Houdini 9.1 Released
7 February 2008
Side Effects Software, an industry leader in 3D Animation software announced the release of Houdini 9.1, which for the first time will include access to the new FBX importer. This addition gives studios a clear choice for interoperability with other 3D applications making it easier than ever to leverage Houdini within an existing pipeline. “I need Houdini to work with a variety of different 3D applications,” says Visual FX artist Miguel Salek. “With FBX support, I will have a common file format that works with them all.”
Autodesk® FBX is a well known open-standard 3D file format that promises a high quality interchange of 3D content. As an official Autodesk Authorized Developer, Side Effects is providing early access to the FBX importer with Houdini 9.1. The importer remains in development and will see a variety of enhancements over the coming months. For now, it supports geometry, attributes, lights, cameras, node and joint hierarchies, animation and geometry caches. Support for FBX export is planned and will be released in Q2 of this year.
“Since the release of Houdini 9 last year, we have grown our base of boutique and commercial production studios,” says Kim Davidson, President, Side Effects Software. “Now with FBX support, these customers can more effectively transfer their work between Houdini and their other software tools.”
Optimized for Production
Houdini 9.1 is available immediately for download and includes a variety of enhancements and optimizations to fluids, cloth, character rigging, animation, lighting and UI.
The user interface now ships with an alternative dark color scheme and the ability to download a variety of user-defined color schemes from the net. The Network view and Channel editor have been optimized and the timeline interaction has also been streamlined to make it faster and more intuitive. Animators can now work more easily by using the Channel List to select objects in the 3D view.
New Fluid emitter tools have been added to the shelf and the surfacing of particle fluids are up to 60 times faster than before. Cloth simulations are also faster and more reliable especially when interacting with dynamic volumes.
Houdini 9.1 includes a richer library of production-quality materials and rendering has been optimized to be more reliable and faster, especially when working with many textures. There is now support for triangle strip primitive rendering and for vertex normal rendering.
You can visit the Online Docs for a more detailed list of enhancements.
Now Available for Apprentice Users
Houdini Apprentice users can Download the new version right away and Houdini Apprentice HD customers will find an updated license ready in the Houdini license server. Houdini Apprentice HD customers have all received free upgrades to the new version due to the recent release of the HD program.
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