Weta Digital and SideFX to enhance cloud production with Houdini software

New Zealand's famous Weta Digital has announced together with its partner SideFX, a new software service. The new software service will combine Weta's proprietary tools within SideFX's award-winning Houdini application. This partnership, known as WetaH, will enable unprecedented levels of creativity that offer artists the ability to leverage the integration between Houdini and Weta Digital's award-winning technology.

SideFX is a world leader in procedural 3D animation and visual effects tools used in movies, games and commercials. Houdini is the industry standard. The WetaH collaboration will offer the best of Weta Digital's “Houdini Workflow Integrations and Extensions”. These integrations will include Weta Digital's Loki multiphysics solver and the high-performance computing paradigm, well known for their work in films such as Avengers: Endgame e Alita: Angelo della battaglia.

The WetaH partnership will have an immediate impact on Weta's cloud service, which is a new business unit “born as part of a vision to unite the industry's leading technology players”. The partnership between Weta Digital and SideFX serves to validate the importance of modern procedural workflows in today's visual effects pipelines.

The partnership of Weta Digital and SideFX has seen years of joint development work with a shared perspective that supports the incorporation of Houdini. This inclusion of Houdini is a fundamental part of Weta Digital's vision for the evolution of the entertainment industry.

“Partnering with SideFX was essential to realizing our vision for the cloud service, I can't imagine doing it without them,” says Prem Akkaraju, CEO of Weta Digital. "The industry is moving towards distributed architectures that will enable our cloud service model to reduce costly technology barriers, further enhancing the natural strength of Houdini node-based procedural workflows and overall market position."

WetaH has been designed and stress-tested by artists “serving the industry's most visionary storytellers” and will unlock the potential of Houdini and the Houdini Engine across the visual effects pipeline. WetaH will enter private beta in the fourth quarter alongside WetaM as part of the software service that Weta offers to the global entertainment industry.

Source: Weta Digital