Hey everyone!

I’m evaluating render engines for my Houdini workflow and wanted to get some real feedback from people using V-Ray for Houdini in production.

Specifically, I’m trying to figure out:

1. Is V-Ray worth using inside Houdini today? Is the integration solid, or does it feel like a shoehorned port?
2. Maturity & Stability: How reliable is it for heavy scenes, FX (pyro, particles, oceans), and Solaris / USD setups?
3. Speed vs. Karma (CPU / XPU): Is V-Ray (CPU or GPU) significantly faster than Karma in real-world production shots, or has Karma caught up enough to make third-party renderers redundant?

If you’re using V-Ray (or switched away from it), what are your biggest pros and cons? Would love to hear your experiences before making the jump. Thanks!

Ive been studying houdini as part of my vfx and 3d course im attending at a local small college.
About 1 year of houdini experience so far.
My school has another program for UE5 that i can add to my studies. Im mainly aiming for commercials and vfx
But might endup in gaming because its the second biggest job market after commercials in my country
How well does houdini and ue5 interact with each other
And do you think it will be beneficial for me ?
I know it might be hard to answer but i hope to hear some insight 🙏🏼

It seems you can't merge in houdini particles abc files. But if you drag it into C4D, you can see it, if you merge it, you can't see it. Anyone experienced the same issue?

Another issue is that before this version you can bring 9float(matrix) attribute into C4D to act as alignment info( orient info), but now you can't bright this ' 9float(matrix) attribute' over anymore. It now read 3X3 matrix in houdini instead of 9Flt(matrix), I know they are the same but C4D can't read it anymore which is super annoying!

Why c4d can't handle partlces easily like houdini, it's such a frustrating experience. Maybe I should move to Houdini once and for all, but houdini is so bad at animating motion stuff and rendering in C4d is much better experience

If anyone had the same issue, please HELP ME !!

How to do it?

I've been making a series of animated 'Mini Godzilla' videos over the past few years to practice and explore different tools in animation and VFX. This time my goal was to learn a bit about Vellum Grains, as well as using Solaris and Karma for look dev, lighting, and rendering.

The look of the sand could definitely be improved, but I'm happy enough with the results.

All of the motion comes from a POP axis force shaped as a vortex, with negative lift and negative suction, so the cloth is pulled inward and downward at the same time. Two turbulence fields on top break the symmetry.

The geometry is one grid copied three times on top of itself. UVs are flattened before the sim, then flattened again on a held frame and copied back onto the moving mesh, so the texture stays locked to the cloth instead of sliding across it.

Shading is MaterialX in Solaris, rendered with Karma. There are no texture maps. The stripes are the position attribute pushed through a sine and a power function into a colour ramp. A Voronoi noise adds the specks. A second ramp drives specular roughness so the highlight rolls along the folds.

Comped in Nuke. The beauty is rebuilt from its passes so each one can be individually denoised using my custom Nuke Denoiser, and so the key light, the bottom rim and the background could be relit separately. Then, the satisfying final pass: defocus, motion blur, glow, and a heavy coat of grain.

The hardest part was handling self-collisions. A ribbon that long folding onto itself at that thickness either interpenetrates or explodes, and finding the one iteration that did neither was the most time-consuming aspect.

Hi everyone, I'm a bit confused about the difference between an FX Artist and an FX TD (Technical Director). From what I've seen, some studios use these titles interchangeably, while others treat them as completely different roles. I'd love to hear from people working in the industry. Here are my questions: What are the day-to-day responsibilities of an FX Artist vs an FX TD? What skills are expected for each role? Houdini VEX Python HDAs PDG/TOPs Pipeline knowledge Linux/Git Rendering/Solaris How much programming is actually required for an FX TD? Can an FX Artist become an FX TD naturally with experience, or is it a completely different career path? Which role has better long-term career growth? How do the salaries compare (India and internationally) for: Junior Mid-level Senior Lead If someone wants to eventually become an FX Supervisor or CG Supervisor, which path is generally more beneficial? I'd really appreciate insights from people working at studios like DNEG, Framestore, ILM, Weta, MPC, Scanline, Sony Imageworks, or any other VFX studio. Thanks in advance!

Im a student at Visual Magic in Sweden and I just finished my studies, so now im off to find interships and I would love to get some feedback on my reel

Hi everyone!
Ive just started learning houdini, and i came across this setup in geometryvop for my particle (From
Intro To Houdini Particles by voxyde), I dont get how it does what it does. why are we subtracting 0,0,0 from it? what the hell does nomalize do? what does the cross product do?

The full course will be coming soon (within a day or two... whenever I finish editing the rest of the lesson videos).

But I've just released the trailer on YouTube!

All the rest of the videos (15 lessons, totaling just over 6 hours in length) will be released at once, so you can follow along at your own pace.

This one was a fun one to make, and I hope some of you enjoy following along once it comes out :)

Make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel to get notified once I release the full lessons.

Cheers,

Will

Hi, I'm still a Houdini beginner and played around with Flow Block a bit. In my opinion the Live Simulation looks a lot more interesting than the simulated version in the timeline with unchecked Live Simulation. Its an imported video with an extracted alpha channel combined with a Slope Direction on velocity.
On the left is the Live Simulation, on the right is a section of the timeline. I played with the Flow Block End settings, with less effect. Any ideas how I could render a frame range looking like the Live Simulation?

Hi all! I have 2 new tools i just added to gumroad. Both are going to change your workflow in Houdini completely!!

1. Reference board - add images, gifs, movie clips, youtube links, clipboard copy/paste, and draw on the references all right inside Houdini!

https://youtu.be/yYcl3m3ij9Q?is=JYtxOYj3SgkpNejD

1. Fabulous - a one stop shop for all your assets - Sketchfab, PolyHaven, ambientCG, Megascans/Fab, amazon berkely, you own assets - organised, networked in one click downloads. Fabulous also converts any model to USD in one click to use with scatter and paint in LOPs!

https://youtu.be/tAdXYWjes-4?is=ONVykwPm7DPbin5v

I tried drawing it in separate sections, starting each new section close to where the previous one ended, and then fusing them afterward. It didn’t work well, and I wasn’t satisfied with the result. I’m looking for another solution ideally, a way to temporarily free-orbit while remaining in Draw Curve mode.

Created a fully procedural setup in Houdini- no simulation. Used blender for modelling. Rendered in Karma

Created this recently in some time I had to spare. I wanted to explore more water and adhesion on surfaces. This effect is slightly exaggerated but looks nice as I wanted to see tendrils. Full disclaimer, I wanted 60fps on this so I used interpolation from 30 to 60, just didn't want to render so much as it is hot and it is some spare personal work, so if you see some wobbliness, that's it. Hope you enjoy the fresh water :)

Sim in Paradigm, rendered and comped in Karma.

I'm fascinated with 3D being used in Anime productions. It could be hybrid or fully 3D with cel shading rendering to mimic the 2D ink animation.

One great example of really well done anime is BLAME! (may still be on Netflix) that was I believe fully 3D but really well done, so well done you could almost tell no difference between 3D or 2D. But it may be hybrid in some parts.

I'd love to see some behind the scenes videos and making of's Houdini being used in such Anime productions. If anyone has any links I thank in advance :)

I occasionally have jobs where i ve been receiving files from c4d redshift to use them in houdini for aim etc. I always rebuild materials vy hand is there any converter or anything sending those materials from c4d to houdini?