Continuing with its six-month cycle of upgrades, Toronto’s Side Effects software has unveiled Houdini 2.0, its next generation 3D digital animation software package.

Launched in August at SIGGRAPH ’97 in l.a. and in Toronto at a demonstration for industry types on Oct. 8, the 2.0 version of Houdini has a myriad of new features and improvements while maintaining what Side Effects director of marketing and sales Richard Hamel calls Houdini’s different and innovative approach to cgi, ‘procedural animation.’

Likening the advance to the nonlinear revolution in picture editing, or to the difference between a calculator and a spreadsheet, Hamel says, ‘We’ve pushed the procedural paradigm, the animator drives the work flow. There is no order or set way to do it as the network is alive or dynamic and recognizes if you make changes and cascades those changes through the program.’

The 2.0 version of Houdini remains user-friendly, with a ‘clicky’ graphical user interface and a quick ramp-up time that allows novice users to begin animating and modeling very quickly.

One of the beta testers of the upgrade from Chromocyde, Toronto, reported picking up the software’s ‘surface-pasting’ feature without the aid of documentation.

Hamel calls the surface-pasting aspect one of the upgrade’s most innovative techniques. Allowing animators to add detail to a base model by pasting features seamlessly to it in a hierarchical fashion, Hamel uses the example of pasting finely detailed features such as eyes, ears and a nose onto a premodeled head without having to refine the head’s surface. ‘Surface pasting allows animators to work with a light model, which saves time and money,’ says Hamel.

Other new enhancements to the interface include a four-view modeler, new skeletal-capturing and deformation tools, and an advanced OpenGL display support for transparent objects and projected spotlights as well as true 3D lens flare capabilities.

Side Effects has been developing 3D animation software since 1987, first with Prisms and now Houdini, and claims to be among the top three software makers in popularity by users of 3D animation software on workstation platform.

Toronto shops using Houdini include Spin, Axyz Animation and Dan Krech Productions. Houdini was used by Sony Pictures Imageworks to create the opening sequence for the feature Contact and DreamWorks skg, Digital Domain and Sega are on Side Effects’ American client list.

Side Effects is also planning to port Houdini to the Windows nt platform to expose the product to more people, but its $15,000 plus $3,000 character tools package price tag may restrict some non-professionals from purchasing the 3D modeling, animation and 2D compositing software.

2.0 is the third version of Houdini in 13 months. The next upgrade, 2.5 for Silicon Graphics workstations and Windows nt, is due in January.