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A little experiment I like to nickname: 'Life as a VFX Artist'

Hello! I'm starting a twitch dot television channel and will be streaming Houdini training content. I've worked at several large VFX and advertising studios as well as taught Houdini classes at Academy of Art university. I'm hoping I can reach a larger audience through Twitch as well as the idea that people viewing the stream can participate by asking questions and providing feedback in real time. This is my channel: https://www.twitch.tv/johnkunz My first stream will be starting on Sunday (Jan 26th) @ 1pm PST. If you follow my channel (it's free ), you'll get an email notification whenever I start a stream. I'll be going over this project I recently finished https://www.behance.net/gallery/90705071/Geometric-Landscapes showing how I built things (VOPs, packed prims, Redshift render) and why I set things up the way I did. Some of the images I made are shown below. Please come by this Sunday with any questions or ideas you might have!

Hello peeps! This is a fun project created using Houdini, so hopefully it ain't against the rules! Vancouver had a snowmageddon last week, and I thought it was the time to make snow ducks! I whipped up this simple mould inside Houdini, got it 3d printed and BAM! Ice ducks! There's some improvements to be made - the joint that aligns both halves of the mold fills up with snow really easily, and they need to be kept clear in order for both halves to form a perfect seal. I think instead of using a half ball with its matching negative space, a cylinder matches with a through hole would allow the snow to pass through, and the cylinder would resist the moulds sliding out sideways. The head was also difficult to form - the ice kept sticking to the mould. Perhaps a coating of polyurethane or even just sanding the insides would help with that. The ducks themselves are a rubber duck model I got off thingiverse, converted to vdb then back to a mesh, sculpted that mesh in sops to remove undercuts, and finally I used the boolean sop to create the empty areas. The final snow duck is about 12cm tall, and the moulds themselves are printed with abs filament. It took about 12 hours for this print using a 0.4mm nozzle. I hope you found this interesting!

Cloud tornado with water VFX breakdown from Chinese feature 哪吒 (NeZha), I was responsible for creating and rendering of all the effects using Houdini Pyro and Flip, render in Mantra.

Here's an example file illustrating the above: Protruded_Vellum_Shape_02.hiplc

Its more in how people use the tool, since its werry complex and maybe not that intuitive i want the ability to update the tool. I also want to present it in a way that people can see how its used. When it comes to the code, i offcourse loose all control, unless its a blackbox, but thats kinda unfair. But i have made an example using pops that can be further built on, and that have the same core principals. popcurves_01.hiplc

Hi guys, I would love to show you few of my works creating scape clouds scenes with Houdini. All scenes has several seconds of animation rendered out but since I am based in China I can't upload the videos to Vimeo or YouTube so for now only this pictures are available. All clouds are procedural and animated, even the clouds in the background. The scenes contains several thousands of clouds. Done in Houdini 17 and the sunset scene with Houdini 18. Rendered with Mantra. -MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2016) -Processor 2.7 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 -Memory 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 -Graphics Radeon Pro 455 2 GB Intel HD Graphics 530 1536 MB Thank you!

Seems about right. Did some rnd on this, and went with rbds. Easier to interact with other objects and get stiff branches. Downside is the amount off setup.

Just need to connect randomly but i get it cmm2002.pdf

Hi folks. Just posted a set of HDAs geared towards building vector fields intuitively, using curve and point features. Documentation and alternate download can be found here. Happy trails! DFX_Vecfield_HDA_bundle.zip

Hey guys, here's a river I made and rendered with Redshift ! Tell me your thoughts about it ! I didn't followed Knipping tutorial cuz I can't afford it but I tried my best. I got a problem with some flicker in the refraction pass, somehow whitewater particles were disappearing and reappearing randomly, and I solved it by increasing the refraction max trace depth. Cheers,

James Hodgart is a lead enviroment artist at axis animation and we're very honored to have him teach with us this brand new called called "MASTERING ENVIROMENT CREATION IN HOUDINI" James will talk about the artistic aspect needed to recreate a large scale realistic environment and will share his own workflow that uses houdini at the base to create highend photorealistic environment. This workshop is ideal to anyone interested in learning how to build large scale environment while utilizing the latest Houdini 18 features. More details can be found here: https://rebelway.net/mastering_environment/ $50 discount for the first session. Start date: February 23td 2020 Vimeo link for better video quality: https://vimeo.com/376284112 Note: the below renders/promo is almost raw render from Houdini with a minor comp tweaks. 8k renders can be download from this link if you want to see more details https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3x8rf6vtakoy3ez/AABSm09rVUV5h_z2OWbPGiXSa?dl=0 Please feel free to PM us if you have any questions. REGARDS REBELWAY TEAM.

A small experiment, where geometric models are turned into sound. More info about the process at ch3.gr/geophone I love the geometry CHOP node! =]

@tylerafx Here is the update I was talking about. The mesh still needs to improve, but this is just to show the tool's update/fixes that I did on my pipeline to get rid of the volume issues and overshooting mainly to have a more natural sheet breaking and wobbling. I hope you like it! Thanks, Alejandro https://www.dropbox.com/s/9io3yow61dsivld/Tension2.5_sheetColapsing_VolumePreservation_01_v002.mp4?dl=0

Here is a quick hack with Librarian's plane dropped into Farmfield's wind tunnel. ap_ff_POP_wind_tunnel_effect_013020.hiplc

Here is the your scene with the MOPs setup shown in the video. I cross faded the original simulation with the dampened one to bring the simulation to a stop. ap_metal_transform_2.hiplc

Here is my rebuild of your popnet to generate smoke. The upward movement of the smoke is controlled by the buoyancy on the popsolver. When you are rasterizing a particle into a volume, the f@pscale attribute plays a role. If the particle is too small, it may not generate any density. You can link density generation to particle age so it starts off less dense and grows more dense as it ages. ap_particles_trail_2_v03.hiplc

http://patreon.com/posts/33249763 http://gumroad.com/l/houdinisupercharged In this video I will show you some of the inner workings of the context-sensitive rule-based hotkey system that I implemented and one I have been using for a while to speed up my workflow inside Houdini. It's a very light-weight and flexible system that allows an arbitrary number of actions to be assigned to any key, with extensive modifier key and state support (Ctrl, Shift, Alt, Space, LMB, MMB, RMB, selection state). It's deeply integrated into the overlay network editor workflow.

Modeler 1.0 for Houdini released! Free for all the DM 2.* users. $70 for the DM 1.* users. https://gum.co/xKBKM What's new: 1. DM now renamed to Modeler 1.0 2. new feature: the DM menu (Z hotkey) has been replaced with a new alignment menu where you can use tools for fast and accurate transformation. The menu includes the whole set of tools for working with a compass, geometry centring, quick flattening with gestures and many other transformation tools. Use the hotkeys for the tools of the old DM menu. 3. new feature: Deform Menu (N hotkey) with lots of interactive deformation tools including a new Lattice tool 4. new feature: MODELER_PICK_STYLE environment variable allows to override Modeler startup selection pick style. Add it to the houdini.env file. Use "Box", "Lasso", "Brush" or "Laser" values, then restart Houdini. 5. new feature: the hard and soft boolean tools are now combined in a new menu called Boolean (J hotkey) 6. new feature: a Fix Curves tool helps get rid of broken lines in open polygons. This helps when beveling corners of open polygons. 7. new feature: a Select Curves tool helps to select open polygons (curves) in the model 8. improvement: now some tools can create curves and process them. For example, the Extrude tool can produce lines from selected points. The Collapse tool can flatten open polygons (curves). The Connect tool can be used to cut a segment between two selected points or connect two open faces. The Push tool now properly moves points in open faces. 9. improvement: the RMB menu of the Push tool has a new item Toggle Connectivity, which allows you to move points, capturing the points of other closed pieces 10. improvement: the Push tool now works slightly faster 11. improvement: the Push tool can now slide point with Ctrl+MMB 12. improvement: the mouse and keyboard shortcuts of the Push tool have been completely redone 13. improvement: if nothing is selected, the Hose tool searches for all the curves in the current geometry 14. improvement: a Group parm added to the Hose Tool. Can be used in conjunction with a result of the Duplicate tool 15. improvement: Hose now creates straight edges tube if the Resample Curve set to zero value 16. improvement: Geometry Library renamed to KitBash and works only as the python panel 17. improvement: KitBash replace feature now doesn't update the item icon 18. improvement: Tools Panel now has a new category KitBash with tools for working with the library items. Now you can create, save, overwrite and update icons faster, without actually working in the KitBash panel 19. improvement: volatile edge sliding now does not require explicit movement of the mouse pointer to the edges 20. improvement: volatile edge sliding now can be used to slide points and faces 21. improvement: Fix Overlaps can now use face groups 22. improvement: Duplicate applied to edges now creates a curve in the current geometry object 23. improvement: the Resymmetry tool now works slightly better. The Tollerance parameter is no longer saved between nodes (). This allows you to not change the position of the seam points. 24. improvement: mouse wheel manipulation in various tools has been improved 25. improvement: new simple box type has been added to the QPrimitive HDA 26. improvement: Tools Panel now has a more logical structure for faster access to popular tools 27. improvement: the Modeler shelf was fully revisited 28. improvement: the Walk History Up and Walk History Down tools (Up and Down hotkeys) now work more interactively when traveling through nodes with more than one input or output. 29. improvement: the Select By Shells tools was replaced with a new Convert To Shells tool (Ctrl+1) 30. improvement: double-clicking with LMB in the viewport is completely revisited. Now you can jump to objects level by double-clicking LMB in an empty space. Clicking on a geometry allows you to quickly switch between objects. If you are in a certain state, double-clicking activates the selection mode. All these improvements speed up the modeling process. 31. improvement: the deformation tools (Size, Ramp, View) now have the fixed blend feature. The transition between the deformable points and the undeformable part looks more correct. 32. fix: Hose now orients rings copies correctly 33. fix: Slice, Mirror and Cut tools now set correct geometry center on tool activation 34. fix: JumpUp and JumpDown tools does not work when Compass is active 35. fix: QLight now works properly if you run it from the orthographic viewport 36. fix: sometimes camera movement with Alt did not work after a mouse click 37. Lots of tools have changed hotkeys. Look at Tools Panel for more details. 38. Python code has been revisited 39. Documentation has become more detailed 40. Overall speed improvement 41. Other improvements Works only in Houdini 18. Use build >= 18.0.346

Waterfall Bending VFX breakdown from 哪吒 (NeZha). I was responsible for all the FX and rendering FX elements. All the FX are created in Houdini and render in Houdini Mantra, final composite done in Nuke.

Here is another offering. Three UV mapped spheres that unfold to different grid aspect ratios. A 16:9, 4:3, and 32:9. These are pre-animated Alembic files, not procedural at all. ap_UV_spheres_unfold_to_plane.zip

sorry for spamming

Faster and easier way to setup passes (for example velocities) or other attributes, both for geometry and volumes. Ideally you just need to have the attribute on the geometry and the only thing you need to do is set it up as Extra Image Plane

Hello everyone, The training will take you through the steps of how to detail the cupcake and icing using volume noise and then animate the cupcake using a combination of procedural and key frame animation. For more information kindly click on the link given below. https://www.rohandalvi.net/cupcakes

In general i avoid "for-each" networks, it usualy becomes to slow. And when things get slow, art directing and creativity get worse. You can make hda's of your vex setups and then it gets as easy to use as a node. You can get a long way with learning how to use vectors, matrixes and quaternions.

Its basicly stacked packed rbd primitives, connected with conetwist constraints. Then you transform/rebuild your curves based on thoose rbds. If you dont want destruction its pretty straight forward, if you want to break it or even want slow motion, its alot more. Heres a basic setup. TreeSystem_rbd.hiplc

Same setup with your feathers, and with uniform scale. Mystique_02.hipnc

Heres an example of how you can set it up. mystique_01.hip

plus you have one exampel in HELP , download Qlib you have exampel with weight Attribut . Play with one point try to promote and change vector with ...(att create) ...play muSoSofti.hipnc

DL link: http://www.vusta.com.au/Houdini.htm works best on actual curves, tho you can get interesting effects on a grid say....try it.

I am still amazed at how quickly you can build complexity with Houdini. This scene has just a few nodes - sphere, spring, add, copy stamp, poly wire - and result looks rather good, even if I say so myself

Hi, (just as personal preference) if you want to avoid for loops for creating parametric functions, just define the function in vex and apply it on an existing line (1d) or grid (2d). teardrop.hipnc

Magnus thanks to your file I discovered the node : CircleFromEdge it proved to be really usefull. I could not understand all the vex so I decided to do it manually. I'm pretty happy with the result. I will have to do more vases and cups so i will go the procedural way next time, i have to improv e in vex . Thanks for your help guys ! Feel free to add anything if you want. vase.hipnc vase.hipnc

Seriously though, to bake point colors onto a UV texture, set a string parameter to your geometry and put these lines into a COP snippet. vector pos_tex = set(X, Y, 0.0); vector geo_clr = uvsample(geo, 'Cd', 'uv', pos_tex); assign(R, G, B, geo_clr); baking.hipnc

I suggest you check this scene https://github.com/pedohorse/educational-hips/tree/master/throwing_knifes

Let's suppose we want to imitate graffiti art pieces with minimal effort. Warp the lines into curvy curves. Map the direction to the closest curves with greyscale values. Colorize each segment. And e x p l o d e by color difference. curve_art.hipnc

http://patreon.com/posts/32631275 http://gumroad.com/l/houdinisupercharged In this video I will go through the GUI customizations I did for Houdini 18. So let's get into it.

use Channel SOP to bring it back here is the file with CHOP filtering applied (green nodes), nothing else is different than the original scene (even though I locked the Vellum SOP) that would always be preferred vellum_test_filtered.hiplc

you need to shift order of primitive vertices, the point order doesn't matter so use Primitive SOP/Face/Hull/Vertex/Shift offset instead of Sort SOP

Hi Olly! Hit "D" in the viewport to bring up the Display Options, go to the Guide tab and you will see a parameter called "Guide Font" Thanks, Sean

Hi, maybe this gives you some ideas. hand_fan.hipnc

And there was that swirly head tutorial, a few years back... ap_swirl_lines_around_airplane_013020.hiplc

Another attempt. Once a particle comes in contact with the collision surface, it uses a volume sample to fetch the direction to push @P. float vs = volumesample(1,0,@P); if (vs<0){ // Yes we have collided. vector vg = volumegradient(1,0,@P); @P+=vg*0.01; i@group_collided = 1; } ap_pops_avoid_sort_of_013020.hiplc

whatever Mark said since you are using 17.5 however technically the new method since H18 is using Piece Attribute to copy variants to points and avoiding for loop altogether

Just look in your target render folder for images. What is happening is that each time a frame is rendered, MPlay uses a little more memory. If your frame sequence is long enough, MPlay will consume all physical ram and produce the Tile error inside of Redshift when it requests more memory for the new frame.

A basic way to span a graph that efficiently connects all points using Prim's algorithm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prim's_algorithm minimal_graph.hipnc

I found the answer: matrix3 matrx = ident(); vector axis = {1, 0, 0}; float angle = 256; rotate ( matrx, angle, axis); vector pivot = {0, 0.8, 0}; @P = (@P - pivot) * matrx + pivot; But I can`t understand how it`s working, why this line `(@P - pivot) * matrx + pivot` puts pivot of rotation to a required point?

Only ink left in our printer was orange.

Broken down into more comprehensible steps: vector uv = relbbox(0, v@P); vector crv_0 = primuv(1, 'P', 0, uv.z); vector crv_1 = primuv(1, 'P', 1, uv.x); vector crv_2 = primuv(1, 'P', 2, uv.z); vector crv_3 = primuv(1, 'P', 3, uv.x); vector start_0 = primuv(1, 'P', 0, 0); vector start_2 = primuv(1, 'P', 2, 0); vector end_0 = primuv(1, 'P', 0, 1); vector end_2 = primuv(1, 'P', 2, 1); vector ipol = lerp(crv_0, crv_2, uv.x); ipol += lerp(crv_1, crv_3, uv.z); vector fit_0 = lerp(start_0, end_0, uv.z); vector fit_2 = lerp(start_2, end_2, uv.z); v@P = ipol - lerp(fit_0, fit_2, uv.x);

here. your scene rendered in 6 minutes on my laptop, with close to zero startup time, and consumed 700 mb of ram. what I did - first of all, the reason for your high startup times and crazy memory demands were actually nested packed primitives. nesting itself would't be an issue if you weren't nested thousands of packed prims... that actually makes packed geometry more expensive than rendering just plain meshes. just have one packed prim per tree - or maybe two if you want to separate leaves and wood. so if you unpack completely your tree and pack it again as one primitive, you should see much better performance. another thing is your render settings were completely overkill in some points - like ray limits. with trees or very detailed geometry i find having pixel samples quite high as needed so 8x8 is fine, but setting ray limits to zero made almost no visual difference (in this particular render) and renders faster. you don't necessarily want to have zeroes in ray limits at the end of the day, but point is to cut it as low as you can (and what you've had set there was definitely overkill for this king of rendering). also, rendering a depth of field is something I have never seen done on any project in any vfx house. very expensive to render, and if you don't get it right you have to render the whole thing again. maybe in some very special case renders it makes sense, but generally you do that in comp. regarding instancing in general, i don't think instance object is any faster than copy SOP in it's essence, as a few people mentioned here. it's just that copy SOP gives you more freedom to do stuff and that naturally leads to longer cook times. instance object simply forces you to obey the most efficient workflow. copy SOP in loop is actually the most efficient workflow if you need more than just a bunch of static objects distributed over the points. but if you do a very simple instancing like you do in your scene it actually doesn't make sense to use loops as you're not using any of it's benefits. (but still I haven't found it slow to cook, it was like maybe a half of a second??)