Javier Toledo is a Technical Director over at RushVFX. Javier has started a bit-sized informative series called “Houdini Pill”. Each video plans to be a concise, easy to swallow view of some techniques within Side Effects Houdini. The first in the series has a look into creating your first custom Houdini Solver.
create a very simple solver that will make spheres grow
Watch as Javier walks us through creating a simple Houdini Solver that will make spheres grow until they come into contact with each other. This involves first creating a volume and then adding points to that volume, frame by frame. The spheres will then grow from those points, starting with a radius value of zero. The spheres will also grow frame by frame and keep growing, until the point where they collide.
The tutorial is easy to follow, but you do need some basic knowledge of Houdini, as it has some VEX code involved. VEX is a great way to create custom solvers for Houdini, that operate just like out of the box solvers.
