scatterer

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.

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.

Houdini scatterers, part 1/2 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

This new video is part of the "little project" I made in Houdini and Redshift a while ago. In this part 1 of 2 video I show you how to create efficient tools in Houdini to deal with scattering, specifically focusing on environments. We are going to create a setup that takes care of randomization while using scattering techniques. Random rotation, random scale, random assets, etc.

Once the setups are done we are going to create tools or "digital assets" so you can re-use these tools as many times as you need in future porjects without re-doing the setups. We will create an interactive user interface to manipulate the tools.

In part 2 of this video I will show you different scattering techniques using these tools that we are going to build today.

The video is available on my Patreon site.

Thanks for your support!
Xuan.

Clarisse scatterers, part 01 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

I just posted the first part of Clarisse scatterers, in this video I'll walk you through some of the point clouds and scatterers available in Clarisse. We will do three production exercises, very simple but hopefully you will understand the workflow to use these tools to create more complicated shots.

In the first exercise we'll be using the point array to create a simple but effective crowd of soldiers. Then we will use the point cloud particle system to generate the effect that you can see in the video attached to this post. A very common effect these days.
And finally we will use the point uv sampler to generate huge environments like forests or cities.

We will continue with more exercises in the second and last part of these scatterers series in Clarisse.

Check it out on my Patreon feed.

Thanks,
Xuan.

rendering Maya particles in Clarisse /  by Xuan Prada

This is a very simple tutorial explaining how to render particle systems simulated in Maya inside Isotropix Clarisse. I already have a few posts about using Clarisse for different purposes, if you check by the tag "Clarisse" you will find all the previous posts. Hope to be publishing more soon.

In this particular case we'll be using a very simple particle system in Maya. We are going to export it to Clarisse and use custom geometries and Clarisse's powerful scatterer system to render millions of polygons very fast and nicely.

  • Once your particle system has been simulated in Maya, export it via Alembic. One of the standard 3D formats for exchanging information in VFX.
  • Create an IBL rig in Clarisse. In a previous post I explain how to do it, it is quite simple.
  • With Clarisse 2.0 it is so simple to do, just one click and you are ready to go.
  • Go to File -> Import -> Scene and select the Alembic file exported from Maya.
  • It comes with 2 types of particles, a grid acting as ground and the render camera.
  • Create a few contexts to keep everything tidy. Geo, particles, cameras and materials.
  • In the geo context I imported the toy_man and the toy_truck models (.obj) and moved the grid from the main context to the geo context.
  • Moved the 2 particles systems and the camera to their correspondent contexts.
  • In the materials context I created 2 materials and 2 color textures for the models. Very simple shaders and textures.
  • In the particles context I created a new scatterer calle scatterer_typeA.
  • In the geometry support of the scatter add the particles_typeA and in the geometry section add the toy_man model.
  • I’m also adding some variation to the rotation.
  • If I move my timeline I will see the particle animation using the toy_man model.
  • Do not forget to assign the material created before.
  • Create another scatterer for the partycles_typeB and configure the geometry support and the geometry to be used.
  • Add also some rotation and position variation.
  • As these models are quite big compared with the toy figurine, I’m offsetting the particle effect to reduce the presence of toy_trucks in the scene.
  • Before rendering, I’d like to add some motion blur to the scene. Go to raytracer -> Motion Blur -> 3D motion blur. Now you are ready to render the whole animation.

Introduction to scatterers in Clarisse /  by Xuan Prada

Scatterers in Clarisse are just great. They are very easy to control, reliable and they render in no time.
I've been using them for matte painting purposes, just feed them with a bunch of different trees to create a forest in 2 minutes. Add some nice lighting and render insane resolution. Then use all the 3D material with all the needed AOV's in Nuke and you'll have full control to create stunning matte paintings.

To make this demo a bit funnier instead of trees I'm using cool Lego pieces :)

  • Create a context called obj and import the grid.obj and the toy_man.obj
  • Create another context called shaders and create generic shaders for the objs.
  • Also create two textures and load the images from the hard drive.
  • Assign the textures to the diffuse input of each shader and then assign each shader to the correspondent obj.
  • Set the camera to see the Lego logo.
  • Create a new context called crowd, and inside of it create a point cloud and a scatterer.
  • In the point cloud set the parent to be the grid.
  • In the scatterer set the parent to be the grid as well.
  • In the scatterer set the point cloud as geometry support.
  • In the geometry section of the scatterer add the toy_man.
  • Go back to the point cloud and in the scattering geometry add the grid.

  • Now play with the density. In this case I’m using a value of 0.7

  • As you can see all the toy_men start to populate the image.

  • In the decimate texture add the Lego logo. Now the toy_men stick to the Logo.
  • Add some variation in the scatterer position and rotation.
  • That’s it. Did you realise how easy was to setup this cool effect? And did you check the polycount? 108.5 million :)
  • In order to make this look a little bit better, we can remove the default lighting and do some quick IBL setup.

Final render.