Patreon

Professional photogrammetry 04 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello!

This is the first of two videos about drone photogrammetry of my series "Professional photogrammetry".
In this video I will explain everything that I know about scanning for visual effects using commercial drones.

We will talk about shooting patterns, surveying extra data, equipment, flight missions, etc. And we will also start processing some of the data sets that I have available for you.
The video is around 3 hours long and it will continue in the next episode of this series.

Head over my patreon for more information

Thanks!
Xuan.

Intro to VEX for artists 01 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello Patrons,

I start the new year with an introduction to VEX for artists.
VEX is a crucial tool for any Houdini artists, it doesn't matter if you use Houdini for procedural modelling, environment creation, scene assembly and rendering or FX, you will have to use some VEX at some point.

This video covers the basics of VEX from scratch, there is no need to know any coding at all, and I will be making some basic examples along the way. From something very simple to more complicated setups.

My idea is to record 2 or 3 videos about VEX over the next few months,
This is the time to take your Houdini skills to the next level by understanding the most common uses of VEX.

Thanks!

Info on my Patreon.

Intro to TOPs /  by Xuan Prada

Hello Patrons,

This month I bring you an introductory video about TOPs.
TOPs is Houdini network that allows you to automate processes (amon other things).
I use it quite a lot for creating variations or wedges, specially when building procedural assets, scattering systems or environments. I also use it a lot to create different variations for simulations, and I use it specially for wedging lighting when designing sequences. But you can really use it for anything in Houdini.

This is a two hours introduction to the TOPs workflow, I hope you find it useful.
All the info on my Patreon.

Houdini's window box /  by Xuan Prada

Hello,

I just published on my Patreon a video about Houdini’s window box.
This video is about how to use the new window box system in Houdini. One of those tools that I've been using for many years at different VFX studios, but now it works out of the box with Houdini and Karma. I hope you find it useful and you can start using it soon in your projects!

All the info on my Patreon site.

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.

Professional photogrammetry 03 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

This is the third episode of "Professional photogrammetry".
Two videos, around 4 hours long where we will talk about Photometric stereo scanning. We will discuss the different setups that we have available for this kind of scanning. Then we will work on three different exercises, starting with the calibration of the setup followed by some fabric and vegetation scanning.

Finally, we will take a look at how to use coded targets for variable reduction in our scans.
Hope you learn something new and have some fun.

All the info on my Patreon page.

Thanks!
Xuan.

USD in depth, part 06 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello everyone,

USD in depth part 06 is dropping today.
This time is all about lighting and rendering.

We will take a look at all the lighting/lookdev/rendering tools available in Solaris.
We will focus mainly on Karma, as it is the propietary Houdini rendering engine and hopefully something that we all can use in production soon.
We will introduce concepts like sequence lighting, shot overrides, interactive render filters, etc.

Some of the topics covered.

- Main takeaways.
- Scene preparation.
- Lighting workflow.
- Sequence lighting.
- Karma settings.
- Motion blur.
- DOF.
- AOVs.
- LPEs.
- Volume rendering.
- MaterialX.

This is a 6 hours long video, so brace yourselves.
All the info on my Patreon site.

Thanks!
Xuan.

Professional photogrammetry 02 /  by Xuan Prada

Here is the trailer for "Professional photogrammetry episode 02".

In this 4-ish hours video I will talk about scanning in natural environments. We will cover everything needed for scanning and processing two different types of natural assets.

The first asset is a 3D asset, the second one is a ground surface. Both scanning and processing workflows are completely different for each, but hopefully after this video, you should be able to grow your own library of natural environment assets.

We go through equipment, scanning patterns, camera settings, etc. Then we will process everything in order to create final high quality assets ready for visual effects and real time.

I hope you enjoy this video, if you like it I guess I will do more videos about scanning in the wild/city.

Thanks!
Xuan.

All the info on my Patreon.

USD in depth, part 05 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

Part 05 of the USD series is here.

This is a 3 hours video about working with FX layers in USD.
We will explore different situations where we will deal with roundtrips from LOPs to SOPs to LOPs. We will have a look at different types of FX that require different approaches when working with USD.

From vellum simulations, to rigid bodies or pyro simulations. Nothing very fancy but hopefully, it will give you the information that you need when dealing with FX layers of any kind.

We'll also look into the new USD features available in Houdini 19.5
All the info on my Patreon.

Thanks!
Xuan.

Mix 05 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

This mix is not really a mix. What I mean by that is that the two topics covered in this video have a relationship between each other but also with a topic that we will be discussing soon in the USD series.

In the first part of the video we are going to be talking about ingesting lidar scans of natural environments in our pipeline. We will process the lidars to be used as heightfields. Then, we will extract some attributes based on the pointcloud data, later we will create additional attributes that can be used for scattering and lookdev.

Finally, we will export all the data to be used in a different 3D software or in a game engine. Or just to be used in Houdini. Total flexibility.

In the second part of the video we will explore the basics of scattering and distribution in LOPs. This video covers how distribution works under the hood. We will explore random functions and noise patterns to create natural scattering similar to what we can find in nature.

Almost 6 hours of content divided in two videos.

Info on my Patreon webiste.

Thanks!
Xuan.

USD in depth, part 04 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

USD in depth part 04 is here.
In the last episode we talked about asset authoring in USD and Solaris. I spent many hours after that publishing all the assets from Aninmal Logic's lab scene using my asset creation HDA, in the way that I like to publish assets. Now that everything is ready we will move on to the next stages of the pipeline.

In this video we will talk about assembly, the process where we create a set using all the available assets created before. Solaris has multiple tools for assembling scenes, including references, the stage manager, the layout tool, the drop tool, instances, scatterers, etc. We will look into all of those.

Once the assembly is done, we will look into shot setups, where we will establish the structure of a shot, including all the elements that will be needed later on. Part of this process is also layout and set dressing, where we will be creating cameras a shot specific overrides.

We will publish a few USD layers that will be referenced by the animation department. In this step of the pipeline we will look into how to author animation directly in Solaris and also how to import USD animated caches coming from different DCCs to be used in a shot.

Another 3 plus hours of professional USD training plus a big data set ready to be used in Houdini Solaris.

All the info on my Patreon website.

Thanks!
Xuan.

USD in depth, part 02 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

USD in depth part 02 is here.
This is another dense video, about 3 hours long talking about USD.
In the first video we talked about data and structuring, in this second video we will be talking about composition in USD.

USD layers can be written and read in different ways, it is very important to know how to use the different composition arcs, specifiers, and everything else that composes a USD file. This will dictate the way you structure your assets and your whole USD pipeline.

Another heavy video, so be patient and drink coffe, you will need both.

All the info on my Patreon.

Thanks!
Xuan.

USD in depth, part 01 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello Patrons,

I'm starting a new series called "USD in depth", where I will be exploring everything USD related. As you probably know USD is a new standard pipeline system/file format based on layers that contain scene descriptions. It is supported by the VFX platform and is or will be the core of many visual effects studios and animation companies around the globe.

In this first video (more than 3 hours) we will be talking about what defines USD. Type of data, USD structure, terminology, attributes and layers. This is a very dense video, so grab a pot of coffee and enjoy.

All the info on my Patreon.

Thanks,
Xuan.

Deep compositing - going deeper /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

This is a continuation of the intro to deep compositing, where we go deeper into compositing workflows using depth.

I will show you how to properly use deep information in a flat composition, to work fast and efficient with all the benefits of depth data but none of the caveats.

The video is more than 3 hours long and we will explore:

- Quick recap of pros and cons of using deep comp.
- Quick recap of basic deep tools.
- Setting up render passes in a 3D software for deep.
- Deep holdouts.
- Organizing deep comps.
- How to use AOVs in deep.
- How to work with precomps.
- Creating deep templates.
- Using 3D geometry in deep.
- Using 2D elements in deep.
- Using particles in deep.
- Zdepth using depth information.

Thanks for your support!
Head over to my Patreon for all the info.

Xuan.

Mix 04 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

First video of 2022 will be a mix of topics.

The first part of the video will be dedicated to talk about face building and face tracking in Nuke. Using these tools and techniques will allow us to generate 3D heads and faces using only a few photos with the help of AI. Once we have the 3D model, we should be able to track and matchmove a shot to do a full head replacement or to extend/enhance some facial features.

In the second part of the video I will show you a technique that I used while working on Happt Feet to generate foot prints and foot trails. A pretty neat technique that relies on transferring information between surfaces instead of going full on with complex simulations.

This is a 3.30 hours video, so grab yourself a cup of coffee and enjoy!
All the information on my Patreon channel.

As always, thanks for your support!

Xuan.

Dealing with lidars /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

We haven't talked that much about lidar scanning, and it is time to say a few words about it. Lidar scans are a fundamental piece of the VFX pipeline, used by every single visual effects studio on the planet and counted by dozens on every film or tv show.

Sooner or later you would have to deal with lidar scans, that's why I have recorded this video, more than 3 hours of professional vfx training about how to use lidars scans.

In this video we will learn:

- What is lidar scanning.
- How we use lidars in VFX.
- How lidar technology works.
- Basics of working on-set with lidars.
- Lidar hardware.
- Lidar software.
- How to process point clouds.
- How to generate meshes for 3D work.

All the information on my Patreon feed.

Thanks!

Xuan.

Deep compositing /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

In this 2 hour video we are going to be talking about deep compositing workflows.

I will show you how to use deep compositing and why you should be using it for most of your shots.
I will explain the basics behind deep rendering and compositing techniques and also we'll go through all the deep tools available in Nuke while comping some simple shots. From volumes and atmospheric effects to solid assets.

Video and downloadable material will be included in the next posts.
All the information on my Patreon.

Thanks for your support!

Xuan.

Lookdev rig for Houdini /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

In this video I show you how to create a production ready lookdev rig for Houdini, or what I like to call, a single click render solution for your lookdevs.

It is in a way similar to the one we did for Katana a while ago, but using all the power and flexibility of Houdini's HDA system.

Talking about HDA's, I will be introducing the new features for HDA's that come with Houdini 18.5.633 that I think are really nice, specially for smaller studios that don't have enough resources to build a pipeline around HDA's.

By the end of this video you should be able to build your own lookdev tool and adapt it to the needs of your projects.

We'll be working with the latest versions of Houdini, Arnold and ACES.

As usually, the video starts with some slides where I try to explain why building a lookdev rig is a must before you do any work on your project, don't skip it, I know it is boring but very much needed. Downloadable material will be attached in the next post.

Thank you very much for your support!

Head over to my Patreon feed.

Xuan.

Mix 03 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

This month I have another mix video for you. In this case I'm talking about two different ways of using the camera frustum to optimize your scenes. The first method is using the camera frustum to control the amount of subdivisions, a very common practice when dealing with large terrains that need a lot of displacement detail. We will use Houdini and Arnold, but this technique can be used in any DCC that supports Arnold. Other renderers have similar features.

The second method will use the camera frustum to blast parts of the scene not seeing by the camera. This is a tool that we will build in Houdini and can be used with any render engine.

Then we will move to another important topic in VFX, motion blur. I will show you how to use it properly to achieve photo realism. Motion blur should be taken very siriously, specially by lighters and FX TD's.

All the information on my Patreon.

Thanks!
Xuan.

Mix 01 and mix 02 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

Today's video is not part of any series, it is just a bunch of things that I consider important or relevant for this channel. More of these videos with mixed topics will be published more frequently.

I actually recorded two videos, almost 4 hours of training, and will be available as usual in the next post, only accessible to patrons.

Today's topics are:

- New features in Katana 4.x
- Katana new render queue.
- Multiple rendering using graph state variables.
- Improvements in catalog and monitor.
- USD viewport with Hydra.
- New lighting tools.
- New network material edit.
- New lighting tools.
- Modelling desdert dunes in Houdini and Blender.
- New solaris features relevant for assets creation and set dressing.

All the info on my Patreon site.

As always, thanks a lot for your support!
Xuan.