HoudiniDevelopmentKit

The Houdini Development Kit (HDK)

The HDK is now freely distributed with HoudiniApprentice. The HDK is a C++ toolkit for developing plugins for Houdini and Mantra.

This is right place to post community documentation on the HDK.

The HDK allows you to:

create new nodes of all types: SOPs, COPs, Objects, CHOPs, ROPs, DOPs and POPs
create new HScript commands and expressions.
extend the VEX function set.
draw into the viewport (look for GR_RenderHook) by intecepting the geometry on the way to the viewport.
write MantraProcedurals.
extend the supported FileFormats.
access a large and extremely useful library of utility classes that are traditionally not available in other API's.

HDKFrequentlyAskedQuestions : Our FAQ for the HDK including installation and setup information
HDKDoxygenPages : doxygen documentation of the HDK
HDKCodeExamples: learn by example!
HDKNotebook : some notes on the HDK - please feel free to add info here.
Discuss and search at odforce HDK Forum too.
OdForce also has a SourceForgeProject set up for HDK enthusiasts to download code and share their projects.
Opensource library for reading Houdini geometry files: http://sourceforge.net/projects/houdinigpdlibra/

Optimization, Threading & GPGPU : Article on various performance-enhancing development methods.