geneome
Just a guy, drifting.
Image Planes Part 4 (Object IDs)
Nov 19th
Didn’t think the image plane series was complete enough so I tacked on this little diddy. I covers how to get object (or primitive) ids using image planes in Houdini and what you can do with them in the compositor using the lumakey COP. The compositor part I learned from SYmek, who I feel is an integral part of the Houdini community (and who I had an argument with about points on the Sunflow forum a while back 
).
Image Planes Part 3 (Light Export)
Nov 18th
I’m fairly pleased with this video only because I learned a lot on my way to get this worked out. Well, I learned a lot of mistakes one could make with Houdini’s VEX like what you shouldn’t put in illuminance loops. I felt obliged to do this video since in the very first video I mentioned that I would talk about light export in the image planes. What this covers is how to get planes/passes for each light in the scene. You can find the video as well as the final hipnc file here. The final hipnc file has specular components added which I didn’t cover in the video since the technique to get the diffuse planes is so similar.
Image Planes Part 2 (An Occlusion Plane)
Oct 12th
Okay, so I went a bit off the track on this one. It’s loosely an image plane video and more of a “how to do an occlusion pass inside a shader then put it in a plane” video. So I’m not sure if I should keep it under the “image plane” heading or create some new one. Either way, this topic was a weird one I was wrestling so I did a lot of forum searches and made lots of mistakes (basically writing my VEX poorly). So I thought I would at least show my results so people could see what I found. What’s made this more interesting is looking into the different occlusion functions and trying to figure out why they differ and what they really give you.
Edit: In this video I use a subtract node to subtract the occlusion output from a constant float (1). Houdini user Jason M. pointed out that I could have used the compliment VOP instead which does the same thing in one node rather than the two I used. So remember that the compliment VOP is around!
Image Planes Part 1
Oct 7th
I’m loving Houdini shaders and image planes are just icing on the cake. I thought I would run through the basics first then in a later video(s) get into extracting specific data into planes then cover light exports in image planes. So you can find part 1 here!
XSI Foundation, Fare Thee Well
Aug 27th
It has come to my attention that XSI Foundation is no longer available. To most people who know the company this isn’t news, but for those who haven’t stayed up to date on XSI this is certainly interesting to note. To me, this news is both understandable and frightening. Understandable because, having used Foundation, it was severely limited and I couldn’t imagine users getting the most out of the software. Frightening because it just goes to show how precarious acquiring affordable industry leading production level software is for training and/or noncommercial work. Even more frightening because it could happen to any application. One would think that it won’t, perhaps being unchanging and everlasting, but with XSI Foundation disappearing after a 3 year run my beliefs have been shaken. It is surprising though that XSI Essentials has everything I would want in a package for only 3 grand.
BTW, I still have XSI Foundation 4.2
I would love to understand the business of selling 3D software. I would really like to see the costs involved in producing the software and maintaining the business and what profit is expected from sales. Obviously if these “affordably awesome” packages (e.g. XSI Foundation (R.I.P), Maya PLE, and Houdini Apprentice) don’t make money, don’t increase sales of the full-version packages, or actually hurt the sales of the full-version packages, then they will no longer be offered. I can understand that. So for me, I would like to greatly help in finding a way to help these companies make these affordably awesome packages work for the company to increase sales of the full applications.
Of course, with all this talk I start sounding like a leech. You know the ones. They want everything free and when it’s not they complain (and even when it is they complain even more). They want greatness for cheap, and when they can’t get it they whine. I think I can separate myself from this cadre since I really do think that the higher end software is really worth the 2 to 8 grand they sell it for. And I use the “affordably awesome” software with the intent that I will one day buy the full version and no longer dwell in the shadows with leeches.
Still, the thought of no longer having free/cheap training tools available for the production level packages is a thought I would rather not have at all. Especially if it’s one I have invested a great deal of time in. Trust me, switching apps (by necessity or choice) isn’t always a joy – it’s a quick journey from prince to pauper when it comes to knowledge of the tools. But one must prepare. If you are investing your effort into an application using the affordably awesome packages, one must be mentally prepared to be ready to either make the leap of purchasing the full version or be ready to stand alone on a sinking ship.
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