I've been playing around with Houdini 20's new APEX feature ever since I tried out the chicken rig that was made with APEX (one of SideFX's APEX demo projects). APEX is very powerful! I was already obsessed with KineFX in Houdini, APEX is like the cherry on top of the ice cream, completing the whole animation job. What I use to try to do in KineFX is now very simple and easy in APEX. Join me in a Live Stream and I'll show you what I've learned and what NOT to do when dealing with APEX. I'll also show you what I've been working on, brushing up some of my zbrush sculpting skills and rigging it in Houdini with KineFX and building Control Rigs using APEX! Then add simulations just because we can!

I use a new character that I've made to show case how to setup the animate and setup the IK Controls utilizing all the Basic Concept videos up until now in this Kine-FX mini-series for Houdini! There's a lot of new tips and tricks within this video that are only available in this video, that will help you rig & animate characters in Houdini using Kine-FX!

we'll explore how the Full Body IK node in Houdini is used for quick character animations for long chains of rigged bones. This workflow is especially useful for animating with tails, fingers, ropes, tentacles, or anything that has a long chain of bones.

I go over another technique you can use for Rig Posing with Houdini's KineFX system. By Layering the Full Body IK nodes and organize the rig poses into groups, it will make our Character Posing tasks a lot more efficient. Non-destructive rig posing! We can take this to a new level and tackle some more complex character poses that involves more limbs and requires more adjustments.

I demonstrate how we can use what has been taught up until now with Houdini's Kine-FX techniques and character rig posing to create a scene where the Octopus grabs onto a balloon. The Kine-FX is combined with some tricks in the viewport and Vellum Simulation to make the wrinkles in the balloon and make our lives easier rather than modeling the wrinkles manually. I hope this will inspire more ideas for future projects of your own!

I demonstrate how priority can be added to the IK Control Bones and tell Houdini’s Kine-FX system which bones should be followed more closely than others. This will allow us more control over posing the characters and makes posing much easier!

We start digging deeper into Houdini's Kine-FX world by introducing the IK Full Body node. You're going to love this node! It makes character posing so much easier! And if you use the workflow I suggest in the video, you'll find that you don't need any bone remapping at all!

A very super simple introduction for those that have never touched KineFX in Houdini before. This video is meant to be very simple and if you have any experience with KineFX, you should probably skip to the next KineFX Animation Basic Concept #2 IK Controls.

Explore some of the new features of Houdini 19 with example HIP files and a look at the Vellum Unified Multi-Solver, Curve node, KineFX Key Post Extraction, and Pyro.