Providing an overview for the Wire Solver in SideFX Houdini, Arri Danesh covers creating a couple of projects that will use the Wire Solver which include creating a jellyfish tentacle set up.

Wire solvers are great to control deformable structures such as trees falling with deformation

Wire Solvers are pretty good at doing soft body collisions and hair simulations, and being a point-edge solver, they use existing point-edges of the geometry unlike cloth sobers that are comprised of their own internal make up. This makes the Wire Solver a great lightweight solution, offering a fast calculations.

The drawbacks of the wire solver are that it can only be used on one object per simulation, and it can’t be used for fracturing or tearing, like the cloth solver can.

The scene files for this lesson are available on the SideFX site, so check out the Next Steps Lesson for Procedural Animation, Lesson 4 using Wire Solvers here.