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300...and Houdini?


michael

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I hear Meteor did some work on the film....and in Houdini no less...anyone have any more info?

That work was completed before I got here, but most of it was done in Maya. The fields of wheat were all done with procedural primitives and renderman via Maya/mtor. Looks great, shame they didn't get a credit.

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We did some work on 300 at [the now defunct Technicolor Toronto office], using houdini.

It was the eye replacement on Ephialtes. They shot the entire sequence with a prosthetic that was not quite working. It's always fun working on VFX shots that were never supposed to be VFX shots. No lens info, no track markers... good times :D

Was fun.

Cheers,

Gene

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  • 2 weeks later...
You could ask Fred for specifics. Last I talked to Fred Houdini ws making significant inroads at Meteor thanks to him, and he served as a Lead Technical Director on 300.

BTW I loved the movie.

Whatsup Mark!

Yo Cronin!

Yup, I asked Fred about it, and he did use houdini for a couple particle shots. Management here is very anti-Houdini, pro-Maya, mostly because they expected it to be a magic bullet -- without support, with only 2 artists in the studio who know how to use it, only one license, no access to the farm, etc.. When a VFX shot in Maya takes 3 times longer than quoted, it's just business as usual, but when a shot you can't even DO in Maya take 3 times longer in Houdini, it's time to blame Houdini... I'm amazed he and Todd managed to get anything done at all, considering how badly things were set up.

BTW, I heard the VFX supe refused to allow them to use RiCurves or LOD for the wheat -- every stalk is full-rez NURBS geometry... crazy... Render times were insane... the theory is he was trying to sink the studio, but never blame on malice what you can just blame on incompetence...

later

-Mark

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I heard the VFX supe refused to allow them to use RiCurves or LOD for the wheat -- every stalk is full-rez NURBS geometry... crazy

Sad but a very common attitude in this business. I remember one chain link fence modelled in Sludge with actuall 12 division tubes. It's the default you know. ;) One panel was half a million polys all the while the modelling supe just watched it progress along. When I saw it, I laughed out loud.

It inspired me so much I built a chain link asset using open curves with a wire displacement shader and put it up on the old school blog. Well it should be up there today...

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Sad but a very common attitude in this business. I remember one chain link fence modelled in Sludge with actuall 12 division tubes. It's the default you know. ;) One panel was half a million polys all the while the modelling supe just watched it progress along. When I saw it, I laughed out loud.

It inspired me so much I built a chain link asset using open curves with a wire displacement shader and put it up on the old school blog. Well it should be up there today...

That's cool, oldschool! Looking forward to it.

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