Houdini

Houdini's USD implementation, codenamed Solaris, is one of the most easy to use and "getting started to USD" entry points currently on the market.

We highly recommend grabbing a free-for-private use copy of Houdini via the SideFX website.

Houdini offers an extensive tool set around USD, often exposing common API calls as easy to use nodes. It therefore is also a great way to get started with the USD API, as the terminology is the same.

In this guide's Houdini section we focus on the production related side of USD. That means we cover things like:

• How to best approach USD in Houdini, what to expect from a artist vs pipeline perspective
• What Houdini handles differently to using native bare-bone USD
• Typical pitfalls in common production scenarios
• Optimizing HDAs and geometry import/export