Side Effects Houdini is a 3D animation and computer graphics software from Side Effects Software. It is designed as a purely procedural environment and contains animation features that are based on the PRISMS ecosystem of standalone tools. The modeling style in Houdini includes all standard geometric forms like polygons, metaballs, and a hierarchical NURBS (with Bezier curves, patches, and trim). Curved-based modeling with NURBS creates smooth, organic surfaces that are ideal for creating items like cars. Animation is based on the Keyframed technique and raw channel manipulation (CHOPs) that support motion capture. The software support multiple animation layer through lighting techniques with a node-based shader authoring, and tools for dynamics that include rigid body dynamics, computational fluid dynamics and cloth simulation. It supports a variety of renderers like mental ray and Mantra:Renderman and provides extensibility through plugins. This application runs on platforms supported by Microsoft windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.