Zeus VFX shows how you can have audio drive animation with a CHOP network in Houdini.

CHOPs in Houdini represents nodes for manipulating time-based channel data like animation curves or audio. CHOPs include things like generators, triggers, and filters and are an essential tool for procedural animation. The documentation for CHOPs can be intimidating, but thankfully, there are lots of tutorials on the subject. Check out this tutorial from Zeus VFX that shows how to use CHOPs to have audio drive animation in Houdini.

The tutorial covers a basic setup for audio-driven animation using a CHOPs network. Connecting CHOPs can control the flow of channel data from nodes that get channel data through other nodes that modify the channels. Audio reactive animation – It’s a topic that gets published a lot. For a clearer picture, have a look at Junichiro Horikawa’s tutorial for Houdini that shows how to create an audio spectrum visualizer, again using Chops.