Houdini Engine notes

See #vr-in-vr-3d in lab discord

For those new to Houdini, it's a node-based programming environment just like Max or TouchDesigner or a million others; but the main output is geometry (including animated geometry, simulated particle physics geometry, etc.) Houdini itself has a desktop editor for making these patches and visualizing the result. It has plugins for Maya, 3DS Max, Unity, Unreal etc. for using those patches. It also has offline non-realtime rendering options for Film/TV etc. (it's used in a LOT of movies you have seen). But, all this works by talking to what's called the Engline, which is a library or server kind of thing. There's a programming API for this Engine, which means you can also both create/modify and use patches it in other software -- including our own in-house software.

Engine API

See node binding at https://github.com/worldmaking/node-hapi

See example code at https://www.sidefx.com/docs/hengine/_h_a_p_i__full_source_samples.html

An engine-created scene can be saved as a "hip" file which can be loaded into Houdini editor to test it. See https://www.sidefx.com/docs/hengine/_h_a_p_i__fundamentals.html#HAPI_Fundamentals_SavingHIPFile