This is the MUST HAVE for anyone using Python in Houdini.
In this extensive and intensive course you'll learn years and years of accumulated knowledge experience and experimentation using Python with Houdini.

This course is amazing, this is the course I wish I had when I started doing Python in Houdini and full of everything you need to know to really Master Python in Houdini.
The Material included in this course has taken years and years of development, experimentation and research and I'm not afraid to say this is the most COMPLETE Python course in Houdini ever made.

This course is great for Pipeline development, Tools development, Custom UI development even geometry creation.
Python is so well integrated in Houdini that there is a lot you can do to customize it and make it work for you, that plus the knowledge in this course and there is really nothing you can do.

TOTAL DURATION: 8:30 Hours

4k 60 fps quality for crisp image on any device.

About the author

Topics you will learn

Environment set up for better development experience
How to use help , Variables and Conditionals
What is HOM and create a Object Loader Custom Tool
Build a Material Translator
Create Custom UI Tools
Learn how to use Python in HDA'S
Create a Python Panel and Custom Menus
Develop a custom Json Importer from scratch

What you will be learning in each chapter

01 - Environment Setup

Before we start coding we need to setup our environment so we are all in the same track.

02 - Help, variables and listing nodes

In this lesson we'll learn where can we consult the Python help, learn about variables and how simple they are in Python, types, lists, etc. We also look at how to interact with Houdini by getting node information, type and children.

03 - HOM, OBJ loader custom tool

We take a look at the Houdini Object Module (HOM) and the we create an OBJ Loader tool from scratch, this will teach you to use file selection dialog, expanding variables, creating, connecting and arranging nodes and a few more things.
Please TYPE ALL THE CODE yourself, that will make for a better learning experience, not typing the code is basically the same as not even watching the lesson, code doesn't stick like that.

04 - Material Translator

Hello, this week we will be doing some PIPELINE work, this is something you would do as a pipeline developer, translating shaders from one render to another is something really helpful, objects can have thousands of shaders and nobody wants to do that by hand, so Let's Script it.

05 - Custom UIs part 01

One very EXCITING part of Python integration in Houdini is the ability create custom interfaces using PySide, a "version" of the Qt Framework for Python, this is the same methods and libraries used by the SideFX developers to create the Rigging, Character Chooser and Pose Library panes and a few other parts of the Houdini interface, which it self is built on top of the Qt Framework.

06 Custom UIs part 2

This week we finish the Custom Attribute manager we are building, we will learn how to extract attributes and attribute values from points in Houdini and how to populate the data table with the extracted data.

07 Python in HDAs

This is a topic I have had a lot of requests for and is finally here. We are going to add code to our HDA, where do we put it and how does it run? all that you'll learn after you watched this lesson.

08 - Custom Python Pane and Custom menus

This week we'll learn how to embed our previous created widget into a Houdini pane, this gives us the ability to have it in the Houdini UI and even save it as part of the desktop, you can use this for any of your custom tools you need to develop. We will also look into adding custom menus and entries in the main Houdini menu to better integrate your tools into Houdini making it seamless.

09 - JSON Custom Importer part 1

This week well build a custom importer for Houdini to import JSON files that describe a scene, this is common practice at some studios since they write their own tools and/or want to move data across multiple applications. For our example we'll use the Moana Island Scene that Disney released, this is a production asset so is great data to build out importer with.

10 - Json Importer part 2

This week well continue building our custom importer, specifically the geometry generation, all the palm fronds are only point coordinates that make up curves so we will rebuild them and apply their width attribute to realize them as they came from the original application. Python is not considered "fast" to create geometry, but as you'll see it is really fast to create thousands of curves in a few seconds.

For our example we'll use the Moana Island Scene that Disney released, this is a production asset so is great data to build out importer with.

Enjoy Week 10 and congrats if you made it this far!

Bites of Python