Digital Assets

In a typical production environment, scenes are built up of varous assets such as sets, props, characters, lights and cameras. The management of these elements can be a daunting task as these assets mix and match between different shots. Many artists will be working with the assets and they must be maintained throughout the production process.

Houdini lets technical directors build assets as custom tools, each with their user interface, then store these in Operator Type Libraries (OTLs) that can be put into the production pipeline for use by artists and animators.

Creating these assets is possible in Houdini at all levels. You can have a custom SOP, SHOP, POP, or COP. You can even set up custom VOPs. In the following lessons the focus is on Digital Assets at the Object level, although the concepts are similar for custom tools throughout Houdini. Object-level Assets can also contain other network types using the network-within-network capabilities.

To learn about Digital Assets, you can work through the following lessons:

Working with Digital Assets - In this lesson, you will install an OTL then work with its custom tools to explore what the artist sees when working with a Houdini digital asset.

Creating an Object-level Asset - In this lesson, you will create the same tool you were working with in the previous lesson. You will learn how to package up the related Operators then create an Operator Type and build the custom user interface.

Creating a Character Asset - In this lesson, you will create a simple character animation Asset. You will package up the bones and the kinematic CHOPs as an Operator Type. You will also learn how you can use the Pose tool with the asset to take advantage of that tools handles and controls.

Managing Operator Type Libraries - In this lesson, you will learn how Operator Type Libraries are created and installed. You will also learn how to create Libraries that will always be installed.