SideFX has officially released Houdini 22, bringing a broad set of new tools and workflow improvements across procedural modeling, character animation, VFX, look development, world building and rendering.
Houdini 22.0.368, the official Gold Release, became available on July 15, 2026. The new release focuses on making procedural workflows faster and more flexible while introducing new technologies such as Gaussian Splats, expanded Copernicus capabilities, new character tools powered by APEX, and significant improvements to Solaris and Karma.
Gaussian Splats Come to Houdini
One of the most notable additions in Houdini 22 is the expanded support for Gaussian Splats, a technology increasingly used for capturing and representing real-world environments and objects in 3D.
The new tools allow artists to work with Gaussian Splat data inside Houdini and integrate it into procedural workflows, opening new possibilities for environment creation, look development and visual effects.
This addition is particularly interesting for artists working with photogrammetry, real-world capture and emerging image-to-3D workflows.
Major Character Animation and Rigging Updates
Houdini 22 introduces a wide range of improvements to KineFX and APEX, strengthening Houdini's procedural approach to character production.
The new release provides reusable rig templates, enhanced retargeting and rig inversion tools, helping artists build and modify character rigs more efficiently. APEX-based tools also expand procedural rigging and deformation capabilities, including workflows for facial animation and complex character performances.
These improvements are designed to reduce setup time and create a more connected workflow between modeling, rigging and animation.
New Modeling Tools
Houdini 22 also expands its procedural modeling toolkit with several new tools designed to make common geometry workflows faster and more interactive.
Walk on Surface allows points and curves to move across meshes using directions, attributes or vector fields, providing new possibilities for modeling and effects workflows.
The new Curve Animate tool provides animated positions, tangents and topology changes with smooth interpolation, while Morph makes it possible to morph curve profiles without self-intersections.
SideFX has also continued to improve its procedural modeling and geometry workflows throughout the release.
Copernicus Expands Procedural Texturing and VFX
Copernicus receives one of the largest areas of development in Houdini 22.
The node-based image-processing environment has been expanded with a large collection of new tools for procedural texturing, terrain generation and visual effects. SideFX has added new procedural texture generators, including workflows for materials such as fabric, bark, rust and other surface details.
The release also introduces new tools for creating complex layered materials, including Weave and Knit generators.
For VFX artists, Copernicus also becomes more important with the continued development of GPU-accelerated workflows, including the new GPU Pyro framework. SideFX has expanded its Pyro tools to support faster procedural effects creation and more interactive workflows.
Terrain Generation Moves Further into Copernicus
Houdini 22 significantly changes the way artists can approach terrain creation by bringing height field workflows into Copernicus.
The new approach combines height fields with Copernicus' procedural image-processing capabilities, allowing artists to build and manipulate terrain using a unified node-based workflow.
New tools such as Height Field Strata can add layered geological detail, while new terrain recipes can generate detailed surfaces and textures from relatively simple procedural inputs.
This makes Houdini 22 particularly interesting for environment artists working on large-scale landscapes and procedural world building.
Solaris and Karma Improvements
Houdini 22 continues to develop Solaris as a central environment for USD-based world building, layout and look development.
New tools provide more flexible approaches to scattering and instancing large numbers of assets, while improvements to the Solaris workflow allow artists to manage complex environments more efficiently.
Houdini 22 also introduces new USD-related workflows directly within SOPs, allowing artists to organize USD hierarchies and manage layout transformations before moving into the traditional LOP-based Solaris environment.
Karma and Solaris also benefit from improvements aimed at making large and complex scenes more responsive during look development and layout.
A Major Architectural Update
Beyond new artist-facing tools, Houdini 22 introduces important changes to the software's underlying architecture.
SideFX has developed a new mathematics library designed to improve both performance and numerical stability across Houdini.
The application also introduces new memory allocators for different platforms, with the goal of improving performance while reducing memory consumption.
Another notable development is the introduction of a Linux ARM preview, opening the door for Houdini to run on ARM-based Linux systems. SideFX notes that this could be particularly interesting for cloud computing, where ARM architectures can offer potential advantages in energy efficiency and cost.
A Broader Procedural Pipeline
Rather than focusing on a single major feature, Houdini 22 represents a broad expansion of SideFX's procedural workflow across multiple areas of production.
Character artists gain more powerful KineFX and APEX tools, environment artists receive new terrain and world-building workflows, VFX artists benefit from expanded Copernicus and GPU-based tools, while modelers gain new procedural geometry and curve workflows.
At the same time, improvements to Solaris, Karma and Houdini's underlying architecture aim to make the entire production environment more efficient.
Conclusion
Houdini 22 is a substantial evolution of SideFX's procedural 3D platform, combining new technologies with improvements across almost every major stage of production.
From Gaussian Splats and Copernicus to APEX, KineFX, Solaris, Karma, procedural terrain and GPU-accelerated VFX, the release expands Houdini's capabilities while continuing SideFX's focus on procedural and highly customizable workflows.
Houdini 22.0.368 was officially released on July 15, 2026, making it approximately five and a half weeks old as of August 23, 2026.
Source: SideFX – What's New in Houdini 22
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