I’ve been trying to put together a Tron-like effect in Houdini, and so far it’s coming along great… other than it being REALLY REALLY SLOW.

However, it turn out that there’s some SOPs in Houdini that I’m using that aren’t very efficient, plus instancing of shaders has some issues as well. On top of this, I’m not using ODE rigid body dynamics, which are supposed to be pretty fast. This video from the opening credits of film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button demonstrates someone using ODE in Houdini… with some pretty nice results, like this…

Although, with a little more research, it looks like Bullet is the way to go. Oh… oh yes, this slightly more powerful. 😛