Procedural Biped Generation in Houdini by Rohan Dalvi

Want to build your own characters in Houdini? This course walks you through creating a fully customizable biped, complete with automatic bone generation and parenting. You’ll learn how to easily pose and rig your creations, and even use the system to build cool robots.

🎯 What you’ll learn

• Construct a procedural bipedal character in Houdini.
• Implement auto bone generation and parenting for easy posing and rigging.
• Create customizable torso geometry with adjustable controls.
• Build arm and leg rigs and integrate them into the main biped system.
• Set up basic full-body IK for posing.
• Utilize the biped system to generate robot characters.

✅ Requirements

• Skills: Intermediate understanding of Houdini workflows.
• Tools: Houdini 19 or later.
• Hardware: A standard computer capable of running Houdini.

📝 Description

This training dives into the creation of a procedural biped system within Houdini. You’ll learn to build a character from the ground up, starting with the spine and progressively adding arms, legs, and a head. The course emphasizes creating a flexible system where you can easily adjust the torso geometry and automatically generate bones for rigging. We’ll cover merging all the parts together and setting up a basic full-body IK system for posing. To showcase the system’s versatility, we’ll also demonstrate how to build a complete robot by repurposing the biped structure, including a procedural robot using a kitbash library (note: the kitbash library itself is commercial and not included). The training includes hip files for reference.

🧑‍🎓 Who this course is for

• 3D artists looking to master procedural character generation in Houdini.
• Technical directors and riggers interested in building flexible and customizable character systems.
• Houdini users who want to expand their knowledge of procedural modeling and rigging.

🧑‍🏫 About the Author

Rohan Dalvi is a seasoned 3D artist and educator known for his in-depth tutorials on Houdini. He has a strong background in VFX and procedural workflows, with experience in creating complex digital assets and systems. Rohan is passionate about sharing his knowledge and empowering artists to leverage the power of Houdini for their creative projects.

🏁 Final Result

By the end of this course, you will have a fully functional, procedural biped model in Houdini that you can easily customize, pose, and rig. You’ll also have the foundational knowledge to create robotic characters and other complex procedural assets.