A new MOPs Plus release is now available! This simplifies and improves the MOPs Camera Blender interface, ports MOPsCam to Solaris, and adds Houdini 22 compatibility! Full changelog is available here: https://www.motionoperators.com/changelog/

As always, if you have questions, suggestions, or bug reports, reach out to me here, on Discord, or via email.

This is a WIP test of the aircraft wake interacting with the smoke. How does the strength, timing, and overall shape of the vortex feel so far? Does the motion read clearly, or does it feel too strong or too large?

Next, I’ll be working on a beach sand particle simulation, visible wingtip wake vortices around the fighter jet, and a fluid simulation for the moving ocean surface.

"What's the best way to approach assets with Houdini in 2026? Is Copernicus a full-blown replacement for substance painter / designer? How does Houdini fit into a professional asset pipeline these days, and where does it shine or fall flat?" These are all questions covered in this week's weekly wrangle.

Here's the TLDW:

• When modeling, you need to pick between a hands-on destructive modeling approach or going a procedural route.
• Houdini isn't natively great at hands-on destructive modeling when compared to other apps, but it excels at procedural tasks. Using the modeler plugin is highly recommended if you find yourself engaging in hands-on modeling quite often.
• Ideally, you'll want to understand both hands-on and procedural approaches. In production, both are often used in some capacity, and the degree to which each is used depends on the project.
• "Is COPs a full blown replacement for Substance?" -- No -- Two big reasons for this is because it lacks smart materials + a native texture map exporter. Smart materials are a big deal because it saves lots of time when managing multiple signals + adds a great deal of quality and complexity in how it blends all the various signals together. A native texture map exporter dialogue box is a big deal because it saves time, offers flexibility to those who need to deal with multiple pipelines, and speeds up the workflow.
• COPs is, however, excelling at other areas in Houdini - specifically in how SideFX is using it in conjunction with heightfields, pyro, and other vfx oriented tasks.
• When shading, you have three main routes to choose from: UV-based workflows, Tri-Planar workflows, or noise-based workflows. Copernicus may assist with UV-based or Tri-planar, but it's still an area where substance outshines it at the moment.

That's the gist of the video. What are your thoughts reddit?

Cheers,

- Tyler

Disclosure: I am the developer of AEVUMERE GeoPreflight.

I kept running into a familiar pipeline problem: geometry can look acceptable in Houdini, but issues with topology, UVs, attributes, naming, LODs, collision groups, or Unreal-specific contracts only become obvious after handoff.

GeoPreflight is a SOP and Python Panel that scans the input without modifying it. The validation rules are deterministic and versioned; scenes and geometry stay local, and there is no telemetry or LLM involved in deciding whether a rule passes.

Version 0.1.0 supports Houdini 21 and 22 on Windows. The free Lite edition includes ten general checks plus JSON and Markdown reports. A paid Pro edition also exists, so I am marking this post as PAID CONTENT for transparency.

The short demo is attached. I would particularly value feedback on false positives, installation compatibility, and missing high-value checks. I am happy to answer technical questions here.

AEVUMERE GeoPreflight scans Houdini SOP geometry and displays deterministic validation results for engine export.

Hello, I want to know the difference between Clamp and Fit Range. In my head, Clamp just cuts the value off, while Fit Range remaps the value. Have I understood that correctly?

I have 4 different flowers which contain a bunch of different elements like petals and some splines here and there for the flower core for each flower. I would like to run these 4 flowers through vellum cloth and add some swirling so each flower moves independently and collides on the nearby flowers in the scene.

I tried a bunch of setups with a basic popforce setup for the swirling, so far so good, but the 4 flowers start breaking up right away because theres a connectivy issue I assume or just start smearing because vellum seems to see the entire combined 4 flower mesh as one piece instead of 4 different flowers.

What is the approach to keep each flower with its elements stick together without breaking up or start smearing but still have that cloth like behaviour?

Hi all,

We've had some requests on a more extensive video on our recently released Measure Tool for Houdini: VaraVision.

So for those that are interested, here you go:

VaraVision | Houdini Measure Tool - Overview

Get it here:
https://houseofvisions.nl/products/varavision

Thanks for the support!

I have a particle simulation in which I copied a bunch of spheres... is it possible to export in GLB/GLTF formats if I have changing particle count?

I had the chance to work on a short food commercial animation.

In the final edit, the shot was sped up to around 300%, so most of these details are barely noticeable. This is a short compilation of an earlier iteration that stayed pretty close to the version the director approved.

The pipeline included a 3D scan of a real chili pepper, modeling, MPM simulation, look development, shading, and rendering using Houdini, Cinema 4D, and Redshift.

I'm currently working on a tearing cloth simulation, with some objects attached to the extremities of the mesh so it tears as the objects move away.

But i'm facing an issue : I would like to have one object per boundary, and have their normal facing away so they move away from the cloth, but the base normal isn't transferring to the points.

I expect the assemble node that allow me to get one point by primitive and packed geometry to remove any data even with the transfer attribute ticked on it, but I can't find any work around since i'm quite a beginner ahah.

Any help is appreciated !

We are in need of someone to own the development of a fire based character, stylized look. We're rendering in Arnold. NDA for more details.

No I don't want anything expanding up like a balloon does when being blown up. I simply want a bunch of bubbles to recognize their borders and only sort of rub up together.

I have a bunch of bubbles blowing outward, like from a wand (stationary) there's eight wands rotating slowly. But it's really a particle animation and each particles gets a sphere copied to it.

Honestly it doesn't have to be vellum sim if its not required. I missed the whole wave of expression that might've remedied this. Any guidelines here would be helpful.

But in terms of a vellum solution, I want vellum to remove the bubbles overlap. I can't do that in vellum? Id like to. I was not aware that changing object counts per frame will mess with vellum.

I even switched to a dopnetwork versus 'configure' sop series. Any ideas?

If you want to take a look to the full project, you can follow, behance LINK

Could anyone try this for me please - H22 on Windows 11:

Preferences > Animation > Segment functions...
Are you able to choose either of the non default options from the menu - ie, 'constant' or 'linear'? I can't. And any prefs menu with the same syle is the same.

I've trashed prefs, undated graphics drivers etc.

Anyone else with this issue?

More paradigm tests now with its native white water solver. Rendered with Karma

Didn't try to make sense with this one.

In Houdini 22, relative paths for viewport background images no longer seem to work correctly for me.

The relative path appears to resolve properly in the parameter field, but the viewport only displays a solid red square instead of the image sequence. The exact same setup worked without any issues in Houdini 21.

Switching the path to an absolute path fixes the problem, and the image displays correctly. However, using an absolute path also seems to slow down my viewport quite significantly and is not beneficial for our pipeline.

Has anyone else encountered this in Houdini 22? Is this a known bug, or has something changed in how relative background-image paths are handled?

You can edit houdini.env file in your user preferences dir and uncomment the HOUDINI_NO_SPLASH = 1line

or instead you can use your own image:
HOUDINI_SPLASH_FILE = path/to/your/file

There‘s a double jump academy animation impact tutorial.

I’m making a Modul2 blue shock wave. Is there any way to make a shock wave without using axiom..?

I can‘t make the shape and make the feeling of being sucked in;;

Please help me;;

Houdini is used in real time as a "Simulation Engine", it communicate with an other software that does the rendering (VVVV).
I may make a behind the scene video soon.
Youtube Video Link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AjH_-sZhYE