Houdini

Megascans modules to full procedural buildings /  by Xuan Prada

 

Hello patrons,

In this video we will create a setup in Houdini to generate full procedural buildings using Megascan modules.
You can tweak this setup in any way you want to create a different style of buildings, either using other Megascan modules or your own 3D models.

At some point I would like to replicate this setup 100% inside of Unreal using PCG, this is something that I explain briefly in the video as well and it would be part of the Unreal PCG series that I started a while back.

All the info on my Patreon.

Thanks,
Xuan.

Grooming 02 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello Patrons,

I don't think I'll be able to publish anything next month, so I'm leaving this video this month (as well as the first video).

This is the second part of my grooming series (more to come) where we expand the knowledge and workflows explained in the first video.

This time we talk about cartoon female grooming, and we will spend quite a bit of time developing full procedural grooms. I will expand on this topic in the next grooming video, there are still plenty of things to cover.

All the info on my Patreon.

Thanks for your support!
Xuan.

Grooming 01 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello patrons,

This is the first video of my grooming in Houdini series.
The video is a bit longer than I anticipated, 4:46 hours, but we need to start by covering the very basics of grooming before doing any real grooming work.

This is what I will be covering in the video.

- Grooming workflow in Houdini.
- Grooming tools.
- Cartoon style grooming.
- Full grooming of one character.
- Overview of grooming of another character.

In future videos I will be covering many more grooming related topics, I explain the whole plan in the introduction of this video.

All the info on my Patreon.

Stay tunned.
Thanks!
Xuan.

Solaris backplates and live compositing /  by Xuan Prada

Hello,

I'm planning to realease two more videos before the end of the year, and most lilkely I will stop posting on this Patreon in 2025 let's see.

For now, this is the first video that I'm releasing in December.
Solaris backplates and live compositing. Houdini has re-designed COPs and now you can do much more without leaving the software when it comes to compositing, specially for slap comps.

We will take a look at the new tools and we will do a simple slap comp similar to the ones we do in production.

All the info on my Patreon.

Crowds part 03 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello Patrons,

This is the final video for my Crowds series.
In this video we are going to talk about using ragdolls in crowds systems.

Of course, there are many other topics that we could discuss when it comes to crowds, but for now, let's end this series here. Please let me know if you would like to see more crowds content in the future. Otherwise, please feel free to suggest other topics as well.

Al the info on my Patreon.

Thanks!

Crowds part 02 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello Patrons,

As promised, this is the second part of the crowds series.
In this very long video, almost 3.30 hours, I will cover creating agents from scratch. We will start by building the rigs bone by bone. Then retargetting mocap from different sources, creating collision layers, etc, and finally creating the crowd simulations.

We will be adding cloth and hair layers for simulation.
This is a more advanced crowd setup, so I encourage you to take a look at the first video.

I will conclude this series with Crowds part 03 - ragdolls, hopefully next month.

Thanks!
Xuan.

Crowds part 01 /  by Xuan Prada

Hello Patrons,

This is the first of two parts of my Houdini crowds training.
The first video is an introduction to the system. I will cover everything from agent creation, motion capture clips, props attachment, configuring contraints for feet contact, transition clips, and rendering in Solaris with Karma.

I will also explain in the video what are the plans for the second video, which will be a bit more advanced and it will touch on some important topics not covered in the first video.

I hope you like it.
Head to my Patreon to get all of this.

Thanks,
Xuan.

Snow piles in Houdini /  by Xuan Prada

In this video I will show you my process of building snow piles for your environments.
This might be a bit overkilling but it is a nice way of getting super detailed props for close up shots.
I basically use vellum grains to get a decent looking sim. Once the setup is done, you can get variations quickly and export single frames to build multiple props efficently.

All the info on my Patreon.

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 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.

Dummy crowds in Houdini Solaris /  by Xuan Prada

Quick video showing how to use one of my oldest tricks to create “dummy crowds“, but this time in Solaris, which makes this even easier and faster than using SOPs or MOPs.

I’ve used a flavour of this dummy crowds technique in many shots for a bunch of movies. It is very limited in so many ways, but when it works it works. You can populate your environments in minutes!

Please consider subscribing to my Patreon so I can keep making professional VFX training. Thanks. www.patreon.com/elephantvfx

Houdini Solaris and Katana. Custom attributes /  by Xuan Prada

This is a quick video showcasing how to use custom attributes in Houdini Solaris for USD scattering systems. The USD layer will be exported to Katana to do procedural look-dev using the exported custom parameters.

This technique will be explored in depth in my upcoming video about Houdini Solaris and Katana interoperability.

Subscribe to my Patreon to have full access to my entire library of visual effects training.
www.patreon.com/elephantvfx

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.

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.