courses

Solaris Katana interoperability part 2/2 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

In this video we will finish this mini series about Solaris and Katana interoperability.
I'll be covering the topics that I didn't have time to cover in the first video, including.

- Manual set dressing from Solaris to Katana.
- Hero instancing from Solaris to Katana.
- background instancing and custom attributes from Solaris to Katana.
- Dummy crowds from Solaris to Katana.
- Everything using USD of course.

There are many more things that could be covered when it comes to Solaris and Katana interoperability, I'm pretty sure that I'll be covering some of them in future USD videos.

All the info on my Patreon.

Solaris Katana interoperability part 1/2 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

This is small trailer for the video Houdini Solaris / Katana interoperability part 1/2.
The full video is published only for Patrons.
The whole thing is divided in two videos, the first one is around 2.5 hours and hopefully next month I can publish the second video covering the rest of the topics.

In this first video we are covering.

- Working template in Solaris.
- Working template in Katana.
- Full assets from Solaris to Katana.
- Modifying/overriding looks in Katana.
- Geometry assets from Solaris to Katana.
- Publishing looks as KLF.
- Publishing looks as USD files.
- Full assembly USD files.

All the information on my Patreon.

Thanks!
Xuan.

Camera projection masterclass, episode 03 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

I'm about to post "Camera projection masterclass, episode 03".
In this episode we are going to create a nested projection setup, where the camera is moving from far away at the begining of the shot, to end up closer to the subject by the end of the shot. A very common setup that you will see a lot in matte painting and environment tasks.

Then, we are going to take a look at the concept of overscan for camera projection. I will show you different ways of creating overscan, I will explain why overscan is extremely important for all your camera projection setups, and finally we will do a complex overscan camera projection exercise, using an impossible camera.

Make a big pot of black cofee because this is around 5 hours of professional training divided in two videos. Oh and remember that you can download supporting files if your tier includes downloadable material.

All the info on my patreon feed.

Thanks!
Xuan.

Houdini scatterers 2/2 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

This is the second (and last) part of Houdini scatterers. We are going to take the tools that we made in the first video and see how we can use them to create complex and efficient scattering systems for your VFX shots, specially useful when dealing with huge environments.

I will show you some of my favourite worflows and share some techniques that I've used in the past in combination with the HDAs that we created in this series.

For those of you in tiers with downloadable material, you will have access to another post with some links to get the files.

As usual feel free to contact me with questions, suggestions, ideas, etc.
And if you like my content, please help me out and recommend it to you work mates.

All the info on my Patreon feed.

Thanks a lot for your suppor!
Xuan.

Camera projection masterclass, episode 02 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello Patrons,

Camera projection masterclass, episode 02 is here! In this video, we are going to be doing two different exercises involving camera projection work in Nuke. The first exercise is a simple one, but also one you'll be doing all the time, a layering camera projection.

The second exercise is a more complex one, we'll be dealing with multiple geometries, different footage, and different approaches to set up our camera projection setup, this will be a coverage projection exercise.

More than two hours of content, also providing working files for you to practice.

As always, I can't thank you enough for your support.

Questions, suggestions, and critiques are always welcome.

All the info on my Patreon site.

Thanks!
Xuan.

Real time rendering for vfx, episode 02 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello Patrons,

It's been a while since I posted a video here. I did a little bit of traveling (not for fun though) and I've been super busy at work, but I finally managed to put something together for you guys.

Episode 2 of "real-time rendering for VFX". This episode is boring, really boring but also very much needed. If you really want to get into real-time rendering you need to go through everything that I explain in this video. I will cover very important topics that you need to know before starting to create any content for real-time.

Concepts like occlusion, overshading stages, lightmapping, vertex shading, distance culling, rasterization, and many other fancy terms that you necessarily need to understand. This video is almost 5 hours long so I hope you don't fall asleep and learn a few things to put in practice soon.

As usual, please let me know if you have any questions, concerns, suggestions, feedback, etc. And also, thank you very much again for your support.

Right now we are 199 patrons, let's get up to 200 and do something to celebrate it.

All the information on my Patreon site.

Real time rendering for vfx, episode 01 /  by Xuan Prada

Episode 01 for "real time rendering for vfx" is dropping later today. I called this video "your first day in Unreal engine". We will do from scratch a very simple environment that we can scout in virtual reality.

These are some of the topics covered in this (almost) 4 hours video.

- Assets considerations for real time.
- Exporting/importing assets in Maya/Unreal.
- Using templates in Unreal.
- Collisions.
- Materials basics.
- Lighting/atmospherics basics.
- Exporting projects.
- VR scouting.

Please head over my Patreon site and check this out.
Thanks for your support,
Xuan.

Intro to LOPs and USD /  by Xuan Prada

My introduction to Houdini Solaris LOPs and USD is already available on my Patreon feed.
These are the topics that we are going to be covering.

- Introduction to USD and LOPs
- Asset creation worflow
- Simple assets
- Complex assets
- Manual layout and set dressing
- Using instances in LOPs
- Set dressing using information from Maya
- Using departments inputs/outputs
- Publishing system
- Setup for sequence lighting
- Random bits

This introduction is around 4.30 hours long.
Check it out here.

Introduction to heightfields /  by Xuan Prada

This is the first part of the "Redshift little project" we are doing to conclude the "Introduction to Redshift for VFX" series. In this case, I will explain to you the basics of Houdini's heightfields. The most common tools, different workflows, how to export attributes, geometry, and textures, how to use real world data, and many more things. In the end, is about three hours of video training that will set you up quickly to start working with heightfields.

The video will be available for subscribers in my Patreon site.
Xuan.

Introduction to Redshift - little project /  by Xuan Prada

My Patreon series “Introduction to Redshift for VFX” is coming to an end. We have already discussed in depth the most basics features like global illumination and sampling. I shared with you my own “cheat sheets” to deal with GI and sampling. We also talked about Redshift lighting tools, built-in atmospheric effects, and cameras. In the third episode we talked about camera mapping, surface shaders, texturing, displacement maps from Mari and Zbrush, how to ingest Substance Painter textures and did a few surfacing exercises.
This should give you a pretty good base to start your projects in Houdini and Redshift, or whatever 3D app you want to use with Redshift.

The next couple of videos about this series are going to be dedicated to doing from scratch to finish a little project using Redshift. We are going to be able to cover more features of the render engine and also discover more broad techniques that hopefully you will find interesting. Let me explain to you what is all of this about.

We’ll be doing this simple shot below from start to finish, it is quite simple and graphic I know, but to get there I’m going to explain to you many things that you are going to be using quite a lot in visual effects shots, more than we actually end up using in the shot.

We are going to start by having a quick introduction to SpeedTree Cinema 8 to see how to create procedural trees. We will create from scratch a few trees that later will be used in Houdini. Once we have all the models ready, we will see how to deal with SpeedTree textures to use them in Redshift in an ACES pipeline.

These trees will be used in Houdini to create re-usable assets llibraries and later converted to Redshift proxies for memory efficiency and scattering, also to be easily picked up by lighting artists when working on shots.

With all these trees we will take a look at how to create procedural scattering systems in Houdini using Redshift proxies. We will create multiple configurations depending on our needs. We are also going to learn how to ingest Quixel Megascans assets, again preparing them to work with ACES and creating an additional asset for our library. We will also re-use the scatterers made for trees to scatter rocks and pebbles.

To scatter all of that will be used as a base Houdini’s height fields. For this particular shot, we are going a very simple ground made with height fields and Megascans, but I’m going to give you a pretty comprehensive introduction to height fields, way more than what you see in the final shot.

Once all the natural assets are created, we’ll be looking at the textures and look-dev of the character. Yes, there is a character in the shot, you don’t see much but hey, this is what happens in VFX all the time. You spend months working on something barely noticeable. We will look into speed texturing and how to use Substance Painter with Redshift.

suit.png

Now that we are dealing with characters, what if I show you how to “guerrilla” deal with motion capture? So you can grab some random motion capture from any source and apply it to your characters. Look at the clip below, nothing better than a character moving to see if the look actually works.

It looks better when moving, doesn’t it? There is no cloth simulation btw, it is a Redshift course, we are not going that far! Not yet.

Any environment work, of course, needs some kind of volumetrics. They create nice lighting effects, give a sense of scale, look good and make terrible render times. We need to know how to deal with different types of volumetrics in Redshift, so I’m going to show you how to create a couple of different atmospherics using Houdini’s volumes. Quite simple but effective.

Finally, we will combine everything together in a shot. I will show you how to organize everything properly using bundles and smart bundles to configure your render passes. We will take a look at how Redshift deals with AOVs, render settings, etc. Finally, we will put everything together in Nuke to output a nice render.

Just to summarize, this is what I’m planning to show you while working on this little project. My guess is that it will take me a couple of sessions to deliver all this video training.

  • Speed Tree introduction and tree creation

  • ACES texture conversion

  • ACES introduction in Houdini and Redshift

  • Creation of tree assets library in Houdini

  • Megascans ingestion

  • Character texturing and look-dev

  • Guerrilla techniques to apply mocap

  • Introduction to Houdini’s height fields

  • Redshift proxies

  • Scattering systems in Houdini

  • Volume creation in Houdini for atmospherics

  • Scene assembly

  • Redshift render settings

  • Compositing

  • Something that I probably forgot

All of this and much more training will be published on my Patreon. Please consider supporting me.

Thanks,
Xuan.

Arnold interoperability /  by Xuan Prada

In this video I will guide you trough arnold operators in both Maya and Houdni to show you advanced methods for creating looks, and potentially anything arnold related. Working with arnold operators can be very beneficial in your visual effect pipeline, among other things you are going to be able to transfer "for free" pretty much anything from one 3D package to another, in this case from Maya to Houdini and vice-versa.

These days it is very common to work in a traditional 3D package like Maya while creating assets and then moving to a scene assembler like Houdini or Katana to do shots. With this workflow you are going to be able to do so in a very clean, tidy and efficient way.

On top of that, I'm going to show you how to create look files that can be easily exported to use in lighting shots, independently in Maya or Houdini. You also are going to be able to override looks, versioning looks in Shotgun and many more things.

This is a two plus hours video tutorial posted on my Patreon feed.

Thanks a lot for your support.
Xuan.

Cryptomatte in Katana and Arnold /  by Xuan Prada

This post is mainly for my Patreon supporters. Some of them are having issues while setting up cryptomatte AOVs. This is how you do it.

  • Create a material node.

  • Add an AOVs shader -> cryptomatte.

  • If you are using the Arnold AOVs supertool, add all the cryptomatte AOVs that you need.

  • In the arnold global settings add the cryptomatte shader to the AOV shaders.

If you are not using the Arnold AOVs supertool.

  • Create an arnold output channel define node.

  • Set it to be crypto_material.

  • Type RGBA.

  • Add a render output define node.

  • Set the channel to crypto_material.

  • Repeat the same steps to create crypto_object and crypto_asset.

Katana Fastrack, episode 07 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

Episode 07 of Katana Fastrack is already available.
In this episode we will work on the second and latest lighting shot of this course, a live action shot where we have to integrate some CG elements, in this case our very own Ant Man falling on the ground.

We will learn a few things like:

- How to quickly capture HDRIs on-set and lighting references.
- How to technical grade footage and HDRIs to live under the same context.
- How to approach live action shots in Katana.
- How to slap comp CG renders on top of a plate for validation.

More information on my Patron site.

Thank you very much for your support!
Xuan.

Mari 4.6 new features and production template /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

I recorded a new video about the new features in Mari 4.6 released just a few weeks ago. I will also talk about some of the new features in the extension pack 5 and finally I will show you my production template that I've been using lately to do all the texturing and pre-lookDev on many assets for film and tv projects.

This is a big picture of the topics covered in this video. The video will be about 2.5 hours long, and it will be published on my Patreon site.

- Mari 4.6 new features
- New material system explained in depth
- Material ingestion tool
- Optimization settings
- How and where to use geo channels
- New camera projection tools
- Extension pack 5 new features (or my most used tools)
- Production template for texturing and pre-lookDev

All the information on my Patreon feed.

Thanks for your support!
Xuan.

Katana Fastrack episode 06 /  by Xuan Prada

Episode 06 of "Katana Fastrack" is already available.

In this episode we will light the first of two shots that I've prepared for this series. A simple full CG shot that will guide you trough the lighting workflow in Katana using the lighting template that we created in the previous episode.

On top of that, we also cover the look-dev of the environment used in this shot.
We'll take a look at how to implement delivery requirements in our lighting template, such as specific resolutions based on production decisions.

We also will take a look and how to create and use interactive render filters, a very powerful feature in Katana. And finally, we will do the lighting and slapcomp of the first shot of this course.

All the info on my Patreon feed.

Katana Fastrack episode 04 /  by Xuan Prada

Katana Fastrack episode 04 is already available.
In this episode, we will finish the Ant-Man lookDev by tweaking all the shaders and texture maps created in Mari.

Then we will do a very quick slapcomp in Katana and Nuke to check that everything works as expected and looks good. We will do this by render a full motion range of Ant-Man walk cycle. And finally, we will write a Katana look file to be used by the lighters in their shots.

Check it out on my Patreon feed.

Nuke IBL templates /  by Xuan Prada

Hello,

I just finished recording about 3 hours of content going through a couple of my Nuke IBL templates. The first one is all about cleaning up and artifacts removal. You know, how to get rid of chunky tripods, removing people from set and what not. I will explain to you a couple of ways of dealing with these issues, both in 2D and in 3D using the powerful Nuke's 3D system.

In the second template, I will guide you through the neutralization process, that includes both linearization and white balance. Some people knows this process as technical grading. A very important step that usually lighting supervisors or sequence supervisor deal with before starting to light any VFX shot.

Footage, scripts and other material will be available to you if you are supporting one of the tiers with downloadable material.

Thanks again for your support! and if you like my Patreon feed, please help me to spread the word, I would love to get at least 50 patrons, we are not that far away!

All the info on my Patreon feed.

Katana Fastrack episode 03 /  by Xuan Prada

Episode 03 of my Katana series is out. We are going to be talking about expressions, macros and tools to take our look-dev template to the next level. Right after that, we will take a look at the texture channels that I painted in Mari for this character and then we will start the look-dev of Ant-Man.

We divide the look-dev in different stages, the first on is blocking, and we are going to spend quite a few time working on this today.

All the info on my Patreon feed.

Katana Fastrack episode 02 /  by Xuan Prada

Katana Fastrack episode 02 is now available for all my patrons. I cover how to create a proper look-dev template to be used in visual effects. Everything will be setup from scratch and at the end of this lesson we will have a Katana script ready to be used. In lesson 03 we'll be using this script to do all the look-dev for Ant-Man.

In Katana Fastrack episode 02 you will learn:

- How to create master look files
- How to use live groups to create light rigs
- How to create a look-dev template for production

All the info on my Patreon feed.