Houdini 20.5 offers a wide range of new features for artists working in 3D animation, VFX, and motion graphics.
Here are some of the highlights:
- Simulation: New MPM solver for fluids, solids, and granular materials. Faster feather simulation. Improved Vellum and Bullet solvers.
- KineFX: More auto-rig components, Python scripting, animation layers, and ragdoll tools. Advanced wing and feather rigging.
- Solaris: USD v24.03 and MaterialX v1.381.10 support. Improved LOPs for cloning, materials, and crowds. Integration with Karma renderer.
- Karma CPU & XPU: Volumetric atmosphere rendering, blue noise support, motion blur, USD-friendly workflow. Performance improvements on CPU and XPU.
- Vulcan Viewport: Nearly complete beta with higher quality display, improved lighting, and multithreaded rendering. Supports next-generation COPs.
- PDG & TOP Task Management: New nodes for working with dictionary attributes, regular expressions, and file decompression. Improved performance and scheduler support.
- Houdini Engine & Plugins: Performance optimizations for HEngine. Improved Unreal Engine integration, including data layer baking, skeletal mesh interchange, and Node Sync. Plugin support for 3ds Max 2025 and Maya 2025.
- General & Modeling: Interactive brush sculpting tool. Faster clipping and mirroring. Improved curve tools and quad remeshing. New SOPs for proximity, point cloud measurement, planar inflation, and volume blur.
- General UI & UX: Recipe framework for presets. Redesigned MMB node. Improved hotkey management.
- Copernicus (BETA): New GPU-accelerated image processing framework with over 150 nodes. Integrates 2D and 3D workflows. Realtime image manipulation and visualization. Procedural texture tools and material creation. OpenFX support.
