terrain

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.

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.

Meshlab polygon reduction /  by Xuan Prada

Meshlab is probably the only available solution (proprietary Lidar software doesn't count) when you have to deal with very heavy poly count. I'm working with some complex terrains, some of them up to 50 million polys and Maya or Zbrush just can't handle that. I'm reducing the poly count considerably fast in Meshlab with its polygon reduction tools.

  • This terrain has more than 16 million polys. Maya can't handle this very well, and Zbrush can't manage memory to even open it. Just import it in Meshlab.
  • You will be using the Quadric Edge Collopse Decimation tool a lot.
  • There are different strategies available, I like to use the percentage one. In this case by 0.5
  • I'll be getting an 8 million poly terrain.
  • I just run the tool one more time to get a 4 million terrain. I can work in Maya with this :)