Character Animation Workflow | Warren Leathem | Houdini 20.5 HIVE Paris

Explore the new features, tools and workflows for animating characters in Houdini 20.5. Learn about the new transient constraints, animation layers, motion paths and other features and improvements for creating character animation in Houdini.
Warren Leathem is a Senior Animator on the character team at SideFX. Prior to joining SideFX in 2021, he spent over 20 years as an Animator, Animation Lead and Animation Supervisor in the film and TV industry, focused almost entirely on character animation. Having worked at studios such as MPC, Weta Digital, and Animal Logic, he brings that experience to focus not only on animators doing amazing work, but also on how animation fits into the overall production environment and workflows.
00:00 Introduction
01:02 Motion Paths
01:59 Transient Contstraints
06:16 Dynamic Motion
08:27 Ragdoll Motion
10:50 Copy, Paste & Mirror
14:15 Ragdoll Workflow
18:05 Ragdoll Pose
19:18 Animation Layers
20:28 Feather Controls
22:13 Animation Layer Management
24:07 Summation
24:55 Q&A

[@nathandickson8919]

Awesome work on this! I'm super excited as a rigger & animator to see Houdini's proceduralism influence character animation!!

[@jamaljamalwaziat1002]

I hope this rig can be available to try learning animation

[@reasonsreasonably]

This is looking great. Initially APEX was much too complex to setup, but looking like not only will creating the rig be easier, but what you can do with it promises to be amazing.

[@fastlearner292]

Those were some real interesting questions at the end. I was also wondering about the procedural noise/secondary motion stuff and how that would be implemented later on. It's kinda already possible to add that functionality to the rig itself but stuff like this rather is better suited to animation, similar to that constraint where it can just be baked into keys or maybe just applied over the animation.

[@w.a.l.l.a.c.e.]

BRB uninstalling Maya

[@PalmwineStudio]

hurry up😂

[@AviweZathu]

@@w.a.l.l.a.c.e. 🤣😂🤣

[@hyunjoonkang9154]

The ragoll fingers look revolutionary. Is houdini the only software that can do this rn?

[@demianpelos]

From all this tools I wonder how.mich animators will use. ( Example zbrush have 100 brushes. You can create your own etc... but people use the same 3 or 4). Is incredible the collision with other parts

[@nicolaastanghe475]

But if you want to build that brush, zbrush has all the tools to build it just the way you like.

[@demianpelos]

@@nicolaastanghe475 agree. But honestly I have no idea how to do it... Lol or to remember everything. Houdini is a monster of software

[@fastlearner292]

Animators find a way to use anything given to them, and every animator has their own special workflow that works for them. Look at animbot, shit ton of tools and nearly every maya animator l have seen likes it to the point that the lack of it in other packages makes them not want to change from Maya. SideFX is doing exactly that, an amazing and fast toolset for rigging and tons of tools like animbot has but is build into the software itself. It's a great way to increase the software's capabilities and interest other professional animators to Houdini