Houdini Gems is a way for me to chronicle my adventures in learning to use the amazing software package called Houdini by Side Effects Software.
The adventure started for me in 1994, when as a University of Waterloo student I had a co-op job at Side Effects. I was one of these new punks that was learning this "C++" language, and I was extremely passionate about CG. Kim and Greg were kind kind (and brave) enough to take me on board and I became a part (a short part) of the Side Effects family. I had an opportunity to work with some of the most amazingly brilliant people I've ever worked with: Mark E, Mark M, Cristin, Dale, Ramin, Kim, Greg (and Lee!), and others. Some of you aren't there any more, but that group of people is forever burned into my memory.
We were working on the "next generation" of Prisms - Prisms 7, I think we called it at the time (or was it 6?). It, of course, eventually became Houdini and I'm extremely proud to have worked on it. I don't know if any of my code remains in the Side Effects source code repositories, but I remember working on several of the SOPs while I was there: The basic primitives (circle, grid, etc.), Twist, and an early version of the LSystems SOP (and whoever took that over, I apologize - it was at the end of my work term, and I was rushing to finish it).
Over the years I've often peeked into Side Effects to see what was going on. When they released the Apprentice Edition a few years back, I was elated. I downloaded it and played with it a bit, but never found (or made) the time to immerse myself.
Now, with the release of Houdini 8 in Beta, I've decided I'm going to make a concerted effort to really learn this amazing piece of software. This blog is going to be an attempt at chronicling the learning process. I'm hoping its useful enough that complete noobs (like me) can use it as a starting point to learn the software.
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