ENVIRONMENTS I

Environments I is a great course for those who have gone through the basics of Houdini and wish to put them to good use by creating a large, epic landscape.  Everything here is built from the ground up - from modeling to compositing.  We'll be exploring both Karma and Redshift while using the fusion nodes within Davinci Resolve for compositing.

In addition to practicing standard Houdini techniques, we'll also explore some environment-specific challenges.  For example, we'll take a look at how to use Lidar scan data from the USGS database along with QGIS to create high-detail terrain models.  We'll also combine that with various heightfield tools to provide extra detail. Procedural shading is a major topic as well, and lighting/compositing all this will help us understand important artistic considerations that need to be made when establishing large, realistic environments.  The challenge in this course is both artistic and technical by nature.  

By the end of the course, you'll have plenty of skills to start developing sort of environment you'd like.  Topics such as instancing and foliage are intentionally left out because it's important to focus on creating the base features of a landscape first.  If you had to make a salt flat / mountain scene look realistic, could you do it?  Do you have the technical artistic skills to professionally pull it off?  That's the challenge - and by the end of this course, you will be meet this challenge will skill, knowledge, and dash of finesse for a beautiful render.