Custom Houdini tools, simulations, and procedural R&D.

A testing ground for custom HDAs, technical workflows, and solver explorations from viewport diagnostic tools to destruction and fluid simulations.

HUD Generator (HDA)

The Motivation Behind the Tool

When generating multiple simulation iterations and playblasts, it is easy to lose track of which settings produced which result or how long each pass took to cook. I built the HUD Generator to stamp essential scene metrics directly onto the viewport, ensuring every playblast carries its own context. By linking live parameters, geometry counts, and simulation cook times straight to the screen, it eliminates the guesswork when comparing takes, speeds up review workflows, and makes optimizing heavy files effortless.

Plug & Running in 2 Clicks

Step 1. Set Your Camera

Select or assign your active shot camera to snap the HUD projection cleanly to the viewport frame.

Step 2. Choose Your Preset

Pick the inspection mode you need Value, Count, or Sim Time and your live HUD is ready to go.

Core Parameter Breakdown

1. Value

  • Outputs custom viewport readouts across multiple data types: Float, String, Vector2, Vector and Vector4.
  • Monitors real-time parameter changes, channel values, velocity thresholds, or custom attributes frame by frame.
  • Automatically exposes an Integer Only checkbox whenever a numeric type (Float & Vectors) is selected.

2. Count

  • Live viewport tracking with toggle checkboxes for Points, Primitives and Pieces.
  • Works on input geometry by default or accepts any external node via drag and drop.
  • Auto-calculates total piece counts via an attribute dropdown – no manual typing required.

3. Sim Time

  • Real-time display of simulation cook duration, cache playback speed, and frame metrics.
  • Supports File Mode to browse directly to disk, and Cache Mode to link a cache node via simple drag-and-drop.
  • Shows per-frame metrics on the right side, including average frame cook time and total rendered frames.

Behind the Scenes: Building the Tool

Text geometry locked to the active camera near-clipping plane.

  • Frustum Projection: Snapped text geometry directly to the camera’s near-clipping plane, locking the HUD firmly to screen space across all camera moves.

Multi-parm interface showing layer stacking, repeating color palette, and per-layer overrides.

Global Font

Color Palette

Multi-parm Text

  • Global Font & Canvas Controls: Master controls to switch font style, scale global text size, and add safety margins away from camera borders.
  • Procedural Color Palette: Set your preferred color list once; the HUD automatically loops the sequence across all layers without manual tinting.
  • Multi-parm Text Layers: Add as many text lines as you need with a single click, making it easy to track multiple scene details and values at once.

Python logic reading cache frame timestamps.

  • Cache Profiling (Python): Reads first and last frame timestamps directly from cache paths to calculate total sim duration and average per-frame cook times.
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