Hello to my fellow Houdini users. My apologies for being absent from SESI forum. I have been extremely nose-into screen sence coming back from Taiwan, where I worked with Diginoise FX. Winning the Challenge Contest (best model category) was great. I am currently working as animator/TD at EyeballNYC. One of the top 10 advertising design and effects shops in Manhattan. I started in August (right after SIGG03) and have sence worked on multiple spots (all in HD). Though the shop is MAX based, I have used Houdini to suppourt MAX pipeline, and XSI pipeline in near future. I worked with MAX before at previous employer so I found it easy to convert my Houdini techniques into MAX.
As I stated to SESI before. I consider the model of centaur I did for Challenge, as property of entire Houdini community. It is free to anyone to use as they wish, as long as its not for commercial porpouses. Please contact SESI to get it. Its face and head are fully rigged and body is partially rigged. I want to collaborate with a Houdini savvy animator to bring this creature to life. If anyone wishes to attempt this CA (as a thesis project for example), you contact me at daverindner@yahoo.com or at my work e-mail which can be gleaned from studio's site.

Dave Rindner
Animator/TD
EyeballNYC ( www.eyeballnyc.com )

Hi david, good to see you again….congrats on the win!…looking forward to seeing more of your work

Well, if you go to Best Buy, take a look at those huge video walls they have.
We did a TV spot, that also get played there, for the new McDonalds and BestBuy Monopoly game. I was part of the team, and was lead modeler onm the project, and did some animation work. The modeling I did in Houdini, animation was MAX. That was imaged in hidef.

Second hidef job we just finished is for MTV/Verizon for their new Slider/V5 cell phone. Once again I was lead modeler on the project. My task was to create a photoreal model of the phone. The shots ranged from close-ups to far away crowd shots with multiple phone. I used subdivs in Houdini to model the phone. Unrolled the UV's. Then ported the cage to MAX, and set it up with animation controls for freelance animator to keyframe. Another freelancer created VRAY shaders, as the shop uses VRAY for rendering. So check it out, should you catch it on TV. It will also be shown at Times Square anibillboards.

Right now we are finishing up a funny holiday season peice for Cartoon Network. So once the holiday season kicks off, you should see a bunch of our work.

Dave Rindner

Hey Dave,

It's good to hear from you again! Were you at SIGGRAPH this year?

Yep