Shay
Search results
SideFX is the developer of Houdini, a 3D procedural software for film, TV, advertising and video game pipelines. Learn about Houdini features, tutorials, events, customer reels and more on the official website.
- Houdini Indie
Houdini Indie provides you with a procedural...
- Compare
Houdini products are available for studios, indies, schools...
- SideFX Labs
SideFX Labs Public Roadmap is a place where you can check...
- Partners
SideFX Labs is a testing ground for over tools designed to...
- Film & TV
Create more shots under tight deadlines while achieving...
- Game Development
SideFX Labs is a testing ground for tools designed to help...
- Motion Graphics
Designers, animators and storytellers use motion graphics to...
- Virtual Reality
Virtual and augmented reality projects are evolving at a...
- Houdini Indie
SideFX offers procedural tools for creating realistic and stunning visual effects. To download their software, you need to login or register on their website and agree to their terms and privacy policy.
Learn how to use Houdini’s node-based workflow to create optimized game art using tutorials created by industry professionals and by SideFX.
- SideFX Labs - Houdini 20.0
- Roadmap
- Installation
- Method 1 (Personal): Houdini Launcher
- Method 2 (Deployment): Command Line
- Method 3 (Specific Versions / Steam Houdini Users): GitHub
- Verification
- Live Development
- Expanded HDAs
- Example Files
SideFX Labs is a completely free, open-source toolset geared towards assisting Houdini users with a variety of tasks commonly used for digital content creation. It is an all-inclusive toolset that spans the shelf, digital assets, custom desktops and scripts and more. The toolset is currently maintained by Mai Ao, Danicka Oglesby, Christos Stavridis...
Please visit our Public Roadmap to see what we are working on. You can also vote on features or submit feature ideas.
The following instructions are based on the Windows OS. Please adapt them accordingly to your OS.
Open Houdini Launcher and navigate to the Labs/Packages section to install a version of SideFX Labs.
The SideFX Labs package will be installed to C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\sidefx_packages.
You can also install the SideFX Labs package through command line, for example, using Command Prompt or Houdini Command Line Tools (C:\Program Files\Side Effects Software\Houdini 20.0.100\bin\hcmd.exe). This is especially useful for deployment in a studio environment.
To install the latest production build, the latest daily build, or to uninstall (listed in this order), the commands are:
("D:\studio\sidefxlabs" is just an example path.)
To replace part of a hard-coded path with an environment variable, you need to first define the environment variable on the machine that executes the commands.
Press the Windows key to search for Edit environment variables for your account, and then click New... on the Environment Variables window to add a new variable.
Please note that Houdini-specific environment variables, such as HSITE, HOME, etc., are not automatically recognized in Command Prompt or Houdini Command Line Tools when you type in commands. For command line installation purposes, adding environment variables to houdini.env or a Houdini package definition JSON file is not enough. You have to define them in the system.
Sometimes you may need to access an earlier release or to get the same-day updates before the next day's release is downloadable. In those cases, you can get the package directly from this GitHub repository.
Step 1. [Option A] Download one of the releases from here. Choose a release version/date, expand Assets and select either one of the Source code zip files. This step can be automated with a script that downloads the zip files from either one of the following URLs (replace 20.0.100 with the desired version number).
Step 1. [Option B] Click on the top-right Code button on the main page of this repository and select Download ZIP. This allows you to get the same-day updates before the next day's release is downloadable.
Step 1. [Option C] (Advanced) Clone this repository into a custom SideFXLabs directory of your choosing. Skip Step 2.
Step 2. If you have downloaded a zipped version of the package in Step 1, unzip it into a custom SideFXLabs directory of your choosing.
Step 3. Go to your custom SideFXLabs directory that now contains the unzipped contents, copy the package definition template file SideFXLabs.json to C:\Users\...\Documents\houdini20.0\packages. Rename the destination copy to SideFXLabs20.0.json. Open this file and replace "$HOUDINI_PACKAGE_PATH/SideFXLabs20.0" (line 8) with the path to your own SideFXLabs directory. When Houdini launches, it relies on this file to discover the location of your SideFX Labs package.
If SideFX Labs is successfully installed, launch Houdini and you should see a Labs menu on the top-left menu bar.
We're actively developing the tools in this repository. The releases provide safe checkpoints in the code for you to download.
All of the HDAs are using the expanded format that was introduced in H16. This allows better diffing of the tools so you can see what our changes are doing and choose to integrate them back into your production.
Instead of tying the examples as HDAs, we will be generating separate hip files that show how the tools should work in context. These can be found here.
Houdini is a 3D animation software application developed by Toronto-based SideFX, who adapted it from the PRISMS suite of procedural generation software tools. The procedural tools are used to produce different effects such as complex reflections, animations and particles system. [2]
SideFX award-winning Houdini software utilizes a node-based procedural approach which provides digital artists with an unprecedented level of power, flexibility and control.
SideFX Software is a Toronto-based company that develops Houdini, a procedural 3D animation and VFX software for film, TV and games. Follow their LinkedIn page to see their products, locations, employees, events and updates.
