Maya to Houdini Conversion Course: Part 2c - collisions, how to playblast in Houdini

In this lesson you will be able to start creating particle collisions, adjusting colours, creating different instances of geometry onto your particle simulation and quickly and easily preview them in Houdini's equivalent of a playblast. In lesson 2c you will learn collisions how to set up a collision POP adjusting collision attributes Creating instanced Geometry In Houdini you use a Copy SOP to set up instancing How to wire any geoemtry and particle simulation into a Copy SOP Colouring Particles Setting up a Playblast in Houdini a playblast...

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Maya to Houdini Conversion Course: Part 2b - Particle expressions, key frames and graph editor

This lesson will give you the confidence to start using and adjusting basic particle simulations, you'll gain access to the animation controls and expression editor which you can use in other parts of the software  In lesson 2b you will learn keyframing seting up emissions attributes impulse activation constant activation birth rate middle mouse button to see particle states over a node setting up expressions where to create an expression deleting...

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Maya to Houdini Conversion Course: Part 2a - Particle Set up

This lesson will quickly and easily get you up and running with particles in Houdini and lays the foundation for further particle exploration  In lesson 2a you will learn Basic particle setup in Maya versus Houdini Going beyond the shelf buttons to construct your own particle objects What the POP node is Different types of emitters and how to source particles from polygon objects First object context geometry How to collect particles...

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Maya to Houdini Conversion Course: part 1c - Grouping and Transforming

This lesson will quickly and easily push you beyond the top layer in Houdini and you will leave understanding the different mindset required to quickly and easily start using Houdini.  In lesson 1c you will learn How to group objects together How to transform the whole group How to transform individual elements of grouped objects Layout options in Houdini  maximising the viewport creating extra attribute editors linking windows to...

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Maya to Houdini Conversion course: Part 1b - Getting around Houdini

In this lesson you will understand the differences between the Maya and Houdini workspace and how the concept of contexts in Houdini differ from the Maya workflow.  You will leave understanding the different mindset required to quickly and easily start using Houdini.  In lesson 1b you will learn How Houdini contexts differ from Maya workspace  How Houdini lets you go deeper into object mode than Maya does  Using the tab...

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Maya to Houdini Conversion Course: Part 1a - where commonly used items in Maya live in Houdini

Welcome to the Maya to Houdini conversion course in this lesson we'll go through through the course outline and what a Maya artist needs to know when moving across to Houdini.  We'll go through the interface so you can quickly and easily navigate your way around in Houdini as you do in Maya. To shift from Maya to Houdini requires to understand how the two pieces of software were built upon different architecture. In lesson I you will...

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Nitro Dust - how to make an animated movie in 4 days

Hi everyone, I recently finished directing my second animation of the year 'Nitro Dust' a psuedo-prequel to Digitopia: Discover Me, Nitro Dust is set in the same universe a little earlier in the timeline of the story. I had a small team of artists and we made this movie in just four days.  In this blog post I'm going to take you beyond the technical set up required to create an animated movie in four days and we'll explore the human...

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Fable Legends announced

The game I'm working on is finally announced - it's called Fable Legends. Here's the trailer. Here's an interview on the IGN website that should answer a lot of the questions that you have....

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How to put VFX and animation into your film

I've been asked so often how to integrate VFX and CG into film by low and no budget filmmakers.  I've written a quick guide on how you can put in VFX and CG into your movie, whatever budget you are working at this process will work for you.   Follow this simple process i.                     Find out who you need to do the  job ii.                   Define...

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VFX Cloud Studio 2.0 - What it means for Producers and Artists

Hello everyone, buoyed on from the success of VFX and CG Survival Guide for Filmmakers and Producers (Kindle - http://amzn.to/WTZByQ) I've been approached by independent film producers to provide VFX for their projects.  The requests have come from far and wide, some asking for quotes others asking me to carry out the work. This post is about what is in it for an independent film producer to come directly to the artist and what can...

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Launching VFX book to number 1 best-seller spot on Amazon

So the past month I have been really busy launching my book 'VFX and CG for Producers and Filmmakers' on Amazon. Paperback US and International -> http://www.amazon.com/Survival-Producers-Filmmakers-Guides-Volume/dp/1484021541/ UK -> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Survival-Producers-Filmmakers-Guides-Volume/dp/1484021541/ Austria and Germany -> http://www.amazon.de/Survival-Producers-Filmmakers-Guides-Volume/dp/1484021541/ France...

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How to set up your own VFX Studio - business considerations

In this post I am going to guide you through the process of how to set yourself up as a your very own VFX studio.  In practice this post can relate to setting yourself up as your own business, whatever industry you are in, but seeing as this a VFX oriented site I'll use the business model of a VFX studio for the purpose of this exercise. Most of us VFX and animator types are employed as freelancers or contractors, there are very few staff...

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London Newmian Games

I recently finished a job working on Olympics presentations for the recent games here in London. I worked on the lighting and effects for the various 2012 logos. I lit these 2012 stings that appear on the giant jumbtrons. Any time any event is about to take place the 2012 logo will fly right on screen and the title of the event would be displayed. jumbtrons from Farhan Qureshi on Vimeo. There was a team of six of us in a lofty sunny room in Farringdon working on this - we actually worked in a rather convulted way,...

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Naiad R&D

So I've been busily furrowing away learning Naiad.  I thought I'd share some of my first tests with you and how I went about doing these. Naiad test 01 - firing liquid against a wall Naiad test 01 from Farhan Qureshi on Vimeo. Naiad test 02 - a block crashing into liquid Naiad Test 02: Block crashing into water from Farhan Qureshi on Vimeo. Naiad test 03 - trudging through thick liquid Naiad test 03: block trudging through...

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Jelly on a plate served by Houdini

I was playing around with the new fluid solver in Houdini 11. I came up with a pretty cool jelly animation by adjusting the viscosity settings and collision tolerances. Here's the basic setup and settings The basic set up    Geo:       basic box shape with a smoothing operation to create the shape       cutter geo - which we'll reference into the collision object below    Dynamics  ...

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