Houdini HIVE at GDC 2018

Anastasia Opara is with Electronic Arts (EA) in their Search for Extraordinary Experiences Division (SEED). Her background is strongly connected with arts – by the age of 16 she had taken part in more than 20 exhibitions in Russia and Europe. She is deeply moved by cyclicity and layering of patterns in our life, and one of the ways she express it is through procedural art, which she discovered during her studies at NHTV International Game Architecture and Design (IGAD). 

>> Creativity of Rules and Patterns: Designing Procedural Systems
Human mechanisms of representing the surrounding world in a form of ‘language’ is an outstanding ability that enables us to store the information as internal compact abstractions. Proceduralism is also a form of language, where we view the world through rules, dependencies and patterns. And though rules are often perceived as something rigid, their engineering is a fluid and creative task, where analyzing our own thought framework often fuels the design process.

Mike Murdock is a VR Designer and Creative Director at TriHelix ///. His VR projects include Sisters (With over 3 million downloads) and Project Syria (Sundance New Frontiers selection), and he’s worked as a designer for both Oculus and Jaunt VR creating interfaces for virtual storefronts. He earned his MFA from the USC School of Cinematic Arts in Interactive Media and Games. In his free time, he makes retro sci-fi interfaces (In Houdini) and chiptune music (In Bitwig).

>> Procedural Tools for Building VR worlds: A case study from Marshmallow Melee
With Houdini, you’re not just building 3d models, you’re building reusable tools for your project. For Marshmallow Melee (a toy-scale VR battle game), we created a pipeline using procedural tools that allowed the team to see more in context: lighting, shading, gameplay, and more. In this talk, you’ll see how Houdini, Substance Designer, and custom editor extensions work together to craft rich 3d game worlds for VR.

Bill La Barge is a Sr. FX Artist at Blizzard Entertainment. Most recently he was the FX Lead on several Overwatch Animated Shorts, including Honor and Glory, Infiltration, Dragons and Recall. Prior to joining Blizzard in 2009, Bill was an FX TD for ten years working in visual effects on feature films at Sony Pictures Imageworks and Cinesite. Bill has a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Rochester Institute of Technology.

>> FX Techniques in Overwatch Animated Shorts
The animated shorts behind Blizzard’s first-person shooter, Overwatch, tell the stories of the most iconic heroes in this universe. We needed to optimize our techniques and develop cost-effective solutions for creating effects, in order to generate a large amount of content and match the stylized look of the game. To accomplish this, our pipeline incorporated quick simulations, procedural smoke techniques and automated gun systems.

>> Cinematic VR: Immersive Storytelling with Houdini by New Reality Co
New Reality Co., creators of the critically-acclaimed and haptically enhanced cinematic VR experiences Giant and Tree, will outline their utilization of Houdini in their first two projects, and their plans for incorporation in their next project, Breathe, which will be the final part of the trilogy. Co-Founder's Milica Zec and Winslow Porter will detail the partnership between NRC and SideFX and expand on how the process of rendering Houdini’s high-quality animations has been an advanced storytelling tool.

Milica Zec is an NY/LA based film and virtual reality director, editor, and screenwriter. Her directorial debut in the virtual reality medium was a short narrative piece called Giant , which premiered at Sundance Film Festival New Frontier 2016. Since its premiere, Giant has been lauded as a seminal expression of the potential of virtual reality as a storytelling vehicle. Her second VR experience Tree was also selected to Sundance New Frontier, Tribeca Film Festival’s Virtual Arcade, and “TED2017: The Future You” in Vancouver. Since creating Tree, Milica and her New Reality Company co-founder Winslow Porter were named as designers in residence at A/D/O, a creative center in Brooklyn exploring boundaries in design, and named to Adweek’s Top 100 creatives in the digital innovation category. 

Prior to beginning her career as an award-winning VR director, Milica collaborated for nine years with the performance artist Marina Abramovic on numerous projects, including MOMA’s “The Artist is Present” show. She also created and directed ten videos for the Marina Abramovic Institute’s successful grassroots funding campaign. Milicazec.com

>> Cinematic VR: Immersive Storytelling with Houdini by New Reality Co
New Reality Co., creators of the critically-acclaimed and haptically enhanced cinematic VR experiences Giant and Tree, will outline their utilization of Houdini in their first two projects, and their plans for incorporation in their next project, Breathe, which will be the final part of the trilogy. Co-Founder's Milica Zec and Winslow Porter will detail the partnership between NRC and SideFX and expand on how the process of rendering Houdini’s high-quality animations has been an advanced storytelling tool.

As the Futurist at Paramount pictures, Ted works with studio leadership and the technology teams at Paramount / Viacom, exploring forms of new and emerging technologies, with an emphasis on Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. In his role as Chief Creative Officer at Barco Escape, Ted is spearheading a project that is focused on the future of next generation immersive cinema experiences. Initial tent pole movie successes in partnership with 20th Century Fox and Paramount / Bad Robot, have resulted in successful runs in the Escape 3 screen cinema format on the Maze Runner movies and Star Trek Beyond.

>> Cinematic VR: Immersive Storytelling with Houdini by New Reality Co
New Reality Co., creators of the critically-acclaimed and haptically enhanced cinematic VR experiences Giant and Tree, will outline their utilization of Houdini in their first two projects, and their plans for incorporation in their next project, Breathe, which will be the final part of the trilogy. Co-Founder's Milica Zec and Winslow Porter will detail the partnership between NRC and SideFX and expand on how the process of rendering Houdini’s high-quality animations has been an advanced storytelling tool.

Matt Vitalone is a Technical Art Director at Sledgehammer Games who has been in the video game industry for 15 years. He has worked on technical art and VFX for games such as Call of Duty: WWII, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Call of Duty: MW3, and Homefront. He got his start making mods for Unreal Tournament and has been getting game engines to do things they weren’t designed to do ever since.

>> Creating Real-Time Oceans for Call of Duty: WWII
The latest Call of Duty game required realistic oceans and breaking waves on the beaches of Normandy that could run at 60fps. Find out how Houdini Ocean Toolkit and FLIP Fluids were used to build the data that drives these real-time oceans.

Ken Finlayson has a background in digital art that stretches back to experiments on his family’s Amiga computer, and more than 14 years experience across games, VFX, TV and toys. In the games industry, his work as a character artist and production leader saw him contribute to BioWare’s Dragon Age and Mass Effect series as well as Insomniac’s Sunset Overdrive and Resistance series, among many others. Passionate about bridging the gap between the artistic and technical sides of game development, Ken is well-versed in character customization and digital acting as well as asset performance and optimization. His current focus is on art tools and the use of deep learning on visual media.

>> Non-Traditional uses of Houdini on The Long Dark 
Character artist’s don’t usually include Houdini in their toolbox. See how Houdini is used by a character team of just 1 or 2 artists to deliver hundreds of assets. Characters, clothing, texture generation, and even the GUI all see benefit.

Alexander Dracott is a VFX and Lighting artist with 6+ years of experience working on various AAA experiences for VR, games, and entertainment. His passion lies in telling stories by creating artistic content and solving complex artistic problems using both technical and visual tools.

>>Generating HeightField Terrain Textures in Houdini 
This session will be focused on generating HeightField terrain textures within Houdini. Specifically it will cover the basic pipeline of taking mask and height information from your Heightfield terrain, bringing it into a COP image network to generate textures and splat maps, and finally bringing it back onto your terrain or saving for later use.

Kenny Lammers is a freelance Technical Artist / C# Programmer working for various clients, from the medical industry to the game industry, creating interactive content with Houdini, Unity, and Substance.  He has over 19 years of experience working in the game industry and has worked for studios such as Activision Blizzard and Microsoft Games Studios.  Kenny’s skills range from C# programing in Unity 3D to creating procedural art content in Houdini and Substance Painter and Designer.  You can find out more about Kenny at www.indie-pixel.com.

>>Procedural Game Content Workflows in Houdini, Houdini Engine, and Unity 
Learn how the Houdini Engine and Procedural Content workflows can help you produce your game content faster and with the ability to change that content on the fly. In this session we will learn what the Houdini Engine is, How to install it and finally how to begin incorporating Procedural assets into your game content pipeline all within Unity 2017 and Houdini 16.5.

Robert Magee is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at SideFX who has been working with Houdini for over 15 years. He has created lots of learning material and demos designed to help artists understand how going procedural with Houdini can benefit their work.

>> Houdini Foundations 
For game artists and developers who are new to Houdini, this presentation will introduce you to the concepts and ideas that make Houdini, and its procedural node-based workflow, the perfect solution for creating next level game art. You will also learn how to access Learning Paths for building up your Houdini skills.

>>Houdini Engine for Maya and 3DS Max
Discover the best way to bring procedural tools into Autodesk Maya and Autodesk 3DS Max. Build digital assets in Houdini then open them up in their favorite app while the Houdini Engine plug-ins run under-the-hood to deliver game-ready content. 

Paul Ambrosiussen is currently a Technical Artist Intern and Game Tools Developer at SideFX Software, while finishing his International Game Architecture and Design studies at NHTV University of Applied Sciences in Breda. Paul enjoys writing tools to support effective art-pipelines, and maintaining tool/workflow quality for the artists he assists. His goal is to help others create amazing work in a better, faster and more flexible way. He creates tutorials, offers in-person lectures, attends events, and presents custom workshops to clients.

>> Game Development Made Easy Using Houdini
In this presentation, Paul will demonstrate that Houdini for Game Development is NOT hard! by featuring some of the ways Game Development Tools simplify your workflow. Using the complimentary toolset in Houdini will enable you to focus on building high-quality creative experiences, rather than technical nightmares file I/O might bring with them.

Ari Danesh is the Lead Instructor at SideFX. Before working at SideFX he taught Interactive Design at the university level for 12 years. He started his career working as a Software Engineer in the defense industry designing displays and then leading a VR research department for real time Command and Control systems during the first generation of VR applications. His current focus is on Generative Art, Natural Environments, Procedural and Object Based Systems. At SideFX besides teaching clients, he dabbles in designing terrain tools.

>> Terrain Building
Create realistic terrains for your games using Houdini’s height field tools. Starting from scratch, you will add patterns, noise and 3D projections to shape the terrain, then erosion tools to create added levels of realism. You will then learn how to scatter points to populate the terrain with trees, rocks, and snow.

Scott Keating is a Senior Product Designer at SideFX specializing in the user experience needs of Houdini artists. He is also an award-winning commercial illustrator, designer, and comic-book artist and his work has been published worldwide, in magazines, books, comics, and commercial products.

>> Procedural Jungle Set Decoration With Houdini and Unreal
Detailed set decoration can help turn generic playable levels into true environments for the player to explore. Unfortunately, this can be a time consuming process, requiring many iterations. We will demonstrate how tools built in Houdini can help automate common set decoration tasks inside of the Unreal Engine, allowing artists more freedom to explore different ideas within tight time constraints.

Anjeong Go is currently a SideFX game intern working on creating procedural assets. Her previous work had Anjeong in Korea as an FX Artist at Synergy Media, a 3D animation company where she trained in Game Programming at Korea Information Technology Research Institute.

>> Hex Map Generator
There are many ways to create a game environment. We tried to create an automatic map creator for strategy or RPG-style games. Using this Hex Map Generator, it is possible to iterate many times without committing to a final map design. Since you also have the freedom to change up assets, the map variations are endless. This tool allows you to layout and scatter assets on your map by physical selection, masking out areas by shape and make use of elevations to make raised terrain or inversely, bodies of water. For this presentation, we will look at the internals of the Hex Map Generator tool in Houdini, and how it works to make maps in Unreal Engine. With Houdini Engine, this tool can be used in Unity, as well as for Maya, Cinema 4D and 3ds Max.

Fianna Wong is a Technical Marketing Specialist at SideFX and is most known as the robot voice of the Houdini Quickstart videos. She loves hardsurface modeling pr0n and still cannot believe that after so many years (since starting out with Infini-D and Bryce), the CG industry continues to innovate!

>> Hex Map Generator
There are many ways to create a game environment - we have developed an automatic map creator for strategy or RPG-style games. Using this Hex Map Generator, it is possible to iterate many times without committing to a final map design. Since you also have the freedom to change up assets, the map variations are endless! This tool allows you to layout and scatter assets on your map by physical selection, masking out areas by shape, and makes use of elevations to raise terrain or inversely, bodies of water. For this presentation, we will look at the internals of the Hex Map Generator tool in Houdini, and how it works to make maps in Unreal Engine. With Houdini Engine, this tool can be used in Unity, as well as for Maya, Cinema 4D and 3ds Max.

Michael Lyndon is a Sr. Technical Artist at SideFX. He has a broad range of experience creating computer graphics for commercials, films and video games. His fascination with the world around us and the desire to blend art with his technical tinkering has led to his work making rolling cloudscapes in Ender's Game, generating raging fires in Gears of War 4 and trapping penguins in an avalanche of snow for Happy Feet 2. He is a part of our games team and responsible for developing tools to bridge the gap between Houdini and realtime applications.

>> High Quality Integrated Workflows Made Easy
Mike Lyndon will be showing an efficient workflow for creating fire sequences for your game engine as well as interesting ways of bringing fluid simulation data into a game engine. Along the way he'll be discussing some of the added features to the Game Development Toolset created over the last year.

Luiz Kruel is a Sr. Technical Artist at SideFX Software. With a decade of production experience in games, he has worked on several of the largest franchises in the industry, including Halo, Call of Duty, Doom, Madden and Just Cause. He is a part of our games team and responsible for developing tools to bridge the gap between Houdini and Game Engines.

>> Houdini Game Development Tips and Tricks
Discover the production techniques used on this year's SideFX game demo. Luiz will be sharing some details on a wide variety of tricks designed for game productions, including tips on Terrain, Houdini Engine, Sweeping Geometry, Stadium Crowds, Modelling and Texturing.

>> Automated Photogrammetry to Game Res Pipeline
As Photogrammetry becomes a deeper part of productions, the need for a pipeline emerges. Luiz will show how to use Houdini and Reality Capture to generate high resolution meshes and convert them to game ready assets in minutes.

>> Texturing in Houdini using Quixel Megascans
Houdini's powerful material context, combined with Mantra, allows for a new way of texturing high resolution assets. Quixel's high quality Megascans are a great compliment to that workflow; allow Luiz to  teach you the fundamentals of Houdini shaders, and how to bake that information down to game ready assets.

Rob Stauffer is a Senior Production Consultant at SideFX. He has over 20 years experience in computer graphics and visual effects. Rob started his career at Digital Domain and has worked at Sony Imageworks, Weta Digital, Asylum FX and most recently was an FX Supervisor at Rhythm and Hues. He has contributed to the FX of over 20 feature films including, "Lord Of The Rings: The Return of The King", "Spiderman 2", "X-Men:First Class", "The Day After Tomorrow" and "Seventh Son”. Rob joined SideFX in 2013 where he educates new and existing clients on the features of Houdini. Consults with studios on their pipelines and where Houdini may fit in and explores new and future technologies within VFX,Games and VR.