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Introduction to Collisions in Houdini

by John Moncrief

In this series of Houdini tutorials we'll get an introduction to Houdini's dynamic context by exploring object collisions.

What you'll learn

We'll start with a general overview of dynamics in Houdini and discuss the key concepts behind working with simulations. We'll explore the idea of animation without keyframes and the role of solvers in Houdini's dynamic context. Next we go over how to properly set up your scene for working in the dynamic context and how to avoid common mistakes. We'll talk about basic rigid body techniques for creating object interactions. We'll go over how to set up effective collision geometry, and wrap things up by taking a look at the Finite Element Solver and cloth simulations. This course was developed for an artist with a solid understanding of basic 3D concepts and a general understanding of Houdini's interface. While this Houdini training covers the fundamental concepts behind dynamic operators, it is not intended to cover every parameter of every solver. We will instead focus on the ideas and workflow of the dynamic context and the key parameters that will easily allow us to direct the behavior of our simulation.

About the author

John is the resident Houdini and dynamics author at Pluralsight. In college, he had the opportunity to work at SideFX (the creators of Houdini) and has been able to teach dynamics and visual effects to numerous creative industry professionals over the years. He lives for the rush of seeing his pupils experience "light bulb" moments. John's latest passion has been breathing new life into the Pluralsight Houdini training library and making sure that no software or tools can get in the way of an ar... more

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