Gazificator for SideFX Houdini documentation.

Gazificator is yet another sparse fluid simulator for smokes and fires. The real data is contained within tiles (bricks, buckets, boxes, leaves, to the name of it) where each tile is composed of traditional voxels (32^3).

Gazificator can solve its stuff both on GPU (currently green only) and CPU, and do runtime fallback from GPU to CPU on memory shortage without interruption.

Installation

Hardware and software requirements are the following:

  • Houdini:

    19.5+

  • Operating system:

    Windows: 10, 1803 (April 2018+), Nvidia Driver 560+
    Linux: Glibc 2.28+ (Rocky 8), Nvidia Driver 550+

  • Hardware:

    CPU: AVX-2 Capable (i7-4xxx/Ryzen 1xxx)
    GPU: (CUDA-Capable) Ampere Generation (RTX 3xxx)

Download and extract the content of the archive somewhere you wish to contain it. If you have default installation location of Houdini and a regular OS distro (Win/Rocky/Ubuntu), to automatically create and place the package (link) file do the following:

Run the MOUNT_THIS_WORKGROUP_WIN_HXX.X.cmd where XX.X is your working Houdini version”. It may be required to run as administrator.

In terminal, navigate to the extracted folder:
cd /path/to/extracted/archive

Then type:
chmod +x ./MOUNT_THIS_WORKGROUP_LINUX_HXX.X.sh
where replace XX.X with working Houdini version.

Finally, type:
./MOUNT_THIS_WORKGROUP_LINUX_HXX.X.sh

Manual Installation


In case of some weird linux distro or non-default installation, you have to manually copy the GAZIFICATOR.json file to the Houdini packages directory, Refer to the related documentation on the subject.

Then, in the copied .json file modidy the first line "GAZ_INFRA_FOLDER": "PUT_HERE_THIS_FOLDER_PATH_SO_IT_ENDS_WITH_Gazificator_XXX" so PUT_HERE_THIS_FOLDER_PATH_SO_IT_ENDS_WITH_Gazificator_XXX is replaced with path to the extracted archive.

If everything is correct, when you launch Houdini next time, you should be able to locate the Gazificator shelf (press the + button at the left of default shelves, then go to Shelves -> Gazificator). ADD_SHELF

Quick Start

From the Gazificator shelf, press the Examples icon, select any preset, and double-click. This will create a basic node chain to replicate what is shown.

Licensing


Press the Settings icon on the Gazificator shelf -> Manage Licenses. In this window you have access to your Serial ID, which is required for License key generation.
SYS_ID
If you aquired the Node-locked License key, then press the Add License button, paste key and press OK.

If you aquired the Floating License key, you first should download and start the Floating License Server. Then, go Gazificator shelf -> Manage Licenses and press the Add Server button, paste the IP:PORT address of your running server here.