Houdini 12.5 リリース！ - クラウドFX！オーシャンFX！OpenVDB！ボリュームスカルプトツールも搭載！もう怖いものなし？！

Side Effects Softwareは、3Dアニメーション・VFXソフトウェア
Houdini 12.5をリリース！

クラウドFX、オーシャンFX、OpenVDB、ボリュームスカルプトツール、その他色々
SideFX公式の告知記事
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2445&Itemid=66
動画もいくつか公開されています。
ゲームばっか作ってないで、Houdiniちょっと触ってみたいなぁ・・

NEW FEATURES

VFX

Cloud FX Tools

New Cloud sculpting and rendering toolset available on a dedicated shelf:

• Cloud Rig – This tool creates a cloud network using the Cloud, Cloud Noise and Cloud Light nodes in combination along with a Sunlight and Skylight to create a complete cloud setup.
• Cloud – This tool converts geometry into a cloud volume and a gives you control over the shape and density of the volume. Secondary Shapes can be added to give your volume a puffier look.
• Cloud Noise – This tool adds a noise pattern to the volume to create a more distinct cloud-like shape.
• Cloud Light – This tool computes a light field to support the rendering of the volume. This approximates the scattering of light in a cloud to create a more efficient rendering.
• These Cloud tools are built using the new OpenVDB Sparse Volume tools.

Ocean FX Tools

New Ocean FX tools make it easier to integrate ocean surfaces into your VFX work:

• Ocean Waves – This tool uses volumes to deform geometry to create an animated ocean surface. You can visualize the results in the viewport then export a displacement texture to use at render time. This tool is on the Deform shelf.
• Wave Tank – This tool creates a FLIP fluid simulation with whitewater from an underlying ocean surface. This tool is on the Particle Fluids shelf.
• WhiteWater – New, unified whitewater solver creates spray, foam and churn based on an underlying FLIP fluid sim. This tool is on the Particle Fluids shelf.
• Mist – This tool emits mist particles into a smoke simulation one-way based on an underlying FLIP fluid sim. This tool is on the Particle Fluids shelf.
• New Ocean Spectrum and Ocean Evaluate geometry nodes used to generate ocean surface, volume and point outputs.

Sparse Volumes

• Native support for OpenVDB primitives. OpenVDB is an open source C++ library comprising a novel hierarchical data structure and a suite of tools for the efficient storage and manipulation of sparse volumetric data and is developed and maintained by DreamWorks Animation Visit openvdb.org for more information.
• Over a dozen VDB geometry nodes to create, manipulate and convert VDB volumes: Convert, Activate, Advect Points, Analysis, Combine, Fracture, From Particles, From Polygons, Renormalize SDF, Resample, Reshape SDF, Smooth, Smooth SDF, Vector Merge, Vector Split, Visualize Tree.
• Native viewport and Mantra support for VDB primitives.
• VDB volumes in Mantra have support for vector VEX attributes.
• SOP support for doing forward and inverse Fast Fourier transforms on 2D and 3D volumes: Volume FFT SOP.

Fluids.

• Accurate handling of droplet particles.
• Faster and more scalable FLIP fluid simulations.
• Fully OpenCL-accelerated Gas simulation pipeline in Pyro.
• OpenCL DOP for custom acceleration of simulation performance.
• The FLIP solver can now handle animated density and viscosity as well as animated timescales.
• FLIP fluids now use OpenVDB to generate the fluid surface and use uniform volumes for rendering.

Bullet

• New constraint types: Slider and Cone Axis which is useful for rag-doll simulation.
• Ability to handle concave geometry.
• Support for Cylinder geometry types.
• Support for interpenetrating or “bad” geometry.
• More reliable behaviour under complex scenarios.
• Ability to visualize objects that have been put to sleep by the Bullet solver.
• Ability to toggle collision detection between objects.
• Ability to handle an animated centre of mass.
• General performance improvements.

Cloth

• Optimized performance and collision support.
• Support for panel workflows.
• Support for per-vertex multiplier attributes, in addition to per-point attributes, offering more freedom in controlling the behavior of parts of the cloth.
• UV support for triangles and cloth — the UV coordinates represent the threading of the material and make the solver independent of the underlying topology.
• Improved force model, with more independence between stretch, shear and bend.
• Visualization of velocity and surface collision thickness which takes into account the point thickness attribute.
• Cloth shear stiffness and damping are now independent of their stretch equivalents.

Hair and Fur

• New, surface-based collision – more accurate than the existing volume-based collision method.