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I've recently been getting into character animation, but since I come from a programming background I like to approach everything procedurally.

I got started with rigging and animation using Blender and Cascadeur, but that approach seems very limited from my perspective. I saw that Houdini is capable of procedural animation, but the resources seem quite limited so I am not sure to what extent.

I would like to able to abstract motion logic and potentially reuse it, layer it, and use custom logic to drive bones. Also, I would like to be able to use noise and custom blending functions (spring for example). In some cases block out the base motion traditionally and layer procedural motion and in other cases define the base motion logically and again layer other motion on top.

Example: I want to animate a cork flip and drive the height of the flip based on the angular momentum of the sweeping leg and also drive the angular momentum of the rotation based on the relative position between the hand and elbow joints, and the chest bone. This way I can adjust certain parameters and get different motions. Obviously there are many holes in that example, but that is the gist of what I am looking to achieve.

Is Houdini what I am looking for and if so, what resources could I look into?

Or should I be looking into custom solutions?

Are there any known techniques or approaches for achieving what I've given as an example (in Houdini or as a custom solution)?

Nikola Bozhkov
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    Houdini 18.5 added KineFX for character animation. I'm new to Houdini, or I'd give you a more qualified answer. From what I understand, CA hasn't been Houdini's forté to date, but SideFX is focusing on that area now. Proceduralism, on the other hand is what Houdini is all about, and if tools don't already exist to suit your needs, Houdini is a good place to build them. – Jason Conrad Nov 02 '20 at 07:39
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    And, your cork flip example is very do-able. You can assign arbitrary data to points, vertices, and primitives, so if angular momentum is your driver, and it's not already there, you can put it there. You could use color, temperature, or any arbitrary value to drive your animation. That sort of basic animation ability has been part of Houdini for a long time. The new stuff is more about transferring one mocap rig to another, which might not have the same joint structure, if I understand correctly. – Jason Conrad Nov 02 '20 at 07:50

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