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Side Effects Software – 25 years on


CeeGee

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This year marks the 25th anniversary of Side Effects Software. The company’s Houdini product rides high as the go-to tool for procedural and effects animation. We talk to co-founder, chief executive officer and president of Side Effects Kim Davidson, and two of Side Effects’ staff honored at this year’s Sci-Tech Oscars, Andrew Clinton and Mark Elendt, about the invention and integration of micro-voxels in the Mantra renderer. This work allowed, for the first time, efficient rendering of volumetric effects such as smoke and clouds in a micro-polygon imaging pipeline.

http://www.fxguide.com/featured/side-effects-software-25-years-on/

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About those microvoxels I suppose they are the new volume technology core inside H12, right?

From my understanding it has been a feature of Mantra for a while but was recently recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. So if you've rendered volumes in the last few years you're already using it.

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My memory is foggy but I think this was introduced in Houdini 10.0 along side with the first PyroFX release. Here's a link to the SIGGRAPH talk in case anyone is interested. Note that I haven't seen the material for purchase and can't vouch for it. I was in live attendance that year. :)

http://dl.acm.org/ci...FTOKEN=60718759

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My memory is foggy but I think this was introduced in Houdini 10.0 along side with the first PyroFX release. Here's a link to the SIGGRAPH talk in case anyone is interested. Note that I haven't seen the material for purchase and can't vouch for it. I was in live attendance that year. :)

http://dl.acm.org/ci...FTOKEN=60718759

http://webstaff.itn.liu.se/~jonun/web/teaching/2009-TNCG13/Siggraph09/content/talks/667-clinton.pdf

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Yeap, just finished to read and it's incredible the technical evolution they made with Prisms/Houdini.

About those microvoxels I suppose they are the new volume technology core inside H12, right?

But when will SideFX let us work with them?

woooow, this is the day, this is the hour! :)

it's there, among the daily builds

SideFX releases Houdini 12

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2121&Itemid=360

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For those who don't know, Nick van Zutphen is my real name :-).

Mike Seymour contacted me about an article, and above all the images, that I have on my VFX blog about prisms. SideFX turns 25 and my name is mentioned 5 times in the article, I'm proudly wearing my Houdini shirt today ;-).

http://nicknimble.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=73%3Ahistoryofcoding&catid=45%3Ainspiration&Itemid=55〈=en

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woooow, this is the day, this is the hour! :)

it's there, among the daily builds

SideFX releases Houdini 12

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2121&Itemid=360

Great Scott!!!

I'm so happy and excited and... drinking coffee for the incoming sleepless night!

It comes just in time to simulate an heavy scene!

To Nerox: thanks for the Prisms images, it's always a pleasure to admire the past of a software and thinking of how were those pioneering days both for programmers and for artists, and thanks to help them with the article giving those interesting notions about the software and people behind it.

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