Houdini FX 12
Houdini FX is a full-featured 3D animation and visual effects software, renowned for ít particle and dynamics tools. Houdini FX is perfect for visual effects artists, technical directions and CG supervisors who want to experience total control over their pipeline.
Main Feature Particles
From dust to debris to flocks of birds, particles offer a strong foundation on which you can build any effect. Houdini is most famous for its node-based particle workflow that lets you define a set of rules using interactive tools. More info: http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=977&Itemid=266
Dynamics
Create realistic motion that meets the creative needs of your director using Houdini's integrated dynamics tools. Built so that different solvers can talk to each other, you can simulate using any combination of Rigid Body, Fluid, Cloth and Wire solvers to create boundary-busting effects. More info: http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=971&Itemid=266
Nodes and Assets
As an artist and animator, you use your CG tools to bring life to your ideas. Along the way, you make creative decisions that are necessary to achieve your goals. A lot of these decisions involve experimenting and reworking ideas to get them just right. In Houdini, each of these decisions is recorded as a node that is wired up to other nodes. The resulting network provides a blueprint of your creative process and a framework for making revisions.
Modeling
Houdini’s modeling tools can be used by modellers to create characters, sets and props or by visual effects artists to give particles and fluids shape and form. For traditional modelers, Houdini provides a robust set of tools that work with a wide variety of geometry types. For visual effects artists, Houdini’s node-based workflow makes it easy to set up surfaces that are generated on the fly based on an underlying effect.