import awesomeness as awsm

So in my last post on Houdini George had asked about whether or not I’d be getting more into Houdini. I really want to get into the rigging and skinning with it, but unless I can figure out why Houdini is constantly crashing I don’t know how effective I’m going to be. I also noticed that there are a fair bit of threads regarding Houdini crashing and I had a few folks tell me they stopped learning it because it was so crash prone (most had Mac’s as well so I’m wondering if it’s OSX specific), so I’m not the only one.

Alright. Let’s get to what this post really is about. I decided to jump on how to make a basic (and craptacular I might add) model in Houdini, layout uv’s and add a texture to it. I decided to see if a video tutorial would work and I gotta be honest, it’s a lot harder to tweak it out when your After Effects render takes 3 hours or if you screw something up or if it crashes or your kids are going to sleep, etc. I enjoyed doing it and I think it went well, but there are some addendums that need to be pointed out. Also, if you’re short on time, sorry. The video is about 45 minutes long. (The completed files can be found at the bottom.) So before you delve into it here’s what it is, isn’t and some extra notes. Continue Reading…

I recently had the opportunity to do an art test in a program I’ve never used before: Houdini. I’m going to share a bit of the knowledge that I got from this experience to help anyone else out, because to be honest… This program is a bit of a pain in the ass. I only had about a total of 24-30 hours with it, and modeling took quite a big chunk of that – I am not a great modeler and I admit that freely; I can do it, but someone else will do it WAY quicker and better; It’s like asking a modeler to write python. They’ll get it done, but how good will it be and how long will it take them – so take these notes as you will. I’m gonna talk about what I liked, what I didn’t like and some of the things that I found useful or helpful. If you want, you can download a free functioning copy of Houdini Apprentice from SideFx.com. If you’re a tech artist, I’m going to talk about a lot of stuff generally, but feel free to comment and I can answer any questions you have. If you’re really interested in a particular subject, let me know and I’ll do my best to write up a post about it. So without further ado, let’s start off with the big differences. (If you’re just interested in the L-Systems stuff hop to the bottom) Continue Reading…