network
panes, you can always toggle between node and list mode by typing t in the
network pane.

t toggles between list and node display of the operators in any network pane.

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1.8 CHOPS: CHANNEL OPERATIONS

Now switch into the CHOPs editor. Here you can create and edit channels.

CHOPS = Channel operations

Viewer

Operators

Operator Parameters

The channels may be created here from scratch, as there are certain CHOPs that
simply create certain types of channels, such as the wave CHOP that creates a chan-
nel with a sin wave, for example, or the noise CHOP that creates a noisy channel.
You can then send these channels out to any parameter anywhere in Houdini, so that
the channel you cooked up here is driving the motion of an element in your scene.
You can also fetch channels from any parameter in Houdini, tweak them by squash-
ing or stretching them, for example, and then send them back out.
Once again, the viewer is for viewing the channels, in this case, and then you’ve got
the operator network and parameters panes.

1.9 COPS: COMPOSITING OPERATIONS

Built into Houdini is also a compositor. In fact, there are currently two versions of
the Houdini compositor. For now, the older version is still present as COPs V2 is
still in beta. Because the compositior is integrated, you’ll find you can use it for
many additional tasks you might not have imagined. For example, you can use
COPs to adjust texture maps. Once again, the viewer is for viewing the current COP

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and there are the COP network and parameter panes.

COPs = Composite Operations

Viewer
Operators

Operator Parameters

1.10 ROPS: OUTPUT OPERATORS

Last, but definetely not least, is the output editor where you can set up and modify
all kinds of output operators to render your scene. In this case the viewer lets you
see the current renders and suspend or kill those processes.

COPs = Composite Operations

Viewer
Operators

Operator Parameters

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There are many different output options including

rendering with Mantra, Houdini’s renderer, or
outputting to Mental Ray or Renderman. Rendering
out geometry per frame and Wren, a 2D renderer are
also options.

1.11 CONCLUSION

That is the whirlwind introductory tour of Houdini. Now you should have a feel for
the way things come together and are created, and a feel for moving around in the
interface. The next exercise introduces you to panes and desks, and how to set up
and arrange the interface in Houdini.
Go ahead and close the file by selecting Quit Application from the menu in the
upper left hand corner.

1) From the file menu

3) Select Discard & Quit

2) Select quit application

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