Here is the final episode for “Katana Fastrack”. Free for everyone.
This one is about sequence lighting.
Many thanks to my patrons for your support!
Xuan.
Patreon
Real time rendering for vfx, episode 01 /
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.
Introduction to heightfields /
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 /
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.
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 /
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 /
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 /
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.
Introduction to Reality Capture /
In this 3 hour tutorial I go through my photogrammetry workflow using Reality Capture in conjunction with Maya, Zbrush Mari and UV Layout.
I will guide you through the entire process, from capturing footage on-set until asset completion. I will explain the most basic settings needed to process your images in Reality Capture, to create point clouds, high resolution meshes and placeholder textures.
Then I will continue to develop the asset in order to make it suitable for any visual effects production.
This are the topics included in this tutorial.
- Camera gear.
- Camera settings.
- Shooting patterns.
- Footage preparation.
- Photogrammetry software.
- Photogrammetry process in Reality Capture.
- Model clean up.
- Retopology.
- UV mapping.
- Texture re-projection, displacement and color maps.
- High resolution texturing in Mari.
- Render tests.
Check it out on my Patreon feed.
Mari 4.6 new features and production template /
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.
Lighting a full CG shot in Houdini, part 02 /
Hello patrons,
I just finished the second video for Lighting a full CG shot in Houdini, if you are a patron you will find it in the next private post. This is the content that we will go through in the video for almost three hours.
- Introduction to ACES in VFX. We will talk about the basics of ACES, why it's important for your productions, how to set it up in Houdini, Arnold and Nuke.
- CG lights. I will show you how we usually deal with CG lightings in relationship with principal photography. We will talk about the most common lights used while lighting a CG shot and the purpose of each of them. A very quick introduction to cinematography for VFX.
- Finally, we will jump into Houdini to create a master lighting template that you would be able to re-use in your shots. We will establish a tidy structure that will enable you to work straight away in Houdini. We will create smart bundles to setup automatically your render passes, and finally we will see how to use operators, probably the most powerful render feature ever!
Here the link to the episode.
Thanks for your support!
Xuan.
Introduction to Redshift for VFX - episode 03 /
Episode 03 of Introduction to Redshift for VFX, is already available on my Patreon feedhttps://www.patreon.com/elephantvfx.
It is all about surfacing shading and the video is something around 4.5 hours.
These are the topics of this episode.
Camera mapping
Redshift uber shader
Sub surface scattering solutions
Texture management
UDIM workflow
Look-dev workflow
Surface shading
Look-dev tools
Normal maps, bumps and displacements
Zbrush and Mari displacements
Substance Painter workflow
Shading user attributes
Look-dev exercises
Check it out on my Patreon page.
Katana Fastrack episode 06 /
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.
Lighting a full cg shot in Houdini, part 01 /
Part 01 of "Lighting a full cg shot in Houdini" is out.
In this first episode I go through everything you need to convert Houdini into a powerful scene assembler, specially focused on look-dev. I will go through other assembly capabilities and lighting/render in future videos.
In this episode we will cover:
- How to organize and prepare assets in Maya to be used in Houdini for assembly and render
- Good uv workflows for vfx and animation productions
- How to assemble multiple assets in Houdini in a scene assembly fashion
- Quick look at speed texturing in Substance Painter
- How to create digital assets and presets in Houdini to re-use in your projects
- Look-dev workflow in Houdini and Arnold
All the information on my Patreon feed.
Thanks for your support,
Xuan.
Katana Fastrack episode 05 /
Episode 05 of Katana Fastrack is already published. In this episode we are going to take a look at the lighting pipeline that we could find in any visual effects studio.
First, I will explain quickly what is the most common workflow when starting a vfx production, from the lighting point of view.
Then, I will explain the recipe that we are going to cook in Katana for lighting shots. And finally, we will jump into Katana to build our lighting template, a tool that we are going to be able to use on many shots and sequences in the future.
Before finishing this episode, we will try our lighting template with very simple assets, testing features like importing look files, shading override, shading edits, geometry edits, etc.
All the info on my Patreon feed.
Clarisse scatterers, part 01 /
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.
Katana Fastrack episode 04 /
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 /
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 /
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.
Introduction to Redshift for VFX, episode 01 /
I'm starting a new training series for my Patreon feed, it's called "Intro to Redshift" for visual effects. I'm kind of learning Redshift and trying to figure out how to use it within my visual effects workflow, and I'll be sharing this trip with you. In this very first episode, I'll be talking about probably the most important topics around Redshift and the base for everything that will come later global illumination and sampling.
I will go deep about these two topics, sharing with you the basic theory behind global illumination and sampling, and I will also share with you a couple of "cheat sheets" to deal with noise and gi easily in Redshift while rendering your shots.
Check the first video out on my Patreon feed.
Cheers,
Xuan.
Katana Fastrack episode 02 /
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.