80 Level Ratings: Best YouTube Channels With Houdini Tutorials

This time we have prepared a list of YouTube channels with free Houdini tutorials (both beginner-friendly and advanced) for those of you who want to learn more about creating 3D visuals.

1) Houdini

There is truly no better way to learn how to use Houdini than to follow tutorials from its developer. You can find lots of detailed step-by-step explanations of various Houdini tools prepared by different 3D artists such as Simon Verstraete, Mikael Pettersén, Jeff Wagner, and others. What makes these tutorials unbeatable is that you can download project files and play with them as you watch the breakdown. In the tutorials, you can clearly see the process of creation of a certain scene at a natural speed, without any leaps and skips so you can easily follow them. Whether you are looking for guides on creating destructions, using Houdini Engine, or designing procedural buildings, Houdini's YouTube channel has got all of this and more.

2) Entagma

Even though the channel is not entirely dedicated to Houdini, most of the tutorials you will find there are Houdini-related. Entagma has an amazing beginner-friendly course called "Houdini in Five Minutes" that consists of 20 5-minute videos on the basics of the app. The first tutorial explains the structure of Houdini so that you can develop a better understanding of what you see on the screen and where you can find the most important tools you are going to be using most of the time. Manuel Casasola Merkle and Moritz Schwind, the creators of Entagma, take you all the way from Houdini's attributes to rendering. Every tutorial has a project file you can download to carry out your own Houdini experiments.

3) Doxia Studio

Doxia Studio has an entire playlist on Houdini that will help you create stunning visuals. This channel is the right choice for you if you are looking for detailed breakdowns on how to create cloth and different kinds of fluids in Houdini as Doxia has got a great variety of tutorials on these topics. Doxia's creator Luís Almeida also talks a lot about working with particles in Houdini. This YouTube channel is an awesome source of information if you are getting into Vellum as a great deal of Doxia Studio's tutorials cover object simulation using this framework.

4) Nine Between

Ah, if only someone told you "Hey, Houdini isn't scary!" when you were just stepping into the horrifying black hole of unknown tools that do weird things. Well, this is Nine Between's motto when it comes to Houdini tutorials. "Houdini Isn't Scary" is a series of 20-minute videos on the basics of using the app that covers objects, lighting, rendering, and other essential components of working in Houdini. Every tutorial contains a simple step-by-step explanation and a downloadable project file to help you understand the lesson better. "Houdini Isn't Scary" is very beginner-friendly and, to quote one of the users, "is by far the greatest series of Houdini tutorials for newbies".

5) Indie-Pixel

Indie-Pixel is almost entirely dedicated to Houdini and has a great variety of beginner and advanced tutorials on how to use the app. You can begin by watching the "Houdini Basics" playlist where Indie-Pixel's creator talks about textures and materials, exporting stuff from Houdini, working with digital assets, etc. Then you can proceed to watch the "Houdini 18" series where you take a deep dive into Python in Houdini. Here you can also find tutorials on procedural modeling, using Vellum, and creating shelf tools. Indie-Pixel's channel is your best choice if you're planning to learn more about Python scripting in Houdini as it has perhaps the most detailed explanation of how to tame Python in the app.

6) CG Artist Academy

Abhinendra Chauhan, the creator of the channel, is a VFX artist so if you are looking to learn more about the art of making stunning visuals in Houdini, this is the right choice for you. "Houdini Tutorials" series contains 14 tutorials on creating various effects like water droplets, floating cloth, peel-off motion, and others. Abhinendra covers every step of the process from sculpting the main object to creating the effect and playing around with settings. The tutorials are pretty straightforward and easy to follow and for some of them, project files are provided. What is more, there are also some Blender and Maya tutorials on the channel as well.

7) Simon Houdini

The name of the channel speaks for itself — it has plenty of Houdini tutorials for users who already know the basics of working in the app. With Simon's tutorials, you can learn how to generate houses, use rope and cable tools, create stylized environments for games, and use nodes wisely. You might recognize the voice of the creator if you have already watched a few tutorials on Houdini's official YouTube channel, and you would be right — this is Simon Verstraete's channel where the artist shares even more lessons on using Houdini's magic to create amazing visuals. Even though Simon's tutorials are not an ideal choice for the absolute newbies, they are clear and straight to the point so as soon as you get comfortable using Houdini's basic tools you can check these videos out.