Posts tagged Houdini

imageplanes

Image Planes Part 1

3 years ago
by Eugene in ,

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

3 years ago
by Eugene in

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

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.

dophassub

Using dophassubdata To Change Colors Dynamically

3 years ago
by Eugene in , ,

It’s a fairly straight forward but I thought it needed to be put in video form. Dynamics and expressions in Houdini go hand in hand and this is an example of that. You can find the video tutorial on how to do this here and the result below:

Dynamic Color Changing from Geneome on Vimeo.

boundingemit

Emitting Particles Using A Bounding Object And Its Normals

3 years ago
by Eugene in , ,

There was a discussion on the Houdini forums that I took part in that I thought was worth not just one video tutorial but a three part series. I think it’s a really simple task but shows oh so much and is easily applicable to more complex work. What it covers is taking an object that will emit particles and dictating what points on the emitter send out particles and in what direction using a bounding object and one of the bounding object’s normals. You can find the videos and completed .hipnc file here.

Here is what the final result looks like (note that I changed the resulting file a bit to get a good flipbook result):

Emitting Particles Using A Bounding Volume’s Normals from Geneome on Vimeo.

Constraining Cloth Addendum

3 years ago
by Eugene in ,

I was so caught up with showing how you can get your grouped points output to a group node I didn’t show the easier way to stitch cloth with the stitch constraint (and an issue that may arise). So instead of calling do-overs and doing the whole video again just to add that, I’ll just do a 2 minute supplement to the video which you can find here.

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