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I found they had been very helpful and contributes greatly to research and study for my workflow. It allows me to quickly adjust my workflow in a hands-on way, avoid repeated mistakes, build more meaningful tools and methods, explore different frameworks, and gain clearer product definitions. I use NotebookLM to systematize my documents and notes, while employing GPT to explore frameworks and clarify scope, architecture, and pipelines. I also use Grok in a more conservative way, which I really appreciate. It helps me stay grounded and realistic by engaging with real-world data, surveys, audits, and measurements before moving into project planning. In that sense, Grok helps challenge assumptions and debate scope and definitions. Meanwhile, Claude is very useful for quietly assisting with hands-on tasks and helping produce practical tools that I can apply directly in manual workflows. I’ve also noticed some mismatches online when people discuss AI in the context of VFX and animation. Many conversations confuse generative AI (for images or video) with AI used for automation, reasoning, or workflow support. These are very different applications. In production environments, AI is often more useful for speeding up processes, reducing repeated mistakes, and helping frame the correct scope of a project. For technical and visual production, it’s important to clarify what type of AI we are actually referring to before discussing solutions. Doing so helps align both the questions and the answers, ensuring everyone is on the same page. This kind of clarity creates the constructive and energetic discussions that I always appreciate when engaging with the Houdini/Technical Art community. These things remind me of the Houdini community when I first tried to break in from scratch. There were many mysteries and untold details, sometimes things people preferred not to share, especially when there was no clear commercial benefit. Over time, I realized that sharing knowledge is actually a way for me to learn more myself. In reality, only a small number of people will truly understand these ideas and extract what is useful for their own workflows, allowing them to evolve. Meanwhile, AI is advancing rapidly, often faster than major corporations can fully realize. Because of that, I feel comfortable sharing new discoveries, while still valuing the importance of revisiting old topics, practicing fundamentals, and digging deeper into the foundations. In the end, strong fundamentals are what improve real understanding, not hype, marketing scam, or FOMO driven trends that produce flashy ideas but vanishes within weeks.

I've recently set up a full feather groom for a chicken character, I've been looking into the deform nodes - point deform, guide deform and feather deform and I'm struggling to get the feathers to follow the animated mesh. I have been following parts of  https://www.andreaskj.com/creating-and-animating-a-bird-in-houdini-solaris-feather-export-hda/ as well as the eagle example on side FX but I dont quite understand the workflow as it seems to be mostly for simulating the feathers themselves on a static mesh.  I'm having most trouble understanding the procedurals, with the above link he uses a HDA which has been very helpful but then mentions reimporting it back into sops animating and then importing back to LOPs, I dont quite understand this process and any insight would be super helpful! If anyone could help I would be much appreciated

i wish, more people would join this discussion  just to see the houdini arists perspective on it

KUVA is looking for a Senior Houdini FX TD and a 3D Layout Artist for a 3–4 month project starting immediately. FX TD Looking for a senior Houdini artist comfortable working in production pipelines. Required: Strong particles / pyro / volumes Experience creating stylised or magical FX Solaris / USD workflow Rendering with Karma or Redshift Pipeline-friendly approach to scene organisation and optimisation Bonus: Fulldome / immersive formats Gaussian splatting / point rendering workflows Layout Artist Required: Excellent 3D camera animation Strong cinematic composition Experience preparing scenes for lighting/render Bonus: Fulldome / immersive formats Remote friendly. Please send reel + day rate + availability to: steve@kuva.io

Hey Nicholas,  I have a method for creating an texture sheet using the contact sheet node. Its a bit manual at the moment but could be automated with a bit of python.  I go through the whole process of getting an fx texture sheet to a game engine but the bit your looking for is at around 18mins.  The next section is probably worth a look as well, I want to sanity check the texture sheet/atlas in houdini which also has a few small caveats. so probably from around 18mins to 27mins. Hope it helps.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAFlnx8YVjE&t=1565s