Archive notice: This article was originally published on January 16, 2015. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
New features include position-based dynamics for wires, sand, or organic soft bodies, for example, which are already familiar from game physics systems such as PhysX and Havok Cloth. Some of this is also included in the Maya Nucleus Framework. The new Crowd Toolset also uses physics interactions, so crowd agents can interact with fluids, sand, or Bullet Physics objects as well.
Here is the new Position-Based Dynamics Solver with a Bullet Destruction Simulation in a test inspired by the series "Game of Thrones":
Houdini 14 – Destruction in Snow RnD from Graham Matthew Collier on Vimeo.
The Technical Oscar-winning OpenVDB technology has also been integrated into Houdini 14, because the new Hair Grooming Tools are based on it. Developer Ken Museth also confirmed that Houdini 14 supports the current version 3.0 of OpenVDB. If you would like to know exactly what lies behind OpenVDB, the appendix contains an article PDF from DP 05/14 with an interview with Ken Museth.
There are also several updates that Side Effects Software summarises under "UX Changes". These include a new Group Selection Workflow, a revised Animation Editor, and Animation Layers. Another important innovation is that the Houdini interface now supports Python Panels via PySide and PyQt.
Here is the complete feature list for Houdini 14.
Houdini 14 Overview from Go Procedural on Vimeo.
Houdini 14 can be downloaded now. Anyone who does not yet own a Houdini licence can get the basic version of Houdini for 1,995 US dollars; Houdini FX costs 4,495 US dollars. The limited commercial Houdini Indie version is available for 199 US dollars per year.
Naturally, Houdini 14 and its functions will be examined thoroughly in one of the upcoming issues of DP.
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