Download free Houdini motion graphics toolset MOPs
TD Henry ‘Toadstorm’ Foster and Aixpsonza art director Moritz Schwind have released MOPs (Motion OPerators), a handy-looking collection of open-source assets for creating motion graphics in Houdini.
A modular framework for creating motion graphics in Houdini
The toolset, which is still officially in alpha, looks analogous to Mainframe North’s MASH nodes for Maya, since incorporated into Maya itself: a modular framework for creating common motion graphics effects.
Its creators describe MOPs as “an easy way to mainpulate lots of copies of things, leveraging Houdini’s packed primitives”, and note that workflow is intended to be familiar to artists coming from other DCC apps.
The framework consists of three types of nodes: Generators, for creating copies of objects; Modifiers, for transforming their properties; and Falloffs, for weighting the effect of Modifiers.
By combining them, users can create a range of effects: examples include exploding the faces of an object, and audio-driven deformation.
Foster and Schwind say that once the framework is feature-complete and bugfixed, they plan to release further commercial add-ons, intended for creating more complex set-ups.
System requirements and availability
MOPs is available for Houdini 16.5.436 and above under a Lesser GPL licence.
Read more about MOPs on the project website