html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"DNEG Senior Creature TD Mengya Zhang has released the Houdini Skin Slide Deformer: a GPU-accelerated Houdini add-on for creating skin sliding effects in character animation.The hardware-agnostic tool, which can be downloaded for free, generates realistic skin sliding without the need for a full tissue simulation, preserving the volume of the character.A high-performance volume-preserving skin slide deformer for VFX and animation workThe deformer generates realistic skin sliding without the need for underlying tissue simulation.The video above shows the results when applied directly on top of the Point Deform skin mesh from a recent muscle simulation project.Unlike Delta Mush deformers, available in DCC apps like Maya and Houdini to smooth out unwanted artefacts in character animations, it maintains the volume of the character mesh.It supports both triangle- and quad-based meshes, and provides fast results on meshes of reasonable density.Zhang developed the deformer as part of R&D work on OpenCL, the hardware-agnostic parallel programming framework supported in Houdini for GPU-accelerated simulation.On LinkedIn, Zhang noted that she had also created the tool using VEX, Houdinis CPU-only expression language, and that OpenCL is just way much faster in this case.Now available on Gumroad along with Mengya Zhangs Houdini Wrinkle Deformer HDAZhang has now released the skin slide deformer on Gumroad, using a Pay What You Want model for individual artists: you can download it for free, or donate to support the work.As well as the HDA files for the deformer itself and its OpenCL wrapper, the download includes a .hip file for a demo scene.You can also download one of Zhangs previous projects, the Houdini Wrinkle Deformer HDA, which generates jitter-free skin-like wrinkles on animated geometry, on a similar basis.License conditions and system requirementsMengya Zhangs Houdini Skin Slide Deformer is compatible with Houdini. GPU acceleration requires an OpenCL-compatible graphics card, which includes both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs.The tool is available for non-commercial use under a Pay What You Want model. The license agreement prohibits claiming authorship, including of derivative works, in demo reels.For studios, commercial licenses start at $200.Download Mengya Zhangs Houdini Skin Slide Deformer HDA from Gumroad(Enter a figure of $0 to download it for free, or make a voluntary donation)Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we dont post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.