SideFX – FFF Houdini Subject 071

This tutorial provides an enormous amount of information for a Houdini artist.

We will have a fun ride through many different tasks, will start with procedural modeling of static and dynamic objects. Then we will jump into fully procedural geometry and simulations, will play with polygons, curves and volumetrics. Big part of this tutorial will be about an explosion, we will create complex but flexible setup for a trail type explosion, with a precise control of sourcing, velocity shaping and animation with custom forces. The final part of the tutorial will be about a new Karma XPU render, we will see what this render engine can do in current stage, how to work with new shaders, what limitations and ways to cheat.

The tutorial contains 8 chapters, in every chapter, we are going to cover one or several related tasks of our tutorial, all setups will be done from a scratch and total amount of recorded material is 38 hours.

Chapter 1 – In the first chapter, we are going to create out static geometry, floor and podium. Mainly we are going to do procedural modeling, will play with position noises, pattern creation and instancing.
Chapter 2 – In this chapter, we continue adding elements of our scene, but this time they required extra procedural animation or transformation.
Chapter 3- As we have done already with our static geometry, we can jump into fully dynamic elements. Procedural bullets and bullets trail with custom volumetric clustering technique, will be covered in this chapter.
Chapter 4 – In this chapter, we are going to cover several techniques of procedural volume shaping, temperature and motion blur control, cycle animation and form variations.
Chapter 5 – Custom procedural sparks, with full artistic control of shape and motion as well as supporting pyro elements will be created in this chapter.
Chapter 6 – This tutorial will not complete without an abstract procedural geometry with cool motion. In this chapter, we are going to create this element as well as unique hero bullet shape.
Chapter 7 – Our last element will be an explosion. We will create a complex, flexible setup for trail type explosion, will dive into DOP network and microsolvers for a precise control of our simulation, will add extra custom forces for a final smoke transformation.
Chapter 8 – Ones all elelments done, we are ready to start lighting our scene. Karma XPU will be the key of this chapter as well as new shaders and ways to work with new engine.
This tutorial aims to houdini artists who would like to learn new techniques in procedural creation of geometry, volumetric, animation, complex pyro simulation and meet closer with a new Karma XPU render engine.