Houdini Beginner Tutorial - Make an object follow a path

Making an object follow a path is a super common need in motion graphics, and of course, houdini can do it with gusto! It isn't the most intuitive thing, but once you know how to do it it's no problem at all, and we even get to dive a little bit into constraint networks as well as 2 different ways of creating paths.
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[@3dduff]

Additional tip: you can make the object LOOP and AutopAnimate on the path by setting the position to "$F/.1" change the .1 value up and down to change the speed

[@sqiib5328]

love the tutorial man. Great style and really clear. Thanks so much for the help !

[@brandonvillegas4765]

Really really well made. I would love to see more!

[@whitesy001]

Would love more tutorials from you, this is super helpful :)

[@tondann]

Thanks, just needed a simple follow along a curve - works fine!

[@giuliopuglisi7013]

Great tut! Thank you

[@amenonyky]

Let's make cool stuff indeed. Looking forward to your next cool stuff

[@aleksanderw5536]

You get an up vote for the way you created curve. A bit earlier today I was looking for a way to easily animate curve points and was failing miserably. So I gave up on that and started looking for a bit different things. Then I found your way of creating curve... and surprise surprise... you can do key based animation of those points and get animated curve. So thank you :)

[@PhO3NiX96]

I'm an FX Artist but I literally have zero knowledge about animation tools in Houdini, so basic shit like that are great tutorials, thank you man

[@jacklynallen7549]

Great tutorial! I am very very new to Houdini. Is there anyway to take an obj and have it be emitted like the particles?

[@massimobaita7178]

Thank You very much!

[@xiaofan1228]

Thank you!

[@abdalhaseebalhajzain220]

Thanks this great!! Could you please show how to export it to UE4?

[@Kvayzmode]

Very cool and very clear. Just what noob like me needs.

[@dvdgoldberg]

Hello, how would you align text to follow a circle with the whole bending of the font ? thx :)

[@gavinnel8554]

Hi guys, Great tutorial, I'm relatively new to Houdini, but I would really like to know, how one would use this method to create a ribbon, that could be animated along a curve in similar fashion as Maya's Flow path object, any help would be appreciated, Thanks guys.

[@kevincampos6054]

Can you like constrain something to an alembic animation then make that constrain emit particles?

[@PhO3NiX96]

How do you export the anim out of the CHOP? I can't see my anim outside of it also, no matter what I display.
Is there a way to bake the anim maybe ?

[@Dazzer1234567]

Hi mate .......... a question: for your path, why not use "curve" from the "create" menu? ............ doesn't that give the same possibilities more or less? And you can add points later as needed. Using an add node seems a bit unwieldy as you can't just draw them in where you need them..... you start with a load of points all in the same place and need to manually move them to where you need them ..........

[@nicholuassommer2084]

Hey is there anyway to add noise to the animation, to say, the velocity? Looking to use this to cheat a floating shot. Let me know asap!

[@alexs6081]

Just curious. Are you using a trackball?

[@macIain]

How do you delay the time? Say if you wanted the object to start moving from a particular frame. Ie start on frame 30 instead of 0?

[@maxvought2154]

nice

[@rasheedthegenre]

more Houdini, please.

[@christaferchristafer8022]

thumbnail , were is the render tutorial part of it

[@lilboi3000]

@ 20 seconds

[@midphase]

Why didn't you use a Curve node inside your Geometry node instead?

[@Miesnermedia]

I just like the add node, if you like the curve node then go for it!

[@fernando3061]

@@Miesnermedia Unnaceptabru!!!

[@drumslapper]

Hey, what happened to using Blender?!!!

[@sorgulabiraz3161]

I agree. Houdini looks too complicated for a simple path animation. With Blender, you can do this animation under a minute :)

[@Miesnermedia]

I still use blender, I just dont have any good ideas for tutorials for it. And around 4:30 I use the "follow path" shelf tool which creates a path animation in "under a minute" ;)

[@zevnikov]

Blender is cool. But houdini is on another level on another planet.

[@sams_3d_stuff]

@@zevnikov True!

[@npmmalayalamvfxtutorials1717]

@@zevnikov True

[@domdom2181]

Why can't I find the ../../out?

[@cyanide227]

You are fine and dandy at the same time ;) George would be proud of you

[@corerage]

You blender traitor! :D

[@xiaofan1228]

Thank you!