SideFX has presented the Houdini 21 keynote at SIGGRAPH 2025.
KineFX rigging and animation introduces a motion mixer, clip catalog, and an Autorig Builder, with an updated muscle system designed for simpler setups. The company confirmed that MetaHumans can now be imported into Houdini using a plugin developed with Epic Games.
The Copernicus framework now includes a sparse GPU Pyro FX solver, interactive handles, reaction diffusion effects, and texture baking solutions, which are also available in Karma. Terrain tools add an erosion node and extended use of Copernicus for heightfields.
Solaris introduces Shot Builder tools and live rendering in the gallery, while Karma supports Hydra 2 and Gaussian Splats. Houdini 21 now offers production-ready Vulkan support, including real-time ambient occlusion and geometry lights, alongside MoltenVK support for macOS.
VFX updates feature preset recipes for Pyro FX and improvements to the MPM solver. Houdini 21 also includes built-in machine learning tools covering style transfer, skin and tissue deformation, point cloud surfacing, and Pyro uprezing, with complete node setups for training on custom datasets.
Houdini 21 is scheduled for release in late August.
For more information, watch the full keynote on YouTube.
