Attributes (Houdini)
Data stored on points, primitives and vertices
Also known as: Houdini attributes · Houdini point attribute · Houdini Cd color · Houdini N normal · Houdini attribute wrangle · Houdini geometry attribute
Definition
Attributes in Houdini are named values stored on a geometry's points, vertices, primitives or on the geometry as a whole, called detail. Position (P), color (Cd), normal (N) and UV are standard attributes, and you can create your own, such as height, age, density or a random value. Nodes read and write attributes to drive effects, so a color can control scale, or a noise value can control which points get copied objects.
In production
Learn to inspect them in the Geometry Spreadsheet, which shows every attribute for each point, and to create them with Attribute Create, Attribute Wrangle and noise nodes. Game exports carry only standard attributes such as UV, normal and vertex color, so bake custom data into vertex color or UV channels when the engine needs it. Attributes are the base of nearly everything procedural in Houdini.
Tools that use Attributes (Houdini)
See also
Copy to Points
Scatter objects across points in Houdini
Houdini Digital Asset (HDA)
Packaged Houdini network with parameters
Vertex Color
Per-vertex paintable mask channel
PCG (Procedural Content Generation)
Rule-based placement of content in Unreal
Geometry Nodes
Blender's node-based procedural modeling system
Vertex Groups
Named sets of vertices with weights