Wednesday | May 7 | 10:00 AM CEST

First Gig, Big Scale: A Freelancer’s Leap into Houdini VFX  

Freelance artist Karim Rehimi shares how he transitioned from game art to VFX and landed his first Houdini job – working on a large-scale show. He’ll talk about relearning from scratch, building a showreel, and how it all came together at just the right moment. The second part of the session dives into technical workflows, showcasing fluid and lightning effects created in Houdini.

 

Karim Rehimi is a freelance 3D and VFX artist based in Berlin, with over 18 years of experience in the games, advertising, and immersive media industries. After working in art direction, real-time production and VR, he shifted his focus to visual effects and recently made the leap into Houdini. His work blends technical precision with playful exploration, always driven by curiosity and a love for learning.              

Wednesday | May 7 | 10:45 AM CEST

Fail Forward: The Art of Rapid Iteration  

In the fast-paced world of VFX, iteration is the key to success. This presentation explores how a fail-fast approach in FX accelerates the creative process, allowing teams to quickly refine shots, optimize workflows, and achieve stunning visual effects. We’ll dive into strategies for rapid prototyping and faster feedback loops. Through real-world examples and best practices, you’ll learn how embracing failure as part of the process leads to faster, higher-quality results.

 

Magnus Pettersson joined Storm Studios as a CG Generalist in 2008, but it didn’t take long for him to discover his passion for FX work. Determined to pursue this path, he introduced Houdini to the studio, laying the foundation for the FX department and its pipeline development. With a talent for finding elegant solutions to complex problems, Magnus thrives on building tools that simplify artists' workflows. Now serving as Head of FX, he balances hands-on shot work with leading the department, overseeing pipeline improvements, ensuring high-quality output, and managing recruitment.

Wednesday | May 7 | 11:45 AM CEST

Just Drop & Render  

Ever wished you had more sim or render power at your fingertips? Now you can! When JW from Drop & Render reached out about bringing Houdini to their farm, I was immediately excited. I had tried other cloud solutions before, but they never quite worked the way I wanted. With Drop & Render, our goal was to create a workflow that integrates seamlessly with the way you already work as a Houdini artist—making it feel just as smooth as using local machines. Just use assets from anywhere on your machine, whether it’s a local drive, a network drive—it doesn’t matter. Just submit your job, and it all works automatically.

In this presentation, I’ll walk you through the journey of designing these tools—from the first ideas to the beta release, testing different setups, and finally using them in live productions under real-world pressure (and tight deadlines!). Throughout development, I used the tools extensively, refining them along the way, and today, they are an essential part of my workflow. I’ll showcase several projects I’ve run this way, highlight the challenges we encountered, and explain how we improved the tool to handle any scenario.

 It’s been an incredible experience watching this take shape, and I can’t wait for all of you to try it for yourselves! 

Tim van Helsdingen is a 3D artist from the Netherlands. For the past decade, he has worked as a freelance artist for a wide range of clients, creating everything from commercials to visuals for music tours. If it’s cool and interesting, he's all in! Alongside his commercial work, he has been making tutorials for just about as long as he has been doing CG. There are now hundreds of hours of educational content out there for you to absorb with your eyeballs and earholes. He loves the balance between creating and teaching—it keeps things fresh. Every new challenge in his client work sparks discoveries that he can later share with others, making sure he never gets bored. That’s also why he is so excited to be involved with the tools for Drop & Render. It’s another perfect fit for what he does, bringing together creativity, problem-solving, and education in a way that keeps pushing things forward.              

Wednesday | May 7 | 12:30 PM CEST

Framestore's Wicked Houdini Work  

Learn how Framestore used Houdini to create the environments, crowds and effects of The World of Oz in Wicked. It'll be an overview of several techniques that have been used to integrate subtle VFX everywhere to make the world of Oz wonderful and whimsical.

Evan Peignet earned a scientific baccalaureate after studies in 3D and digital visual effects at ArtFX Montpellier then worked in Brussels, then London before returning to France. He has collaborated with 8 different studios and 1 school, in Belgium, England, France and Scotland. He currently works as a Lead Effects Technical Director at Framestore London.              

Wednesday | May 7 | 2:30 PM CEST

This is what the Edge of Your Seat was made for...  

A lesson in exploiting Houdini's toolkit for unconventional use-cases. From hijacking KineFX/ APEX viewer states to abusing TOPs, journey into niche and esoteric territory.

Tom Goffelli is the kinda guy who spends 3 hours with his friend trying to come up with a clever bio and ends up writing about pigs, huffing paint and owning Taylor Swift merch. When he isn't struggling to write his bio, he works in RnD at SideFX. But really, he just lies awake at night trying to come up with a good bio.              

Wednesday | May 7 | 3:15 PM CEST

AWAKENING THE ELEMENTS

FX Simulations Deep Under The Mountains And Above    

Explore the different types of effect simulations achieved to bring to life the gigantic dwarves's caves of Khazam-dûm, deep under the mountains. Art-directed destructions, waterfalls & rivers, dust & debris, flames, atmospherics, crowd and cloth, lead to many different types of Houdini setups - from fairly procedural to completely bespoke.

Fabian Novak is the Head of FX and FX Supervisor at The Yard VFX. After spending about a decade in London as an FX Technical Director and FX Lead, working at some of the biggest VFX Studios - MPC and ILM - on some of the biggest blockbusters and franchises, he moved back to France and started his journey at The Yard in Paris. There, Fabian was free to bring his passion, motivation, and dedication, to build the FX Department from the ground up. He is having a lot of fun working along with amazing people, and making state-of-the-art effect simulations of all kinds!              

Wednesday | May 7 | 3:15 PM CEST

Artist Workflows for USD, Solaris & RenderMan XPU    

Leif Pedersen takes you inside Chris Herrick’s Elucidea — a striking sci-fi vision built to explore USD, Solaris, and RenderMan workflows for production-level character design. Discover how RenderMan XPU was harnessed to light and render complex scenes with both speed and flexibility, and how interactive workflows proved invaluable for nuanced lighting and next-gen look development. The session also spotlights the latest RenderMan Challenge — and learn tips and trick on how to participate.

Leif Pedersen is a CG Generalist with over a decade of experience who applies his diverse skills to improve RenderMan, ensuring it meets the evolving needs of artists and studios globally. Additionally, Leif actively engages with the RenderMan Community and enjoys showcasing the most artistic and technical aspects of the renderer.             

Wednesday | May 7 | 5:00 PM CEST

Fibric : Procedural Clothing Creation with Curves  

Discover Fibric, a next-gen toolset for creating advanced CGI clothing using curves within Houdini's SOP context. We'll guide you through the entire process—from generating and manipulating fabric patterns, adding realistic damage, stitching, and fine-tuning details, to showcasing our custom Husk render-time procedural for dynamic clothing wrapping and authoring. See how Karma XPU enables rapid look development with millions of points in seconds, all within a robust USD-supported workflow.

 

Agustín González is a CG Supervisor specializing in surfacing, lighting, and compositing, with extensive experience in live-action films, game cinematics and feature animation show like "Love Death & Robots" He is passionate about leveraging emerging technologies and developing innovative workflows in Houdini and USD to drive both creative and technical excellence in production.

Thursday | May 8 | 10:00 AM CEST

FX workflows in Solaris/USD    

Importing FX data into Solaris can be challenging. Over the past couple of projects, we have polished our own HDA wrappers which would import particles, volumes and destruction in a very efficient manner without duplicating data. Learn how to destroy big environment pieces, with bunches of arbitrary overlapping geometry. VDB fracturing in conjunction with TOPS was the technique that made it all possible.

Bogdan Amidzic has been in VFX industry from 2006, working both in 2d and 3d departments, mainly in Crater studio. His art background experience and programming skills lead to finally diving into Houdini ecosystem. Over several projects he has been responsible first for adopting Houdini as a main tool, then adopting USD/Solaris pipeline. Recently he started teaching as Houdini instructor in Crater VFX training center, and has organized several Houdini user group events.            

Thursday | May 8 | 10:45 AM CEST

The Boy & The Octopus - CFX workflows     

An overview of the challenges of simulating octopus tentacles, skin and hair for Disney's 2024 holiday season short film. We will explore how we used Houdini to solve the many CFX challenges on this exciting project!

Andrea Lacedelli is a VES nominated CFX Supervisor at Untold Studios has more than 7 years experience in the VFX industry, and has worked on a variety of creatures projects that involve skin and muscle, hair, feather etc. simulations. From bears to birds to octopuses, Andrea has a wealth of experience in finding the right solutions to challenging creature projects. 

Amaan Akram is the Head of VFX at Untold Studios and has worked in VFX for over 25 years, spanning film, episodic and advertising. He has worked as an artist, a software developer and as a team leader across his career in the UK.          

Thursday | May 8 | 11:45 AM CEST

Shaping Light, Shaping Worlds: The Role of Karma in Dune: Prophecy     

Join Scott Coates, Environment Supervisor at Rodeo FX, for an in-depth look at the creation of the VES Awards-nominated Imperial Palace in Dune: Prophecy. From assembling the vast environment to developing shaders in Solaris, Scott will explore the lookdev process, the use of procedural ocean tools, and the shot setup and lighting in Karma XPU. He will also break down the Nuke compositing workflow, revealing how layers were structured to achieve the final cinematic look.

Scott Coates is a highly skilled VFX Environment Supervisor with a career spanning some of the industry’s most acclaimed studios and projects. Scott’s greatest strength lies in championing a full generalist workflow, empowering his team to handle every stage of production, from initial layouts to final renders. With years of experience refining techniques and developing pipeline tools, he excels at solving technical challenges and enhancing efficiency. His passion for pushing boundaries inspires his team to think creatively and work outside their comfort zones to deliver exceptional results.          

Thursday | May 8 | 12:30 PM CEST

How Houdini and multishot workflows push low budget productions to the next level     

Explore Arx Anima’s history to find insight into what working with a low budget truly entails and how to adapt your mindset over time to continually enhance the quality of projects. Learn how Houdini has played a key role in establishing a stable production environment, enabling even artists new to the software to integrate and work efficiently. Lastly, explore our multi-shot workflow developed with Solaris, which has allowed us to further elevate the quality of productions.

Hannes Reindl is a CG Supervisor at Arx Anima, based in Vienna, Austria, with over 22 years of experience in the 3D industry. Throughout his career, he has contributed to numerous television series and feature films, including Talking Tom, The Elfkins 1 & 2, Rabbit Academy: Mission Eggpossible and Rubikon. Over the years, Hannes has held various roles, including modeling, surfacing, lighting, pipeline supervision, and team training on workflows and tools. His expertise is tool-agnostic, having worked extensively with software such as 3ds Max, Maya, Houdini, Nuke, and more. He is recognized for his ability to develop creative solutions to complex challenges and for his keen understanding of how to maximize visual quality within project constraints. In his current role, Hannes oversees multiple projects, identifying bottlenecks and implementing workflow improvements to optimize production efficiency.          

Thursday | May 8 | 2:30 PM CEST

Cheap, Cheerful, (not quite) Camera‑Ready: 

Leveraging generative AI for 3D content generation  

This talk demonstrates how cutting‑edge generative‑AI tools — Trellis, Hunyuan, and curated Hugging Face/Civitai models — can be leveraged inside Houdini’s procedural system to yield prompt‑driven meshes. We cover how generative AI amplifies procedural workflows, unlocking rapid iteration, flexible & controllable stylistic exploration, and on‑the‑fly design variations unattainable through traditional methods. Attendees leave with a principled methodology for deploying scalable, exploratory 3‑D pipelines in design driven production environments.

 

Moritz Schwind is gonna take part in it all - Be it pixels, hardware, code or cameras. And sometimes even reassemble it. In his spare time, he likes to dabble with code and create generative artwork. He claims his early exposure to QBasic is no help at all when working in Houdini, Blender, Processing or Arduino. But it might have been what started his fascination for the boundaries of code and art. When not wreaking havoc to any intriguing devices around him, he works as a freelance Technical and Art Director. His more recent areas of interest cover the use of scientific algorithms in generative design and the application of AI in creative fields.               

Thursday | May 8 | 3:15 PM CEST

Cold, Dark, Wet and Bloody: BlueBolt’s VFX for Nosferatu and Napoleon     

An overview of the process of creating effects that embody and enhance a strong directorial vision in long form narratives. It will aim to give an insight into how Houdini can be integrated seamlessly with performance, and practical elements and to investigate how to use FX tools as a storytelling element to amplify the mood of a shot.

Dave Cook is a highly experienced, award-winning senior 3D artist and CG Supervisor with feature film and episodic credits including Robert Egger’s Nosferatu, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and The Last Kingdom (Netflix). Dave joined BlueBolt in 2021 as CG Supervisor on Amazon sci-fi series The Peripheral. Since then his credits have included The Great season 3, two seasons of The Last Kingdom including the feature-length finale Seven Kings Must Die and most recently Robert Eggers Nosferatu for which he received a VES Award nomination. Prior to joining BlueBolt Dave spent a year at Milk as CG Supervisor on BAFTA nominated sci-fi series Intergalactic (Sky) and five years at Jellyfish as Head of 3D where his credits include Solo: A Star Wars Story, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Black Mirror - Hated in the Nation, Alive at the Natural History Museum with David Attenborough and My Inner Fish for which he won an Emmy award. Dave studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London and began his career in 2D traditional drawn animation in the 1990s, when his early forays into computer animation were on the Amiga. Dave has also spent time lecturing on VFX and animation at Escape Studios, Sae/Quant and the American Intercontinental University         

Thursday | May 8 | 4:15 PM CEST

Sneak Peek: H21 ML Infrastructure & Volume Upscaling     

Get a glimpse into the future of ML in Houdini 21 and dive into a case study on how the new tools enable simplified training workflows. Learn how to approach a project like Volume Upscaling as an end to end solution inside of Houdini.

Jakob Ringler is a freelance TD & Digital Artist based in Berlin, Germany. He worked at SideFX as an FX Intern and in the VFX industry as an FX TD before, where he was involved in a broad range of projects and tasks covering FX work, On-Set LED wall visuals, compositing and pipeline development. He is fascinated by the intersection of film, design and tech and is currently exploring the more technical aspects of the industry and expanding his knowledge of machine learning.         

Thursday | May 8 | 4:15 PM CEST

AI powered character animation web service powered by Houdini     

Hristo Velev, founder at Cairos.ai and Bottleship, will walk you through the tech stack of the Houdini powered character animation service cairos.ai. How to build a backend for Houdini as a web server. Interfacing complex parametric models by natural language using large language models. Processing motion capture into a database friendly way. Autorigging. Sequencing animations and delivering products. Bonus - virtual production without green screens and light stages, powered by Solaris and Touch Designer.

Hristo Velev started as a visual effects artist specialized in simulation work and procedurals, and grew into is a founder and executive at Bottleship on projects in the visual effects, software development and virtual production fields. His latest focus is the AI character animation platform Cairos.ai and the Claros virtual production technology.        

Thursday | May 8 | 6:00 PM CEST

Evolving USD Workflows: Powering The Last of Us Season 2  

Take a look at the latest developments in the Houdini USD pipeline at RISE Visual Effects Studios, and how they enabled the team to create the visually stunning post-apocalyptic world of The Last of Us Season 2.

 

Andreas Giesen works as a VFX Supervisor at RISE | Visual Effects Studios. He is considered one of RISE’s swiss army knives who can take a shot, no matter how complex, from concept, through blocking, lighting, shading and rendering to final. However his focus is now on VFX supervision - mostly of FX intense shows as he worked many years as a FX Supervisor. Andreas latest work includes The Last of Us, Matrix Resurrections, the award-winning feature NYAD and the emmy-nominated series Fallout.