import awesomeness as awsm

Earlier in the day I had said I was going to be asking some questions from my game dev friends about stupid noobish things that folks who haven’t scored their first industry position (like myself) wouldn’t know. Below you’ll find a VERY lengthy thread that I managed to pull together from all the tweets. It looks ugly and I don’t have the heart (or the willingness) to format it, so read it as you will. It was an AMAZING conversation with all types of folks working in all different studios chiming in. If you’re not on Twitter… You’re an idiot. THIS is the power of Twitter. Not finding out where Justin Bieber is or posting about how you threw up on the lawn or you ate a bowl of Cheerios. This is the “Social” and the “Networking” all-in-one. I found a new friend out of it and I crammed as much knowledge as I could into my brain over a 5+ hour period. Some parts have been cut out, but if you’re really interested (none of it’s bad, just funny, but irrelevant) go to any of the following folks Twitter accounts (or my own @ArrantSquid) and troll through the data. I want to give huge thanks to the following folks: @Smapdi (Chad Moore), @JonLogsdon (Jonathan Logsdon), @Anim8der (Tim Borrelli), @cgbeige (Dave Girard), @bclark_cgchar (Brad Clark), @MeatPlowz (Randall), @yantor3d (Ryan Porter), @tweetBoucha (Suchan), @riggingdojo (Rigging Dojo), @bentllama (Nate Walpole), @whiskeypail (M C) and @lightbombmike (Mike Jungbluth). They all threw their time and expertise into the mix at one point or another and I am very blessed to have such awesome friends who are willing to throw out their information for me to take in. So without further ado: Continue Reading…

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…