Description:
Digital assets are at the center of everyday use of Houdini. You've probably created an HDA and also uploaded some of them created by others. The purpose of this course is to analyze what makes HDA good, and how you can apply these concepts to create more robust digital assets. As a sequel to HOU140 – Houdini FX Tool Building Foundation, this intermediate course involves some basic knowledge about Houdini and how HBA works.
The whole course revolves around a realistic production scenario that involves creating a digital asset to create a shingles on various buildings. At the first classes, it will be told about the creation of a user interface and some methods of creating more convenient HDA will be presented. The following classes will continue to develop, improving the performance and time of its iteration of the HDA, as well as advanced methods for organizing internal HDA components, checking input attributes and checking errors, documenting and debugging.
The last part of the course will consider tips for updating the HDA and introduce 2 new methods of automating tests that check the integrity of HDA by making a comparison of geometry and rendering in Python. In recent classes, several more tips and Python techniques will be considered, which can be applied to the HDA, which will lead to the completion of the tile generator project. By the end of this course, you will learn enough methods to create better, more reliable and convenient HDA.
Geronimo Maggie began his career as a universal 3D specialist and has worked with Houdini for the last 8 years as a FX TD on feature films. He worked for several years in the field of education teaching Houdini, and currently works in the animation studio of Walt Disney as the CEO.

Course program
Class 1: What makes HDA good?
This first lesson will present a project that will be used as an example throughout the course, and also explains the installation for creating a tile that needs to be turned into a digital asset. After that, attention will shift to learning what makes HDA good, and getting a new look at how best to approach the HDA process.

Class 2: User interface
This lesson will tell you about the new dialog box to create HDA in Houdini 19.5 and how best to use the namespaces and versions. After that, the installation of the tile will begin to be converted into a digital asset using all the concepts studied in the previous session. The focus will be on creating a user interface by promoting parameters and studying best practices, tips and techniques that make the user interface compact, organized and easy to use.

Class 3: Organization of internal device, part 1
The next step is to clean up the HDA. This class will cover best practices, such as using internal attributes to avoid conflict with existing ones, a clear description of HDA attributes, and support for all existing attributes and topology. Most of these concepts will be first applied with a new HDA utility to remove primitives based on their area or perimeter.

Class 4: Organization of internal organs, part 2
Continuing concepts from the last class, it will consider explicit reading of input attributes, not just assuming them, as well as other smaller details that can be added to the HDA to make them even more user-friendly. The class will continue to study how to improve performance with a performance monitor, and finally it will consider several methods to allow the use of workflows that will improve the HDA response to speed up the iteration.

Class 5: Knot tab and error check
This class will begin by studying how to use geometry guide, message nodes, and DeD HDA tab parameters. Further, a very important step in creating a digital asset is to verify the correctness of entering all the necessary data. This may include checking the presence of an attribute, the correct type or class, and the correct type of input geometry. The lesson will examine the input check technique and the bug reporting methods in a more convenient form so that users can better understand why HDA is not working.

Class 6: Debugging and documentation
When it comes to creating an HDA, it is often forgotten about the documentation. This class will consider advanced HDA documentation methods using the Houdini Wiki markup, the organization of nodes using stickers and comments to nodes, as well as commenting on codes and Python. Some of the best methods of creating visualizers will also be considered, which can be easily accessed in the future when debugging.

Class 7: Update and maintenance
HDA is constantly evolving. Whether it's an error or a new feature, digital assets will definitely change. This class will review advanced HDA update methods. Digital tile asset will be updated to become more flexible and include some additional features. The lesson will review HDA, adding and removing new features and parameters, as well as implications for the end user.

Class 8: Testing
This class will talk about the importance of HDA testing and how it can be applied in the context of digital assets. It will talk about how to create and run tests, as well as their importance when making changes to HDA. Various methods of creating and automating tests will be presented by comparing rendering and geometry in Python.

Class 9: Scenarios
This tutorial will discuss some of the use options for HDA for HDA, such as menu scripts, back call back and caching. It will consider examples of event feedback calls, how to create your own menu script and how to cach menu data to improve HDA performance. Finally, it will cover the creation of a user tab menu tool that can create multiple nodes.

Class 10: Completion of the project
In this final class, we will look at the completion of the project and the use of HDA, created in all previous lessons, for the final creation of tiles that will be used in final rendering. Finally, it will cover the shading and rendering of the project.

Manufacturer's website: https://www.fxphd.com/details/654/