OFFF 2025
Join us at the Houdini HIVE at OFFF Barcelona where you can connect with a community of Offline/Online designers, Motion Designers, Thinkers, Sound Designers, Graphic Designers, Theorists, Developers, Professionals, and Students.
Ignite Workshops in Korea
SideFX is pleased to bring three workshops available over multiple days to Seoul Korea. Learn from industry experts as they dive into topics such as Copernicus, Destruction FX and Realtime FX. Register now to secure your seat to this great lineup of workshops.
SideFX partners with Endava
SideFX has partnered with Endava, a leading technology services corporation, to transform synthetic data creation for AI and ML applications. Through this partnership, artists and developers will benefit from the ability to generate highly varied and realistic data sets in Houdini with pixel-perfect ground truth annotations that mimic complex real-world environments.
Community News Feed
Open Source Academy Software Foundation
FX Guide reports that for the first time in history, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and The Linux Foundation have partnered together to launch the Academy Software Foundation. The ASWF is a new nonprofit organization that will provide a neutral forum for open source software developers across the motion picture and broader media industries to share resources and collaborate on technologies for image creation, visual effects, animation and sound.
V-Ray for Houdini Open Beta
CG Channel reports that the Chaos Group has released Beta 1 of V-Ray for Houdini, the new edition of the renderer for SideFX’s VFX-industry-standard 3D animation and effects software. The current beta supports most of Houdini’s key features, including hair, fur, volumes, and many simulation types, and includes the new scene intelligence and GPU rendering features from V-Ray Next.
3D World | Get Procedural
This issue brings a special theme to 3D World and we have a huge section on Houdini, the king of procedural workflows.
80 LEVEL | Creating Snowy Scenes
Jakub Cieślik discusses the production of his latest winter scene and the way he used Substance, Houdini and UE4 to generate realistic results.
Art of VFX | Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2
In 2012, Paul Butterworth explained to us the work of Fuel VFX on PROMETHEUS. He then worked on IRON MAN 3, THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE and X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST. In 2014, Fuel VFX is acquired by Animal Logic. Within this studio, Paul works on INSURGENT, AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON and CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR.
The Atlantic | Oceans in Disney's Moana
Disney’s engineers used special software to make a magical, authentic body of water.
80 LEVEL | Ghost Recon Wildlands
Benoit Martinez, Vincent Delassus and Erwin Heyms discuss the technical challenges of producing huge open world worlds and how procedural tools helped solve them.
CG Society | Creating VFX for Games
We had the pleasure of sitting down with FX Artist Andreas Glad to discuss his career path in VFX for games, experience working on the Battlefield franchise at DICE, and his methods for creating awesome effects with Houdini.
80 LEVEL | Procedural Landscape Generation
80 Level talks with Alexander Dracott about the new Houdini 16 terrain tools, which could offer some interesting alternatives to your standard World Machine workflow for environment design.
3D World | Houdini 16
In issue 218, 3D World takes an exclusive look at the new features coming your way in Houdini 16, and they’re impressive.
FX Guide | Dr Strange’s Magical Mystery Tour
Marvel’s latest comic book hero to receive the big-screen treatment is Doctor Strange. The creation of artist Steve Ditko, Strange (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) is a master of ‘black magic’, armed with magical objects and a pet cloak, he defends earth against other dimensions.
80LVL | Building Volumetric Clouds
3d artist Camelia Slimani talks about how she creates her amazing volumetric clouds in Houdini. She gives us some nice tips and tricks while discussing all of the stages of production.
FX Guide | Who you gonna call?
Has anyone ever yelled out 'who you gonna call?' without someone answering 'Ghostbusters'? The iconic comedy from 1984 is such a classic that news of a reboot was met with internet outrage. Yet as the film found an audience, many felt it was great to see a new take and very different version with women in the lead roles.
80LVL | Mastering the Procedural Power of Houdini
An interview with Ahmed Saadi, a freelance VFX Artist originally from Iraq.
FX Guide | Raining Octopuses
After seeing this great new spot, fxguide spoke to Deluxe’s Method Studios Senior VFX Supervisor Benjamin Walsh about how they made it rain octopuses.
FX Guide | Method Studios NY throws Particles-off Dance-off for AICP
Method Studios NY was chosen by production company RSA to create the 2016 sponsor reel for the AICP Show awards which honor work done in commercial productions.
FX Guide | Apocalypse, how?
X-Men: Apocalypse picks up ten years after the events of X-Men: Days of Future Past, with Professor X (James McAvoy), Magneto (Michael Fassbender), and Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) all on very separate paths, until Apocalypse is awakened to find that he does not really enjoy the 1980s. Visual effects were covered by a range of companies and FX Guide spoke to three of them.
Cartoon Brew | X-Men: Apocalypse
If there’s one thing in Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Apocalypse that’s got everybody talking, it’s the mansion rescue sequence that showcases the powers of supersonic mutant, Peter Maximoff (aka Quicksilver) played by Evan Peters.