Stephan Walsch made an auto-fill like tool for Houdini, and it’s free.

One of the plugins that captured After Effects users’ eyes all over is the new AutoFill tool from Plugin Everything. It lets you create those elegant write-on effects without all the hassle of masking and adding keys and adjusting everything. Inspired by AutoFill, Motion Graphics Artist Stephan Walsch made something similar for Side FX Houdini.

“What After Effects users need (admittedly amazing) plugins for, us Houdini folk can whip up from a few nodes.” Walsch says.

Automatic Alpha-Fill with Houdini

The Houdini setup will take an image with alpha as input, and then returns a luma matte. You can then select one or multiple starting points and either trace along the surface (just like a write-on effect) or by proximity (great for many different shapes). The Houdini set up also has a second mode even has a parameter to slightly (or strongly) offset each island so that you can get some nicely staggered reveals.

Get Automatic Alpha-Fill for Free.

Download the free Houdini Setup here.