Applied Houdini | Particles

In Applied Houdini Particles I, we'll learn all about how particles can easily give rise to complex effects. In this lesson we'll develop a magical effect from scratch, starting with learning the fundamentals of what makes a particle a particle. From there we'll develop techniques to effectively source, simulate, and afterwards refine the look and feel of our millions of particles. As with all of these lessons, efficient workflows and many of my favorite tips and tricks will help you leap ahead to a production quality final effect.

Applied Houdini Particles II - Velocity Fields will teach you everything you need to know to make stunning particle effects with velocity fields! We will create two different effects in this course, one based off of a dynamic Pyro sim, and one using curl noise to wash particles around a surface. After simulating, we'll take our particles even farther by shading, shaping, and lighting them based on data derived from the sims themselves. You'll be making professional looking advanced particle sims in no time!

Applied Houdini Particles III - Advanced Particles and Lightning is a two in one lesson covering a wide variety of visual and technical topics surrounding the creation of lightning style energy bolts and photorealistic sparks!

Applied Houdini Particles IV - Physical Instances will teach you how to go beyond using particles to just simulate points, and instead treat them as physical things! When dealing with massive amounts of physical objects, it is no longer efficient (or even possible at all oftentimes) to use rigid body systems to get a quick and good looking result.

Particles V - Grains is here to teach you how to make epic snow/sand/mud effects with grains in the Vellum Solver, also known as PBD (point based dynamics)! In this lesson we will quickly learn how to efficiently simulate millions of tiny stacking particles in order to make a snowy expanse collapse into a sinkhole. Along the way we'll control various properties and constraints to control our grain simulation, as well as cover novel geometry and rendering based tricks to make our snow look as good as possible. Start playing with snow with grains today!

In Particles VI: Programming Behaviour we'll talk about how to have absolute control over everything every particle does at any time using the VEX language as well as programming concepts in general. In particular, we will address how we can create particles that individually make multiple decisions based off their surroundings and other criteria. All that plus some fun secondary procedural geometry modelling results in super detailed and complex effect! Along the way we'll talk about a whole bunch of my most favorite tips and tricks too, so get ready for one of the most exciting Applied Houdini lessons yet!