Houdini Node

The source code for this project can be found at
https://github.com/luxalpa/houdini-node

Motivation

For my game, I wanted to test certain physics related libraries and functions. I like using Houdini as a debugging tool (and editor). So the idea was to have inputs coming from Houdini itself, then my own code would generate and animate some Geo, then send it back to Houdini so I could study the results.

Implementation

The project was fairly straight forward to build. There is a Python-based SOP node that collects the input geometry with its attributes, transforms it into JSON, and then calls the user-provided executable, passing this JSON object in. In the Rust code for the executable, all the inputs and geometry types are specified in a type-safe way, and a proc macro handles the serialization and deserialization process for various types (like matrices, vectors, strings, etc). Then it serializes the result back into JSON, which is then parsed by the former Python script to present the result in Houdini.

Future

The project is pretty much complete. I am using it internally for testing various components on my game individually, in particular the complex interactions required for my creatures procedural animations.