Houdini MCP

Lets an AI assistant drive a local SideFX Houdini session: inspect and edit scenes, cook, render, capture the viewport, and read offline docs.

What it does

The server bridges an assistant to SideFX Houdini running on the same machine. Read tools cover scene overview, node, geometry and stage inspection, selection and console output; edit tools cover node editing, parameter setting, connections, HDAs and batch network builds. Run tools cook, render, run PDG and control the playbar and scene files, capture takes viewport, camera, four-view or flipbook images, execute runs Python, HScript or expressions, and docs returns the Houdini documentation for the installed build offline.

When to use it

Useful when an assistant should work inside Houdini itself: building or adjusting node networks, inspecting geometry, running cooks and renders, or checking results visually through viewport captures. It suits iterative, autonomous 3D workflows rather than one-off questions about Houdini.

Requirements

Runs locally as a PyPI package (houdini-mcp-server) over stdio, with uv required for the plugin path. A SideFX Houdini installation is needed; the server can start a headless hython session if none is open, and ffmpeg is used for flipbook encoding. Communication is over localhost only. No accounts, API keys or environment variables are declared, though HOUDINIMCP_PORT and HOUDINI_USER_PREF_DIR are mentioned for port and preferences configuration.