HOPE YOU CAN JOIN US!

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View | Oct 19 | 10:15 AM CEST
Youtube | Oct 28 | 9:00 AM EDT
DRINKS FIRST!
Using vellum fluids to create a Mojito in Houdini  

I was asked to create a demo video utilizing vellum fluids... so naturally I created a digital mojito. In my talk I break down the entire project from start to finish, talk about the issues I ran into, tips and tricks for rendering in karma, and a lot more.

Tim Van Helsdingen is a Freelance CG generalist and Houdini FX artist, connoisseur of memes, and lover of cheese. As a freelance artist he gets to make cool 3d stuff for a lot of different people all over the world, and he also gets to teach the stuff he knows on his youtube channel or in presentations such as this. 

 

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View | Oct 19 | 9:40 AM CEST
Youtube | Oct 28 | 9:50 AM EDT
Vellum Grains in Houdini 19   

 A preview of the grains statues setup done in H19 and a look at the new vellum upgrades.

PROJECT FILES

Bishoy Khalifa is a Lead FX TD at Trend VFX.

 

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View | Oct 19 | 9:00 AM CEST
Youtube | Oct 28 | 10:05 AM EDT
Karma XPU and MaterialX    

 This short talk will present a sneak peak and first impressions of Karma XPU and MaterialX in Houdini. This is by no means a master class, but a general overview of what's new and exciting about rendering in Houdini 19. We'll also look at how to quickly set up a scene in Solaris, for those uninitiated with the LOPS context.

PROJECT FILES

Adam Swaab is a CG Artist and designer. He's been working in the commercial and film industry for over twenty years, primarily specializing in high-end motion graphics.

 

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View | Oct 19 | 12:45 PM CEST
Youtube | Oct 28 | 10:45 AM EDT
Shockwaves Tool in Houdini 19    

 

Miguel Perez Senent is currently a CG Supervisor at Megalis VFX, where he uses Houdini in a wide variety of tasks ranging from effects to lookdev and lighting, and has previously worked as an FX Supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic, where he contributed to projects such as Avengers: Endgame, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Rogue One amongst others. His current work revolves around Netflix' ONI, an upcoming full CG animation series where Houdini and LOPs play the central role on the pipeline. He has been using Houdini since picking it up at a young age in 2005, and was fortunate enough to get into the VFX industry after finishing his degree in Physics. He is most enthusiastic about attempting to solve artistic problems in the most technically efficient way Houdini can offer.

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View | Oct 19 | 1:15 PM CEST
Youtube | Oct 28 | 11:15 AM EDT
Fire Tornado in Houdini 19    

Houdini 19 has some awesome new toys for Pyro and Volumes. This talk will highlight the process for the Fire Tornado seen in the Sneak Peek, which makes heavy use of the new Volume Deform workflow, showcasing some of the methods behind and to conclude highlighting some challenges and problem solving.

Joshua Rizzo is a Junior FX Artist currently in his graduation year at Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, studying International Game Architecture and Design. Houdini has been an integral part since he started studying and has quickly become his focus of learning VFX and Technical Art. Joshua enjoys the flexibility of working of Houdini, making learning technicality and visual development very accessible and fun.

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View | Oct 19 | 2:05/3:30 PM CEST
Youtube | Oct 28 | 11:35 AM EDT

Sexy Pyro    

This part of the presentation will center around the new pyro tools and features in houdini 19, such as the updated pyro workflow, improved volume shading, volume-deformation, axis-force, spark tools and many more.

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View | Oct 19 | 10:45 AM CEST
Youtube | Oct 28 | 12:30 PM EDT
Houdini 19 Crowds |
Shiny New Layers and Meta Power    

There is a staggering amount of cool stuff in  Houdini 19 and the the crowd updates might not be the first that comes to mind. They are still very useful though and Mikael is going to walk you through his favourites.

Mikael Pettersén is currently Head of Simulation at MPC Episodic. He has worked on projects such as Guardians of The Galaxy, The Call of the Wild, Ready Player One and the Oscar winning The Jungle Book. He has been in the visual effects industry for the last 14 years, and worked with everything from commercials to film and episodic. Mikael is also the author of Crowds for Feature Film in Houdini 1-3 and is running the Houdini blog Short & Sweet 3D. 

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View | Oct 19 | 11:30 AM CEST
Youtube | Oct 28 | 12:45 PM EDT
KineFX Secondary Motion Tools     

In this session, we will go through the tool set designed for applying secondary animation, like lag, overshoot and ragdoll, on KineFX characters. We will dig through some scenes that we have built to showcase these tools in actions and explain how you could create something similar yourself. The tools that we will be covering today are: secondary motion SOP and the three ragdoll SOPs - ragdoll collision shapes, ragdoll constraint and ragdoll solver.

Mihnea Stoica studied at Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands and in his last year was able to land an internship with SideFX. Fast forward roughly 2 years and he is still working full-time as a contractor character TD on the KineFX team. 

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View | Oct 19 | 3:20 PM CEST
Youtube | Oct 28 | 1:15 PM EDT
SideFX Labs PolySlice    

A walk through of the PolySlice tool, its development, and how its features can be used to process geometry to create complex patterns that are graphic, organic and technology inspired through practical examples.

PROJECT FILES

Richard C. Thomas started his VFX journey in Fine Art  - studying to be a painter and sculptor before discovering computer graphics. His interest grew during his studies, producing digital art and writing on visual culture. He was awarded First Class Honours in Fine Art & History of Art at Goldsmiths, University of London; after which he attended and graduated from the prestigious Royal Academy of Art for post-graduate study. In the last 15 years, he has worked across London at companies including The Mill, Man Vs Machine, Electric Theatre Collective, Analog, and most recently Framestore. 

He is currently Head of 3D (VFX) at Jellyfish Pictures, building the team, driving the department forward into new technology and opportunities, and making some pretty cool work for TV and Film. He continues to be passionate about creating for the community and sharing knowledge along the way on his learning journey.

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View | Oct 19 | 2:05/3:30 PM CEST
Youtube | Oct 28 | 2:35 PM EDT

Asset Workflow and File Caching 

The presentation will demonstrate the new digital asset creation workflow to help technical artist with they asset management. While the second part of the presentation will cover the new file-cache 2.0 node, and comparing it to the also new labs file-cache workflow.

Attila Torok is a London based FX TD working for SideFX. He has started out as a SideFX internship student after which he worked for Double Negative on projects like The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Godzilla. Before coming back to SideFX he spent 4 years at ILM, where next to a list of movies like Doctor Strange, Avengers: Infinity War, Ready Player One, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, he was building and maintaining tools for particle simulations, deformable and tearable rigid body simulations and for pyro used throughout the company.

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Youtube | Oct 28 | 3:15 PM EDT
Real-Time Pyro Workflows - Chasing Photorealism    

In this talk, Mai will walk you through Houdini 19 and SideFX Labs' newest real-time pyro workflows. Beautiful and fast viewport renders, film-industry-standard ACES color space setups, redesigned visualization and flipbook export tools, our latest compression and shader techniques, all of which work together to bring your real-time pyro effects to the next level, where they can fit naturally within the highly realistic environments of the next-gen games.

Mai Ao is a new member of SideFX Labs team and a technical artist who previously worked in game productions creating procedural pipelines, FX simulations, and shaders. He's here to drink coffee and develop tools, and he's all out of coffee at the moment.

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Youtube | Oct 28 | 3:45 PM EDT
LOAD IT UP! Layout LOP & Layout Asset Gallery    

This presentation will cover how you can do environment concepting using the new Layout LOP and the Layout Asset Gallery in Houdini 19. Primarily, this is geared towards those who want to use Karma and paint assets in their scene, but don't necessarily care about the maximum blinding power of USD.

PROJECT FILES

Fianna Wong is a maker of hats at SideFX and sometimes wears them. She enjoys working with internal development and external artists from around the world, and loves seeing the evolution of the CG landscape.

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View | Oct 21 | 12:30 PM CEST
Youtube | Oct 29 | 9:00 AM EDT
The Secret Language of Solaris

When Houdini artists talk, it can seem like they are speaking in their own secret language. In this session, Robert explores how easy it is to understand "Houdini-speak" in relation to the new Layout, Lookdev and Lighting tools in Solaris while introducing different ways that a node-based procedural workflow can support your rendering workflows. Along the way, you will learn about the different types of nodes, networks and assets that you can create in Solaris and how they all work together. 

Robert Magee is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at SideFX who has been working with Houdini for 20 years. He has created lots of learning material and demos designed to help artists understand how going procedural with Houdini can benefit their work.

 

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View | Oct 21 | 1:30 PM CEST
Youtube | Oct 29 | 10:00 AM EDT
Solaris on Easy Mode 

Simplifying Solaris and USD concepts, together with a peek into real world productions and small studio toolsets.

Andreas Weidman is a Visual Effects Supervisor based in Sweden, with over 20-years experience ranging from Art Direction, Concept Art and Motion Design, to the full spectrum of Visual Effects.Having spent half a decade at Important Looking Pirates working on TV-shows like Mandalorian, Westworld, and Fear the Walking Dead; he is now directing his focus on VFX-commercials at the award winning studio Swiss International.

 

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View | Oct 21 | 2:30 PM CEST
Youtube | Oct 29 | 11:00 AM EDT
Understanding Solaris Materials 

In this workshop, we are going to take a closer look at working with materials in Solaris. We will explore the Assign and UnAssign Material LOP, different uses of collections, selection rules, geometry subsets and a quick look at MaterialX.

Yolanda Charlo joined SideFX as a technical consultant this year.Most of her past experience is in post production, mainly tv and some features. She started as a 3D Generalist and quickly became an FX specialist and then a Houdini FX TD.She has worked for companies like Muse VFX, Fuse FX, Shade VFX and most recently, just before joining sideFX, she got to enjoy some experience as FX TD for Sony Interactive Entertainment Visual Arts Group.

 

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View | Oct 21 | 3:30 PM CEST
Youtube | Oct 29 | 12:00 PM EDT
Creating USD Assets with Component Builder

This workshop covers building USD assets in Solaris, using the Component Builder tool-set added in Houdini 19. We'll discuss what USD assets can look like, and how the Component Builder simplifies making good USD assets even for artists new to USD/Solaris. We will also cover how to leverage some of these features down the road, in later stages of a pipeline. Hopefully by the end you will come away with more confidence about USD assets, as well as a better understanding of using the Component Builder in your projects.

Chris Rydalch has worked in feature animation for the last 10 years. Most of that time has been spent in production as a character simulation, crowds, and FX TD at Pixar, DreamWorks, and Blue Sky Studios. His most recent role at Blue Sky was Production Technology TD, where he helped roll out a new pipeline based around USD. Today he works at SideFX in the R&D group, primarily focused on workflows and tools for Solaris and Karma.

 

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View | Oct 21 | 4:30 PM CEST
Youtube | Oct 29 | 1:00 PM EDT
A Solaris Production Retrospective

We will share some more detailed insights about setting up a USD pipeline with Solaris, the choices we faced and our approach to defining the USD hierarchy, composition and implementation with LOPs. How considering some advanced aspects like LIVRPS and the handling of layers in LOPs helped us in defining the USD structure and creating a cleaner Solaris node setup. We will show how we built up our assets using variants, proxies and inherits, layered our shots to achieve a template based workflow and approached render passes. The hip file used for this demonstration will be shared   

PROJECT FILES

Hannes Reindl started his self-taught journey as a 3D generalist fifteen years ago and joined arx anima as lighting artist/TD nine years ago. Due to his passion in procedural workflows and technical aspects of CG he was then soon able to join the pipeline team and is mainly focusing on USD / Solaris / Karma now. 

 

Ben Lutz has worked on a variety of different projects at arx anima for over nine years, primarily in the pipeline department.In recent years he has been focusing on pipeline for rendering with Mantra and now Karma. He is especially passionate about developing tools and workflows with USD and Houdini.