3 Simple VEX Tricks Every Houdini Artist Should Know

Three quick VEX operations I use in almost every destruction shot. None of these are advanced. They're the kind of small wrangle tricks that quietly carry a scene, and once you've got them in your toolkit, the wrangle node stops feeling like a black box. What we cover: Controlling velocity direction procedurally with an Add node and a Point Wrangle Adding randomization to velocity the right way (and why your rand() calls are breaking your direction) Converting velocity into a speed scalar with length() for downstream effects If you've been navigating Houdini without VEX, you can keep doing that. But the moment you can drop a wrangle and write three lines of code, your scenes get more procedural, more controllable, and a lot faster to iterate on. ⏱ Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:16 Trick 1 - Procedural velocity direction with an Add node 1:55 Trick 2 - Adding noise without breaking your direction 3:46 Trick 3 - Turning velocity into a speed attribute 5:11 Closing thoughts 🔗 Get more from bryanholt.media Subscribe to The Briefing, my weekly VFX newsletter: https://bryanholt.media/briefing Houdini project files and HDAs: https://bryanholt.media/store Blog and tutorials: https://bryanholt.media 📱 Follow along X / Twitter: https://x.com/BryanNHolt Instagram:   / bryan_holt_media   LinkedIn:   / bryannholt   Drop your favorite VEX trick in the comments. If there are more operations you want me to break down, let me know and I'll put together a follow up. #Houdini #VEX #VFX