Houdini Apprentice 10.0.295

Houdini combines superior performance and dramatic, new ease-of-use functionality to deliver a powerful and accessible 3D animation experience to CG professionals everywhere.
Built from the ground up with a particular focus on performance, Houdini for Mac supports 64-bit Intel Macs running OS X Leopard.
Houdini for Mac looks and feels like a Mac application with key features such as a standard Mac menu bar, a window menu on Houdinis Dock icon and drag and drop support.
Quicktime support has also been added on the Mac, as well as on LINUX and Windows.
Autodesk FBX Export
Houdini Master and Escape now include Autodesk FBX export providing a clear in/out path for customers working with packages such as Autodesk Maya or Autodesk 3ds Max. This is an important interoperability feature and will make it easier for studios to integrate Houdini with their other software.
Houdini 9.5s FBX export supports geometry, lights, cameras, animation, hierarchies, skeletons, weighted skins, UVs, geometry caches, particles, and dynamic simulations. Houdinis FBX import, which was introduced with Houdini 9.1, now supports NURBS.
General Interoperability
Houdini 9.5 also includes Adobe Illustrator and eps import in support of motion graphic artists. Houdini 9.5 also supports .MDD output for exchanging baked point position animations with Lightwave. Artists can also use the Point Oven plug-in to use the .MDD files in other applications such as XSI, Autodesk Maya, Autodesk 3ds Max, or Messiah.
Ramps
A new "all-purpose" Ramp parameter type has been added to help artists build shaders and control effects such as particles or L-systems. The generic Ramp and Float parameter types let artists set up parameters using a visual interface that includes keyframable markers that can be easily added or removed. The ramp is then mapped to an influencing factor like time, direction in U, or lifespan to create the desired result.
These two parameter types can be set up in VOPS to add a ramp interface to a shader or added to any node using the Edit Parameter interface.
Fracture and Debris Tools
One of Houdinis most popular features, especially for superhero movies, is the ability for pre-fractured rigid bodies to be glued together until impacted by a dynamic force. To make it easier to pre-fracture your models, Houdini 9.5 includes the Shatter and Break tools that split up your model into solid chunks. These tools are great time-savers and make it even more fun to smash things up in Houdini.
A Debris tool has also been added that uses the broken edges of a fractured object to emit particles into the dynamic simulation. You can use these particles for dust or debris to add an extra level of realism to your effects.
Wave Tools
A series of new tools have been introduced to streamline the workflow for creating a particle fluids-based wave. By modeling a container and then applying a Waveform deformer to the waters surface, you can quickly generate a particle fluid simulation that has the motion of the wave pre-determined. With the resulting network you can either render out the results or go back and tweak parameters and rewire nodes to get the exact look that you want.
Fire and Smoke Tools
Houdini 9.5 includes a new fire simulation system and shelf tools to make it easier to set up these fluid effects. When you set animated objects on fire, Houdini now lets you dynamically change the bounds of fluid simulations mid-simulation by tracking the moving object. For smoke, it is much easier to add shader-based noise that moves through the fluid in a natural manner.
Fur Workflow
To make fur much easier for TDs and even animators to set up, Houdini 9.5 includes new shelf tools that reduce the number of steps involved and provide users with all the control they need to build a sophisticated fur system quickly and easily.
For TDs, the CVEX code used to create styling and clumping rules for the fur can now be built using Houdinis node-based VOP network. This makes it easier to work interactively without having to write code.
Note: The fur shelf tools are not available in the initial public beta release � please look for them in the coming weeks.
Viewport Shadows and OpenGL 2 Support
Lighting artists can turn on viewport shadows to help position lights in the viewport. Now key lighting decisions can be made interactively without relying on test renders. This ability is tied to Houdinis OpenGL2 support which also lets you view scenes interactively using hand-coded OpenGL2 shaders.
Digital Assets
Houdini 9.5 now includes the ability to make nodes inside locked Digital Assets editable. This makes it possible for nodes such as Paint or Edit to be available for artists as they work with a particular asset. This feature was driven by customer demand and makes Digital Assets even more valuable in production.
Volume Utility Nodes
Houdini 9 introduced a new volume rendering system. In Houdini 9.5, that system has been enhanced with a number of TD-level tools that give artists greater control when linking DOP Simulation data with Geometry SOPs. It is now possible to directly build, modify, mix and combine geometry (point clouds, particles, etc) with volumes and back again. Many of these new tools were developed to better support the advancements to fire and smoke in Houdini 9.5.
Wedge Render Output
The Wedge ROP (render output operator) provides an invaluable productivity enhancement which lets artists render out multiple iterations of a shot using randomly generating parameter values, much like photographers use bracketing to explore exposure variations. Other uses of this utility are the ability to bake out geometry sequences or compositing networks using wedged values. The values used can be referenced then added to the name of the output files or burned into the image for reference in dailies.
The Script SOP
The Script SOP is a stand-alone node that has long been requested by customers in production. Houdini can now execute scripts at the point when this node evaluates or "cooks." Previously the Logic CHOP was the only means directly available to do this. The Script SOP is very lightweight because it simply passes data through without caching it. You can rewire networks, add operators, or do anything possible with Python or Hscript just by just forcing this operator to cook.
System requirements:
- Requires 64-bit Intel-based Mac
Memory:
- 1 GB required
- 2-4 GB+ recommended
- Multiprocessor systems should be configured with additional RAM
- Houdini supports multiprocessor compositing and rendering
Processor:
- Recent generation 32 or 64-bit AMD or Intel processor (requires SSE or higher)
- Houdini supports MMX and Streaming SIMD (SSE2) where present
Disk Space:
- 500 MB required for installation
Input Devices:
- 3 Button mouse required
- Scroll wheel used where present
- Wacom tablet recommended for Houdinis brush-based tools
Graphics Card:
- Workstation-class OpenGL graphics card (such as NVidia and ATI)
- Graphic Card drivers: NVidia: 169 or higher, ATI: 8.44 or higher.
- Minimum resolution: 1024 x 768; Recommended resolution: 1920 x 1200 (widescreen)
- Color depth of 16-bit+ required with 32-bit+ ("true color") recommended
- Requires support for OpenGL 1.2 or later; Takes advantage of OpenGL 2.0 support if available;
- Hardware-accelerated OpenGL required for optimum performance
- Performance may suffer with complex scenes on non-workstation graphics cards and on laptops
- Houdini does not require support for Direct3D (all viewports and interfaces use OpenGL)
Other:
- Sound card and speakers/headset required for audio
- Class C network (TCP/IP) recommended for floating licenses
- Network support required for offline simulation, batch processing and rendering
- Internet browser required for connection to www.sidefx.com (Houdini Exchange and Forum)
- Video encoder required for creating AVI/QT/etc.

Version restrictions:
- Watermark on the resulting files.
- Non-commercial file format.
- Maximum render resolution of 720x576.

Enhancements
- Designed to make artists more productive while equipping studios with the most powerful tools in the industry, Houdini 10 is destined to become a must-have release for 3D artists everywhere.
- With Houdini 10 VFX artists can create high quality smoke and fire with the new Pyro FX tools. Utilizing cutting edge up-resing technology, Pyro FX makes it possible to create a low resolution simulation in planning out a shot, then increase the resolution on subsequent passes to add higher level of details and refinement. Pyro FX comes with several pre-made Pyro FX such as Billowy smoke and Fireball to give artists a head start when setting up a simulation.
- Many more features.