VFXArabia

Houdini Quick tip #06 (Don't use spaces)

I faced alot of crashes while working on my previous post  Money gun (Houdini 17 Vellum) and when I contacted Sidefx about it, one of their responses was and I quote:

-"Please try not ...

Money gun (Houdini 17 Vellum)

Or as they call it cash cannon, ladies and gentlemen I present to you my first vellum test.

I can guaranty you that with H17 you will be able to generate more cash, you will letterly be playing with lots of cash compared the old slow H16.5  ;)

#cloth #simulation #paper

Exactly...

Houdini Remesh by attribute

Imagine a case were you have some characters interacting with a ground and you want the ground mesh to have a higher poly count where they step sth like adaptive remeshing based on attribute, well I got you covered you can easily do that using the @targetmeshsize attribute that is read by the rem...

Houdini Quick tip #05 (Fix primitive orientation & Flipped normals )

Sometimes you will be handled such corrupt mesh where some of the primitives are flipped and a simple Normal sop wont fix it for you, you might not see it in viewport but when rendering you will see dark spots near those areas.

So the solution is pretty simple you only have to apply a :

-Fac...

Transformers swirl rockets (Cebas Thinking Particles)

Well if you've seen Transformers then you must be familiar with this rocket launching formation, it was created in 3ds max 2017 using cebas thinking particles.
The attached scene has a wind control which is not shown in the video, you need to have some knowledge to dive deep in the setup so you ...

Houdini Quick tip #04 (Points number & Guide font size)

The default small size font is so annoying when you are debugging, well it appears that we can enlarge it ;)

Houdini Cumulative Transform

I tried creating this result using the built in Cumulative Transform option inside the copy stamp sop but didnt give me the desired look I'm after, so I ended up doing it by accumulating a matrix4 that was created using the maketransform() vex code.

I should note that it only works with meshes and...

Houdini Pixelizer

A tool inspired by Portraits project from Dimitris Ladopoulos and Entagma ARTISTIC QUADTREES, it holds four cutting patterns with density and extrusion control. I already set a material and lighting setup to be used with redshift.

Bonus : My photo is included lol.

Houdini Combine / Flatten VDBs

I came across two situation that urged me to find a way to combine or let's say flatten vdbs so instead of having multiple densities (in case you used a simple merge node) you will end up with only one, and those situations are:

- If you are using the 2018-09-06 19:44:56 +0000 UTC View Post

Houdini Spawn by distance

If you've used 3ds max PFlow then you are familiar with this important feature, a self explanatory title it helps you create trail of particles with a fixed predefined distance. This feature is also present in Cebas Thinking particle as (TrailBorn).

I added a couple of features and parameters for ...

Houdini Quick tip #03 (Points number to array)

Two ways I found out until now to sort your geometry points number in a detail array attribute:

- A conventional and more straight forward way where you loop through all the points and add them one by one to the array.

- Or a cleaner way using the expandpointgroup() vex code which will do th...

Houdini Pixelizer WIP 2

Almost there, I created 4 pixelizing patterns the first and last looks alike but if you paid attention you will notice that the first one (left) uses double cut per primitive (there are lots of crosses) while the last one uses only one cut (one direction horizontal/vertical) per iteration.

Now I n...

Houdini Pixelizing WIP

You might have've seen the amazing Portraits project from Dimitris Ladopoulos, you can find it here:
http://www.dimitris-ladopoulos.xyz/projects/portraits.html

I was so excited to give a shot, in ...

Thinking Particles Electric Arc

 This tool is based on Hristo's electric arc Thinking Particles setup, I added some controls and features like:
-New Tp spline, so you don't need to increase the particle count to make the arc look solid. which made the tool more responsive.
-Noise Scale.
-Animated phase.
-Animat...

Houdini sliding values

Or tiling values, as you can see if you have values between 0-1 then it will slide and repeat them.

I don't know if this tool is handy for you guys but I faced a situation while working on UVs and badly needed sth to do this slide, I started fixing it manually by creating a ramp and start m...

Houdini Quick tip #02 (Copy ramp)

It should be so obvious right clicking on almost anything in Houdini will give you a copy option but I didnt know when it comes to ramps that you should hit the title, because I tried everything.
So here you go copy and paste ramps in Houdini.

Houdini Reflection Vector (vex)

I was doing some particle collision and needed some control over the after hit vel vector, did some research and came up with this reflection formula.

We can push it further by introducing a custom normal vector, in this case I set it to (0,1,0) for demonstration purposes.

Optimizing Houdini RBD solver

I posted this video a before a couple of days and it started the world war 3 on facebook on both sides (TP/Houdini), my intention was I needed some ideas to optimize Houdini solver since it's taking insane amount of time to finish (I was letterly stoned to death for doing so lol).
So I went throu...

Houdini Impact Attribute

Extracting impact data is not one of the most straight forward thing you can get out of an RBD, specially when you want it as an attribute per object. After doing some research I came up with a relatively easy to apply solution.

This technique can be used for example to delete on collision or frac...

Houdini potato chips sop solver

In case you ever wondered how to make potato chips inside of Houdini ;)

Houdini Quick tip #01

Did you know that if you changed the default value of a certain parameter Houdini will Bold it out, and you can even take it further and display all the changed parameters but hitting that search icon and change the search type to (Parameters with non default values).

This is so useful when you've...

Houdini Customer Reel 2018

I'm so thankful and proud that all of the effort I put in this (painful to learn) program finally paid of, at 1:58 you will find my humble contribution to Houdini Customer Reel 2018. 

Houdini glitters

I created this setup in an attempt to replicate what I normally achieve using 3dsmax PFlow, so this setup has the following characteristics:

-Random gravity based on noise pattern (Desney like style).

-At hit trigger, so every time a particle collide you can apply sth in my case I introduced...

Houdini particles struggle

Dealing with particles inside of Houdini isn't one of the easiest things to do, some simple stuff we used to do in 3ds max PFlow like on hit do sth or after collision velocity and controlling the gravity to do some fashionable falling down. But once mastered you can do magic.

Well after finishing ...

Houdini Tornado WIP

Some upcoming goodies.... ;)

Houdini UV to world position

I always wanted to develop such tool, it simply works by sampling the target object uv and extract the world position from it, then apply that to our desired shape or object. I added and offset parameter in addition to thickness which retain the original object volume.

Houdini Rotation matrix (vex)

Matrices is a complex topic for artists, no one can doubt that so I tried my best to put all the known vex method to rotate an object using matrices in vex whether that object was a mesh, a primitive or a point to be copied on later (I like the rotation around a custom point).

Houdini train rail with banking

A cheep but yet an effective trick using the cross product of the side vectors to determine the turning direction and the turn strength, I started studying curve normals and matrices which led to a more complex setup as you can see.

Also the turn direction is visually represented.

Adaptive shape sampling

I faced a scenario where I had to deal a very dense shape and do some extrusion and bevel and with that amount of points it was so heavy and sluggish to deal with, and sometimes those points are positioned in an unnecessary places (like on straight edges).

So I did a small research on t...