Houdini 是一个特效方面非常强大的软件，主要面对的是电影工业的特效制造与组成。与其他如3DS Max/After Effects等三维动画、特效组成软件不同的是，Houdini是一个节点软件，节点的操作具有非常强的逻辑性，同时它也是一个动态的建模软件，经过一个个节点和命令将各种目标组合在一起，在应对含有非常多的视觉元素的影视特效组成时经过节点的操作更加简单管理成千上万的视觉元素，而其它经过层来操作视觉元素的特效组成软件如After Effects在面对成千上万个视觉元素时显然是不现实的。许多电影特效都是由它完成:指环王中“甘道夫”放的那些“魔法礼花”还有“水马”冲垮“戒灵”的局面……后天中的龙卷风的局面等等，a52的汽车广告.反正只要是涉及DD公司制造的好莱坞一线大片，几乎都会有Houdini参加和应用。

SideFX Houdini v14.0.201.13 with Engine x64 | 585MB

Side Effects Software, an industry leader in 3D animation and visual effects software, is proud to announce the immediate release of Houdini 14. With a new Position-Based Dynamics solver for granular simulation, new crowd pipeline tools, user interface enhancements and grooming tools for hair and fur, this release brings a better user experience, improved scalability and optimized performance to VFX artists, animators and game makers.

The new Position-Based Dynamics is a multi-physics environment ideally suited to the creation of wet and dry sand. Multi-threaded thanks to its exclusive reliance on VEX-based operators, the new solver can run on the CPU or on the GPU using OpenCL. In addition to sand effects, artists can create solids, sheets or tethers to generate soft body, cloth and wire-like simulations.

The new crowd system uses artist-friendly shelf tools along with a new packed agent primitive type, a Finite State Machine solver and hardware accelerated display of instanced crowds. The system has a seamless conduit to Houdini’s Mantra renderer 
and is equipped with controls for crowd layout, steering, collision avoidance, terrain adaptation, motion blending, and look-at targets.

This crowd pipeline is intended primarily for large, mid-to-background, non-interacting crowds executing basic motions and can seamlessly interact with dynamic elements such as Bullet, fluids and sand. This pipeline will be enhanced in future releases to support more complex agent interactions and AI for creating hero quality crowds.

With Houdini 14, a great deal of work has gone into user experience. From preselection highlighting to new handles, improved edge-loop selection, new UV Flatten and UV Layout tools with UDIM support, grooming tools for hair and fur, an advanced visualizer architecture, custom panels and much more, this release will make it easier for artists to work procedurally. Meanwhile, animators will appreciate the new faster Animation editor with Animation layers and significant speed improvements to the display and playback of rigs.