Tuesday | April 29 | 10:00 AM CEST

How To Use KineFX For Everything But Character Animation  

If the only tool you have is KineFX, every geometry starts looking like a rig! In his talk Chris will show you how to blissfully ignore anything character related and shoehorn KineFX into everything else in Houdini, from simulations to flowers and even growth solvers, all while exploring why KineFX might just be the best thing that happened to motion graphics since Vellum.

Christopher Kopic is creating and publishing tutorial videos for Entagma and teaching creative coding and cgi at the polytechnic university of Nuremberg. Before that he worked as a freelance motion graphics artist and before that he earned his money making really boring 2D animations in After Effects, which is something he'd really like to forget. In his free time, he likes to dabble with electronics, microcontrollers and sewing (for some reason).

Tuesday | April 29 | 11:00 AM CEST

Project Violet: From Rig to Ragdoll  

An introduction to some of the exciting new features of KineFX in Houdini. Sam will provide an overview of a full character rig from Project Violet that is leveraging the power of APEX. He will walk through what makes this approach unique and particularly powerful compared to more traditional pipelines, highlighting its flexibility, performance, and efficiency. He'll also dive into some of the ragdoll setup and features that enable us to achieve dynamic results in our animation quickly.

 

Sam Taylor started his career at REALTIME working on a range of game trailers, cinematics, and advertising projects. A passion for technical problem solving and knowledge sharing led him to join the lecturing team at the University of Bolton to help establish the technical areas of their VFX and Animation degree course and bring Houdini into their pipeline. During his seven years at Bolton, he continued to work as a freelance Generalist, most often for Screenclay FX on some of their film and TV projects. His experience has seen him take on roles including Generalist, FX Artist, Cloth TD, Texture, Shader and Look Dev Artist, Lead 3D Artist, CG Supervisor, Environment Asset Build and Layout and 3D Asset Technical Build. Sam returned to REALTIME in the position of Head of Innovation & Development, where he is in charge of staff development and training, and exploring emerging technologies and techniques. He has also established REALTIME's junior training scheme (The Level Up Programme) to help new junior artists get their first job in the industry.

Tuesday | April 29 | 12:00 PM CEST

Project Violet: Stepping into Animation with Houdini  

Explore the approach that was taken for a quick adaptation to fit in the Houdini workflow, even with no prior experience of the software. We will review the options that are available to help your animation journey.

 

Nicolas Seck has experience in animation that has seen him work on over 30 major movies and across feature animation, TV series, commercials and cinematics for the games industry. ​With over 30 years in the industry, Nico oversees REALTIME's award-winning team of animators across all episodic and games projects. With an excellent eye for detail, Nicolas ensures that the studio is exploring emerging technology and staying at the forefront of the industry. ​

Tuesday | April 29 | 2:00 PM CEST

Project Outback | KineFX/APEX Rigging Workflows  

Explore the creation of Project Outback from a rigging perspective. Learn how a rigging framework was developed within the KineFX-APEX framework and how we customized some rig workflows inside Houdini. Finally, we will touch on future rig and animation techniques that we would like to investigate with APEX.

 

Carlos Valcarcel was first trained in computer engineering at École Polytechnique de Montréal, Carlos continued his studies in computer graphics and 3D Animation at Centre NAD where he began his learning journey in the field of character creation. Since then, he has been specializing in rigging for over 20 years, while continuously pursuing a technical and artistic training. Having worked with many animation softwares, Carlos is always trying to move away from the limitations of current systems and tries to anticipate the future needs of character animation. In his free time, he uses his experience to mentor students and to develop rigging and animation tools for Houdini, where he believes greater work can be achieved in a better way.

Tuesday | April 29 | 3:00 PM CEST

Project Outback | Animating Aiko using blocking and video reference  

Learn how to transition from Maya's rigging and animation tools to Houdini. Take a project from the initial idea to the final polish. Along the way, learn how to keep it simple, using basic KineFX powered by the APEX rigging and animation tools.

 

Camilo Guaman Gonzalez is a character animator in Feature film, with credits in projects like: Ugly Dolls, SCOOB, Back to the Outback, Thelma the Unicorn, Angry Birds 3 (currently working on) Episodic: Star Wars Visions volume 2 "the Sith" also video games: Fortnite emotes and VFX films like: La Belle et la Bête, Paddington 2, Mowgli and the kid Who will be King. 

Tuesday | April 29 | 4:00 PM CEST

The Rig that Forgives: Create a Realistic Biped Rig in Houdini's KineFX  

Discover how Houdini’s forgiving, procedural approach enables corrections at every stage of the rig build—even after animation has begun. Using Houdini’s KineFX system with Apex Logic, you’ll explore practical techniques for biped rigging, covering topics such as rig design, IK/FX solutions, spine rigging, and facial rigging. Embrace the flexibility to iterate and perfect your rigs throughout your creative process.

Bogdan Lazar has over 20 years in the film and games industry and has mastered character design and rigging using classic software like Alias Wavefront, LightWave, and Maya. Discovering Houdini revolutionized his workflow, and he has never looked back.

Wednesday | April 30 | 10:00 AM CEST

Model, Rig, Animate! - Houdini a Procedural Character Powerhouse!  

A dive into the powerful world of modeling, rigging and animating characters in Houdini.

Roy Kristoffersen is the Lead 3D Artist at Qvisten Animation XTND. A 3D generalist with 20 years of experience in Maya, he has a deep passion for character modeling, rigging, and animation. Over the past three years, he has been exploring Houdini’s powerful procedural tools to enhance character creation.

Wednesday | April 30 | 11:00 PM CEST

KineFX: Creature FX

Check out how Framestore brought to life some of their creatures. This talk will cover all creature FX steps from muscles simulation, to tissue and skin and all the way to making a fluffly coat moves with the wind.

Gabriela Salmeron is Framestore’s Head of Grooming and Creature FX, and has ten years’ experience delivering the highest-quality visuals for high-profile advertising projects, TV series, immersive experiences and blockbuster films. Gabriela’s work brings together a strong technical background gained from her double bachelor degree in Computer Science at the University of Sydney and University of Sao Paulo, and her love for art and nature. She specialises in creating digital animals, for which she develops many of her own grooming and character FX tools inside Houdini and she has her own tutorial series called Grooming Barry Bacon, where she details her approach and techniques in grooming. Her work with creatures has been recognised with three VES award nominations for Outstanding Animated Character over the past five years, across episodic and advertising. Most recently Gabriela has lent her skills to an upcoming animal-focused project for National Geographic, and is currently working on the Netflix adaptation of "Avatar: The Last Airbender".

Wednesday | April 30 | 12:00 PM CEST

How I Learned to Stop Worrying About APEX and Love the Scene Animate SOP  

Recent additions to Houdini's animation toolset have been impressive and most welcomed. In this talk, Saša will share his experience using these new features on a project, why he liked them right from the get-go, and how he stopped being afraid of APEX from the perspective of an animator.

Saša Budimir is a freelance 3D artist/animator from Zagreb, Croatia with over 20 years of experience. During that period, he has worn many hats and has worked on numerous commercials, short animated films, and festival/TV/film openers. His great passion is making things that move around, especially in the form of quirky characters, while exploring different visual and animation styles.

Wednesday | April 30 | 2:00 PM CEST

How to make a Short Film in Houdini | PART 1

Learn how you can make an entire short film purely in Houdini. We'll go through all the steps you need to realize your own vision - going from initial model to final animation and render. It's all about having fun, exploring and trying out new tools and techniques to find your style.

Magnus Møller is co-founder of Tumblehead based in Viborg, Denmark. He has a love for cartoony design and animation, He specializes in 3D look development and Art Direction, as well as rigging. He's an alumni and guest teacher at The Animation Workshop in Viborg (class of 2006)  

Wednesday | April 30 | 2:00 PM CEST

How to make a Short Film in Houdini | PART 2

Learn how you can make an entire short film purely in Houdini. We'll go through all the steps you need to realize your own vision - going from initial model to final animation and render. It's all about having fun, exploring and trying out new tools and techniques to find your style.

Jesper Andkjær is the creative heart of Tumblehead. He specializes in animation, and functions as animation supervisor on all Tumblehead productions. He is also very proficient Houdini generalist and character designer/sculptor. Jesper is an alumni of The Animation Workshop (class of 2017)