Thomas Helzle

I wish you all a totally awesome and alive 2020! :-) May your creative juices flow!!! Cheers, Tom

And now for something totally unrelated to Houdini :-) I recently started to finally get into Blender after looking at it for almost 20 years and thinking "it's almost there but..." And now it finally is (for me at least). 2.8x is amazing and especially the modelling part is really great. I love designing with subdivision surfaces & edge weights and missed this since XSI went belly up. Houdini - with everything I love about it - just isn't really made for manual modelling, the tools feel extremely clumsy to me and the whole workflow is weird. The procedural tools are more in the way than helpful and relying on point numbers really isn't a good way to deal with groupings or edge selections in this case. So Blender to the rescue and it really is great in this regard, very fast even at SDS level 3-4 in the viewport, good modes for dealing with working on the cage or the SDS directly, edge creases work very well and are easy to work with. I also like Cycles. It's really fast with my two GPUs and shows great quality - would love to have it in Houdini actually, way more than Karma... ;-) So yeah, if the Houdini modelling tools don't convince you, give it a try. Back and fourth works well with Alembic, and USD is in the works already. VDB too... Some recent fun things: So yeah, Blender 2.81 & Cycles. Cheers, Tom

:-) Thank you very much eetu! Coming from you that means a lot - you have been a great source of knowledge and inspiration on my Houdini journey. :-) Cheers and all the best to everybody for 2020! Tom

"Radiolaria II" I'm currently learning Blender for modelling after totally failing to enjoy manual modelling in Houdini for years now and really love it. Also I found the "Tissue" plugin to be extremely cool for pattern based design. So this is modelled in Blender 2.81, then imported into Houdini 18, further evolved and rendered with Redshift: And with a bit more oooophf: Both are mostly direct renders with Redshifts PostFX & LUTs. Cheers, Tom

Organics: "Radiolaria" Two variations of a scene I created with those fascinating tiny beings in mind... Somehow I was not 100% convinced by the inner structure, so I tried out a more solid version via VDB in the center: Houdini 18, Redshift, Luminar 2018 Cheers, Tom

"Spiraling Sphere II" Re-did this scene with 3Delight as a renderer. It's still in beta but very interesting as a CPU renderer with perfectly integrated cloud rendering. Houdini 18, 3Delight, Luminar 2018. Cheers, Tom

"Spiraling Thing" Worked a bit more on my threader tool... Houdini 18, Redshift, Luminar 2018 Cheers, Tom

"Rumis Field" "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there." Rumi One of my favourite quotes ever... And an organics version: Both created with a custom solver in Houdini 17.5 & rendered in Redshift for High-Rez printing at 18000x12000 (https://www.artstation.com/thomashelzle/prints). Cheers, Tom

And of course I did the Entagma Physarium tutorial :-) Awesome stuff, thanks guys! Houdini 17.5 Cheers, Tom

"The Portal" Another "organics" experiment... Houdini 17.5 & Redshift Cheers, Tom

"She Flow" I really love how this one came out - make sure to view the full size one for the details. Houdini 17.5 & Redshift & Luminar 2018 Cheers, Tom

"Where are you growing AT" Experiment with growth on a recursive subdivision grid. Houdini 17.5 & Redshift. Cheers, Tom

A weeping willow created in Blender with "The Grove" to grow almost flat onto an obstacle... then further processed in Houdini 17.5 Rendered in Redshift. Cheers, Tom

Some screenshots from the above Circuits R&D: Houdini 17.5 Cheers, Tom

"Octahedral Lines" Combining above with some more VEX and some connect adjacent points/smoothing: Houdini, Redshift, Luminar 2018 Cheers, Tom