No VEX Houdini Tutorial: Dancing Mocap Trails

Support us on Patreon: Houdini without using VEX? It is possible. Although Mo doesn’t enjoy it, he guides you through setting up a simple abstract mocap animation using nothing but built in SOPs. No scripting in this one. Promised. Of course everything is heavily inspired by Method Studio’s seminal 2016 AICP Sponsor Reel: For a scene fully set up and lit to render in Octane, have a look at the scene files. Download Scene File (.zip): 00:00 - Intro 00:32 - Downloading mocap data 00:50 - Loading mocap data into Houdini 01:51 - Scattering points onto animated mesh 04:20 - Calculating velocity for coloring 04:40 - Generating trails 05:11 - Color from velocity 06:20 - Smoothing the trails 07:16 - Adjusting the trails’ width 08:29 - Preventing Octane glitches 10:32 - Thoughts on VEX vs SOPs and personal style 12:05 - Infamou