Loving the new H16 Smooth node. As in previous version of Houdini, this smooths the topology of a Mesh without adding to the poly count. In previous versions of Houdini it employed a Laplacian (Gaussian) smoothing algorithm which did the job but tended to blur the detail too much.
The new version in H16 is a huge improvement and includes a 'Method' setting (topology dependent, but the Curvature-Dominant is my pick of the bunch). This employs a two-step Laplacian operator to inflate the mesh after smoothing, for volume/detail preservation. It's especially useful on scanned geometry or geometry that has been derived via Houdini's VDB tools. The example below shows the new smoothing on a 1million triangle scan (top image) vs the unsmoothed version (bottom). And check out the snazzy new improved PBR shading in the H16 viewport. Nice!
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