Stanford CS348C-23W CG: Animation & Simulation, Prof.

Doug James

Homework #1: Hello Houdini

Due: Wednesday, January 18, 2023 (midnight)

In this short assignment you will get started with Houdini, initially by reading and watching some
introductory videos. Then you will do some basic 3D modeling, and keyframe animation. I don’t
want everyone to model or animate the same thing, so you will pick something of interest to you
but not too tricky. Submit an image or video of your result (as appropriate), and the result will be
shown at in-class Weeklies the day after the deadline (Thursday).

For this introductory Houdini assignment you will click alone. However, as in all projects for
this class, you are encouraged to read, watch and discuss material and ideas with your fellow
classmates. However, to get the full experience of modeling and animating with Houdini, and get
up to speed, you really need to use Houdini yourself to get the hang of it--plus, it’s a lot of fun!
Therefore your final submission should be based on your own work.

Download and Install Houdini Apprentice

In this class we will use the freely available Houdini Apprentice animation software. You can
obtain it by going to https://www.sidefx.com/download, registering as a user, then downloading
the version appropriate for your system(s). This version has several limitations compared to pay
versions, such as limited ability to export high-res images or video, but it is more than sufficient
for our purposes.

Resources for Learning Houdini

There are a lot of great resources to help you learn Houdini that you should dive into this first
week. To get started, I suggest spending a few hours reading and watching some of the
following, then doing very simple experiments to reinforce your understanding.
Stanford CS348C: Animation & Simulation Homework #1: Hello Houdini

● Learning Houdini: The Getting Started page has a lot of resources, and is the best
place to get up to speed. The following are some links you can find there that I
recommend.
● The Houdini Foundations Book is a great resource that summarizes (in written form)
all the things that you will encounter as you get up to speed in Houdini. I suggest
browsing through just the Overview (first 45 pages) of the book, e.g., on and off while
you watch videos and do simple experiments. It’s a good reference as you go along, but
it's too long to read initially.

● Absolute Basics (38min) These short videos will help you understand the Houdini
environment (View Tools, Panes, Workspace, Network View, Navigating Networks,
Create Projects, Display Options, Asset Menu, Tag Visualizer). I suggest trying these
skills out while you watch the video to get familiar.
● The Secret Language of HOUDINI (23min) gives a good overview of the procedural
node-based workflow, and explains the difference between VOP, DOP, SOP, CHOP
operators. It may seem a little weird at first, but soon it will “click” since the same things
keep coming up again and again.
● Video Tutorials (Tip: filter for “Beginner”): Houdini is a highly visual node-based design
tool, and so the best way to learn how to use it is often to just watch videos of people
using it. Fortunately there are many very good instructional videos available online.
Heads-up that 98% of the material is too advanced initially, and/or you don’t need it for
this class. I suggest using the videos as resources to help you solve problems in your
day-to-day modeling tasks.
● Houdini Documentation: These are super useful. You will have these documents open
most of the time you work in Houdini.
● Entagma: The Entagma tutorials cover more advanced topics, and can provide ideas on
how to tackle more advanced modeling problems later in the course. As a beginner, they
can give you a taste of what skilled users can do, and how to work in Houdini, but most
of the details probably won’t make sense--that’s OK.
Stanford CS348C: Animation & Simulation Homework #1: Hello Houdini

Helpful Tips
Autosave is disabled by default: This is minor, but important if Houdini crashes after you’ve
finished a lot of hard work. You should either save your work manually and often, or, better yet,
turn on autosave. There are different autosave settings you can adjust to make it work best for
you, e.g., how often to save, how many backups, etc. (If you forget and it crashes, there may be
a crash save file in your $HIP directory.)

Make Something!
“OK, I read and watched all this Houdini stuff, so now what?” Now you can try your hand at
modeling and animating something. It can be really simple this first week. For now you can stick
to basic geometric primitives, and avoid physics-based solvers. Don’t worry about fancy visual
rendering using Mantra, either. Your final image/video submission can be a screenshot region
capture--just submit by the deadline! (Next week in “Homework #2: Procedural Modeling” you’ll
have a chance to try something more complicated, or even expand on this idea if you want.)

Basic functionality to try:

1. Keyframe parameters to make an animation.
2. Make a “Flipbook” to see your animation. Export frames as images to make a movie.
3. Merge to form compound shapes
4. Deform
5. Scatter points on shapes
6. Use CopyToPoints to instance geometry.
7. Polygon modeling
8. Boolean CSG operations
9. TransferAttributes
10. Wrangle nodes (VEX code)
11. Noise and Randomize add variety
12. Paint node lets you draw Cd values directly.
13. Try the Mantra render capabilities, e.g., to render with shadows or advanced materials.

Thinking ahead: Things to model and perhaps animate: (good for Homework #2 Procedural
Modeling, too):
1. Model a familiar shape or place using basic primitives, interactive tools/handles, and/or
node-based geometric operations, e.g., model a tire, or make some rocks.
2. Animate some shapes using Transform nodes, e.g., animate a robot hand.
3. Keyframe a lot of simple shapes, e.g., cubes, and explore the animation editor.
4. Model or animate a fractal growth process.
5. Simulate cityscapes over time using stylized boxes.
6. Model a building (windows, ledges, etc.) using repetitive structures.
7. Model a moon covered in craters.
Stanford CS348C: Animation & Simulation Homework #1: Hello Houdini

8. Render a shape using LEGO blocks.

9. Build a maze on a surface.
10. Design a logo.
11. Animate credits for a film that is, well, nothing but credits.
12. Design floral or another kind of ornamentation.
13. Visualize and/or animate a mathematical theorem, e.g., Gauss-Bonnet theorem.
14. Animate a volume integral, or a ray-triangle intersection test.
15. Make some mathematical art, e.g., using Fibonacci spirals.
16. Simulate Conway’s the “Game of Life”
17. Render a “pin board” animation using the ray node
18. Fun with VEX code to make patterns, e.g., using sin/cos
19. Explore shader networks for visual rendering.
20. Arbitrary constraints: Model something using only different types of nodes. How many
can you use?
21. Try to reproduce a simple visual effect from a movie, or game, or commercial, or intro
sequence.
22. Convert text into a stylized credit sequence.
23. Pretty much anything else.

Submit your Work

There are two steps to submitting your work:
1. Weekly Artifact: Submit your image and/or short video artifact for the HW1 Weekly
using this Dropbox file request link. Include your name in the filename. (Screenshots,
flipbook & screen captured videos in portable compressed formats are fine for this
week’s submission; default viewport renderings are fine.)
2. Canvas: Submit a zip file via Canvas that contains
● Your image and/or short video artifact (again), and
● Your Houdini *.hipnc file and any data files required to reproduce your result.

Please acknowledge any sources that you based your work on, or inspired you, as well people
that may have contributed. Please do not use other Houdini assets, or others’ Houdini work, in
this first assignment.

Re: Late submissions: Please submit what you can by the deadline. The course is on a tight
schedule, e.g., to participate in “weeklies,” and your participation is required in order for you and
others to get the greatest benefits. Part of hitting the deadline is scoping your project to not be
too ambitious. Start with a simple viable design, and improve it until you run out of time and
have to render & submit it.