The world's greatest Houdini resource; Odforce.net

http://odforce.net/


Go there and check out the Houdini Ocean Toolkit downloads...

L System; The Algorithmic Beauty Of Plants

Here is a high quality PDF of this book;
http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/abop/abop.pdf

You might want to tour that site for many of the other articles on this matter;
http://algorithmicbotany.org/papers/

After struggling with Luke Moore's Python Tips and Tricks for half the day...

Houdini 11 now has PTex Support

This is pretty good news if you're into 3d Coat and you're already into PTex from Pixar. This means you're not stuck having to go to Renderman Pro Studio 15 for your renders. Mantra will do the job. Excellent.

Check out PTex over at 3d Coat. It's pretty cool stuff.


http://vimeo.com/channels/3dctraining

Developed by Brent Burley at Disney Animation Studios, Ptex generated a ton of buzz a couple years ago with its simple promise: no more UVs and no more headaches. It was like someone saying “self-cleaning apartment”—everyone wanted in. With Ptex, textures are parametrically stored per polygonal face and there are no visible seams.  The famous drool-worthy image released by Disney showed Ptex's automatic and seamless texture coordinate system in action:


After Ptex was made open source last year, it was simply a matter of time before it made it into packages. Here at Siggraph 2010, it's clear that time has finally come. First came to Pixar's PRMan 15, then 3D-Coat support for Ptex arrived a couple months ago, and Houdini 11 added Ptex support with yesterday's release. Wednesday, Pixar and Autodesk reps were also showing demos of a Mudbox alpha with Ptex. The Foundry's Mari (the texture painting app that was used for Avatar) also has some Ptex integration in Mari 1.0.


Alan Warren seems to already be working with PTex in Mantra;
http://www.alan-warren.com/category/demo-reel/

Note the "ptexmake" node at the bottom of his network..

If anybody knows more about this please post whatever you can about PTex implementation in Houdini.

http://www.cgrecord.net/2010/07/houdini-11-is-now-available-with-ptex.html

Houdini Python Masterclass Siggraph2008; How to program Hou9.5 with Python

http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to-program-houdini-9-5-with-python-297067/

3d Fractals with Mandelbulb

2d fractals are amazing but 3d fractals are just crazy. Now you too can explore 3d fractals with this very cool app. It's full of functionality so you'll never get bored exploring into the beyond.

http://www.fractalforums.com/index.php?action=downloads;sa=downfile&id=13

Have fun but don't forget to take out the garbage and scrub your toilet with bleach or your apartment will start to smell bad.

Peter Quint Houdini Tutorials on VIMEO

       
http://vimeo.com/14508661

Peter goes through a lot of different subjects in Houdini here in a clear and articulate style. Once again, if you register and go to the lower right hand side of the web page you can use DownThemAll or something else to rip the higher resolution versions to disk.

Python Masterclass on Vimeo for Houdini

http://vimeo.com/14612897

You can download it to disk at full 700mb size if you get a free registration with Vimeo and then go to the lower right hand side of the web page and right click on the link to the hi res download. I used DownThemAll plug in for Firefox to do that.

What better way to start Python than with Bucky's tutorials at You Tube?

 

I think there's over 30 of them on You Tube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Mf0h3HphEA

Bucky's a great teacher and keeps things simple 

 

The Houdini Python Student's Blog

Yes we're open for business.
We want to learn Houdini and how to tap into it's immense and arcane alchemical powers with Python scripting. This site is about sharing information.
It started with HOU DINI and me talking and now we invite patar3d, x-angel, BigFoot, Sinister and Titor. Are you interested? Send in your e-mail throw away addy and get on the list.

Saving your work in the XLM Python City tutorial is perplexing..

What a clusterfuck it is to save your work in this tutorial. There's two kinds of files being saved..

There's all these OTL files that build up in your USER USERS MYDOCUMENTS FOLDERS with automatic saves
These will change the nature of your main saved .HIP file no matter when it was saved..


So if you're writing the code and you screw it up and you want to revert to an earlier save .HIP file, you're out of luck.
those OTL file autosaves will update your saved .HIP file so now it contains all your screwed up code. So solly! you've got to start
again.
So what I'm doing now is I'm cutting and pasting the entire page of code to a new tab in Notepad++ and saving each tab in its turn so I'll be able to just go back to the Notepad++ and copy paste it back into my Code page when I need to.


But then I'm a noob so what do I know? Lots to learn here as I'm struggling to get a handle on Houdini and Python simultaneously..