Houdini (software)
Side Effects Software's Houdini is a very high-end 3D animation package that is often preferred over Maya or XSI in pure visual effects, as opposed to character animation. Like Maya, Houdini is an open-environment and uses the popular TCL/TK scripting language and toolkit (as opposed to the proprietary MEL used in Maya). Houdini differs, however, in that it is purely a procedural environment. Objects are generally constructed by connecting sequences of operations (or OPs), which have several advantages, including allowing one to construct highly detailed geometric or organic objects in comparatively very few steps compared to other packages. Houdini uses this procedural paradigm throughout for textures and shaders, particles, "channel data" (data used to drive animation), and even in rendering/post-processing (combining/compositing multiple renders is not directly supported within Maya). Houdini is unique in its very rich set of tools, leading to a higher learning curve than other comparable tools. Especially unique to Houdini is the range of I/O OPs available to animators, including MIDI devices, raw files or TCP connections, audio devices (including built-in phoneme and pitch detection), mouse cursor x/y position, and so on. Of particular note is Houdini's very unique ability to work with audio, including sound and music synthesis and spatial 3D sound processing tools. Derivative Inc. is a spin-off of Side Effects Software that markets a derivative of Houdini called TouchDesigner. Tailored toward real-time OpenGL-generated animation, it was used on rock group Rush's 30th Year Anniversary Tour to produce dynamic graphics driven directly by the musicians.
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