I'm on a quest to share knowledge and help artists use Houdini in a practical way for their own projects. My goal is to help you skip the headaches and wasted time so you can bring your ideas to life - faster. [Sign up to receive new emails (almost) daily, and read some past articles under "Posts" below :) ]
Within the full Boss Battle (5 Hours and 19 Minutes of lessons that are now all available) we introduce a full FX shot workflow built 100% from scratch.
The full outline of what is covered is listed below.
Studio Scene Prep: Setting up the podium, backdrop, and lighting that our main scene will take place in. This is done in SOPS and then rendered with Karma and Redshift inside of Solaris.
Blaster POPS Simulation: FX POP particle sourcing for randomizing both the "shooting location" and the "target location" for the blaster bullets. And a full POP simulation for the collisions, and impact caching.
POPS Sparks and Processing: Setting up custom sourcing based on the impact location and collision normals. We create an optimized particle simulation for our sparks, with accurate collisions, and proper caching workflows. We then set up the post processing to take the boring particles, and turn them into render-ready sparks with color, noise, and scaling by age.
PYRO Smoke Burst Simulation: Sourcing from the impact locations, we create and modify a three layer smoke sourcing, to add density and velocity into our smoke simulation. We create a DOP network from scratch, set up custom velocity fields, and custom collision for accurate simulation. We source smoke from the impact location, a radial burst generated procedurally based on the impact normals, and an art directed sourcing for creating smoke directly from the sparks themselves.
Solaris / Karma / USD: We then bring our simulations into Solaris to render with Karma. Setting up proper AOVS for each individual effect, and its light contribution to the scene. We debug some USD issues by properly cleaning and caching our sparks and blaster simulations to USD, and then sublayer them back into our network for rendering.
Compositing within COPS: We then create a full COPS network to combine our FX layers with full control, we have the opportunity to modify individual light contributions as well as create a stylized look for our FX by recoloring or editing the individual layers.
SOPS Solver / Burn Mark AOVS: To create the burn / scorch marks on the podium geometry, we create a SOP solver to store the impact locations over time, and then a custom attribute based render AOV with Karma to render out a mask we can use in compositing.
Final Compositing Touches: To finish off the project, we integrate our burn mark AOV properly into our compositing setup to get full control over the look of the scorch marks.
Some screenshots of the final networks we'll be creating are below.
ALL FX Layers, the full simulation network for our 4 sims used in the final shot.
Below is the final DOP network we create for our smoke simulation. We source custom density, custom velocity, as well as a bonus velocity field created from the final spark simulation.
DOP network created for the smoke simulation
Below is the final Solaris setup for our scene, as well as the 7 AOVS and render layers we use in the final composite. Also pictured in the right, is the USD cache workflow we used to create proper motion blur on our sparks and blaster bolts.
This full FX project covers the production ready workflows needed to bring real FX to life.
By the end of this Boss Battle, you'll have a full understanding of how to design, debug, and create FX shots like this AND you'll have the understanding to apply these workflows to your own projects and shots.
If you haven't downloaded the Node Navigator Blueprint™ yet, you can grab that here at this link. It's years of my experience, and my full workflow organized, and documented into an easy to follow structure.
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Quick housekeeping:
I'm a full-time 3D artist still learning as I go. These emails I write, the systems I build, and the new ways of working and learning Houdini - it's all stuff I've learned the hard way and am actively building in real time.
If you ever decide this isn't for you, or you no longer want to get any of my Houdini emails, no hard feelings - feel free to unsubscribe at any time. I work quickly, and share ideas as they come up. So the topics covered in these emails might be related to anything from specific Houdini principles, to general 3D project management, to problem solving frameworks for projects.
Everything I'm building is with the goals of helping you get better at Houdini, helping you complete your projects more effectively, and helping you skip many of the challenges I had to go through.
A few other things worth knowing:
→ If you want personalized 1-on-1 mentorship, reply to this email with the word "LEGEND" and I'll get back to you directly.
→ If an email helps you or inspires you in a particular way, sparks a question, or you want to push back on something and have a different opinion - just hit reply and share your thoughts or questions. I read everything.
→ If you want to follow more you can find me on Instagram @will.hendrickson Feel free to also DM, reach out, and introduce yourself.
→ If there's something specific you're stuck on in Houdini right now, send it over. I keep a running list of subscriber questions and a lot of them end up becoming full emails or lessons.
→ If you want to see where this all started, then click the video below to watch the first video I ever posted on YouTube!
I'm on a quest to share knowledge and help artists use Houdini in a practical way for their own projects. My goal is to help you skip the headaches and wasted time so you can bring your ideas to life - faster. [Sign up to receive new emails (almost) daily, and read some past articles under "Posts" below :) ]
