Sneak peek of Houdini 11

Side Effects Software announced Houdini 11, the next installment in its line of professional 3D modeling, animation, and rendering software for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Kim Davidson, president of Side Effects Software, published a new blog entry describing the functionality of Houdini 11, namely new Voronoi-based fracturing tools designed to break up objects either before simulations or automatically during a simulation; FLIP (Fluid Implicit Particle) solver which is up to up to 70 times faster than Houdini 10's SPH solver; user interface improvements to Houdini's shader building environment; enhanced hardware rendering functionality with high quality OpenGL shading of lights and shadows as well as GPU-assisted volumes, unlimited lights and support for diffuse, specular, opacity, environment, bump and normal maps; new light types such as Global Illumination, Portal, Sky, Indirect and Geometry (turns any 3D object into a light emitting surface); performance improvements; and more. In mid-June all of Side Effects Software's customers covered under the Annual Upgrade Plan will be invited to join the beta test and will be issued Houdini 11 licenses in anticipation of the release. In mid-July, Apprentice HD users will be invited to upgrade to the new release with a planned gold release later in July. [source]