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Final year houdini projects


pclaes

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Hi guys,

My name is Peter Claes and I will soon be graduating from my Ba at Bournemouth University. During my final year I have been working on several Houdini based projects. I would like to share some of my work with the odforce community as I have had a lot of help from people here and from browsing the vast knowledge base.

In the first term of 2007 I gave several Houdini workshops to second and third year Ba students on the creation of a variety of effects in Houdini. The feedback from these workshops was used to improve a series of video tutorials I made for 3dbuzz ( www.3dbuzz.com ). The final result is now on the front page of sidefx software and in the 3dbuzz store:

Houdini Technical Effects - Sidefx

Houdini Technical Effects - 3dbuzz

The second project I want to share is my major project. The short is about a character being born out of jam on toast. The main goal was to specialize further into high end visual effects. The main inspiration was "The Birth of Sandman" sequence in spiderman 3.

movie (7Mb):

Jam - movie

stills

Jam - image_01

Jam - image_02

Info: The entire piece is 3d, the toast is camera mapped, the other elements in the shots (bowl of fruit, cups, flower,...) are cards. The far background is a stitched panorama. The lighting is a combination of hdri with spots. Everything is done within Houdini with the exception of the motion capture, skinning and rigging which was done in Maya. The jam itself is a combination of particle based fluids and a motion-captured model. The piece was rendered out with Mantra and composited in Shake.

So thanks again to this great community that has helped me and helps lots of houdini users every day!

regards,

Peter

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Thanks guys, glad you like it :).

Since this is a final year major project, it ran throughout the bigger part of the academic year (October,November,December,January, February, March, April). However since I had other projects and lectures I could not work on it full-time. I think if I had to estimate in terms of full time I think this took me around 3 months.

I am planning on making a "making off" version similar to what the guys did with "Burning Safari" as I found those very interesting. On top of that I might turn some of this into (part of) another video tutorial dvd as the first one seems to be well received. It is not as much the general overview that is the key, but the numerous little tricks and solutions that enabled me to work fast and automate some sections of the creation process. And even though I wrote a decent report I could not go into as much detail as I would be able to do in a video tutorial.

Breakdown:

I can't give you a shorter breakdown than the info I have already given, but instead I'll provide my project report. I will ask of you to read beyond some spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. English is not my first language and report writing is not my best skill :). I think it is an interesting read though (around 12.000 words, but written in an informal style).

(33Mb)

Peter Claes - Jam - project report

I'll post this on CgTalk as well then.

(Ps: if you do find obvious spelling mistakes, you can always Pm me and I will try to correct them, before I update my website this summer.)

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hey peter.

I loved the film.

great shading renders and everything

the idea is very cool as well.

very well done mate. :thumbsup:

go NCCA :)

(2007 MA Digital Effects :))

cheers,

selcuk

Haha, cool, you know your little leaf is still pricked to the red boards on the side of the labs with a little note: "Cellchuk - 2007 MaDe" ;). And Phil showed me your project as an initial example of a 3d effect integrated with live-action :). Yeah, there are some cool people graduating from the MaDe this year. From the Ba however there are only 3 people (including myself) out of 40 in my year that use Houdini. However.. by doing those workshops in the first term I have inspired a good 5 - 10 of the second years to pick up houdini as well :). And there is some cool stuff coming from them, I'll keep an eye on them next year. I'm going to do an MSc in Computer Animation at Bmth, but I'll be living with some of the current second years. One of them is Steve Twist, he's quite a technical (houdini) guy and I am sure sooner rather than later some of his stuff will pop up on this forum :).

I was at Framestore last summer (junior effects td in commercials), are you still there (which departement)?

I'm sure I'll meet you at some point in a year or so - unless if you could make it to the degree show? - it's at MPC this year and friends are invited... so I guess it's ok. PM me if you are interested in meeting up.

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