Giving Birth Using Vellum

Sometimes we get the weirdest questions. And we’re quite thrilled about them! This time our friend Patrick (https://www.altshift.de/) approached us with a.. let’s call it special Vellum setup and some questions about how to make all Elements interact properly and animate them. Resulting in whatever […]

Demystifying Sevilla’s Parasols: Waffle Structures

At a recent Houdini meetup, Luc Morroni came up with quite an interesting tutorial topic: Procedural waffle structures, like the ones used in Sevilla’s Metropol Parasol. Seems easy enough at first I thought – but as always, the devil’s in the details. In this case […]

Demystifying Hamburg’s Concert Hall’s Acoustic Panels

Having visited Hamburg recently I was smitten by the city’s concert hall, the Elbphilharmonie. What looks quite minimalistic from afar turns out to be an incredibly detailed building. Of special interes to me were the acoustic panels within the main concert hall, developed by Yasuhisa […]

OFFF Special: My First Vellum Sim

Back from OFFF 2022 and well rested, we managed to upload our talk’s very quick example of how to build and export your very first Vellum cloth simulation in Houdini. Enjoy! Download Project File

Nerd Rant 2.0 – Ep.18: CG vs. Photography

Manu and Mo ramble on about what sets CG and photography apart and what might make them closer than they appear at first glance. Rethinking Photography (German): https://fotografieneudenken.de Chris Hoffmann / Ugly Stupid Honest: http://www.uglystupidhonest.com

Creating An Abstract Wire Sculpture

One of those classic setups again! This time we’re combining custom point advection with a few nifty techniques in Houdini to analyze how our base geometry is shaped and where its edges are. Also we’ll talk briefly about a basic rendering setup in Octane. Napoleon […]

Geometry Nodes Ep02 – Working with Geometry

Now it’s time to get our hands dirty with Geometry Nodes. Let’s create our first procedural setup, that turns a triangulated model into an alien mesh structure. In this lesson you’ll learn how to use Geometry nodes to modify existing geometry and how to branch […]

Geometry Nodes Ep01 – Intro to Geometry Nodes

In this episode we’ll look into how geometry is stored inside of Blender, how polygons define the connectivity of vertices and how Geometry Nodes is just another modifier, but one that can be customized without limits. To follow the lessons you’ll need at least Blender […]

Geometry Nodes Ep00 – Overview

Blender rencently added a brand new procedural system to its feature set: Geometry Nodes. While being quite powerful it’s not necessarily easily accessible, especially if you are new to procedural workflows. So we decided to cover this system in depth with a new patreon course. […]

Packing Rigid(ish) Bodies In Vellum

Yes, we covered this in our “packing the Torus” tutorial, however back then we didn’t have Vellum! You draw the conclusions yourself! Seriously though, using vellum for rigid body intersection detection and resolution can be a neat trick when you’re depending on a unified simulation […]

Python in Houdini: Controlling An Embroidery Machine (DST Export)

In what might be our most useless Houdini tutorial to date, Mo covers exporting Houdini geometry for use in an embroidery machine. Yep that’s right. You’re welcome. Setting up Python for Houdini: https://youtu.be/aUdC8p17QEc Virtual Embroidery in Houdini: https://youtu.be/RgLcREpwaU4 Info on the .dst file format: https://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Embro… […]

Pack Points inside Objects with Geometry Nodes

Geometry Nodes offer a node to distribute points on the surface of another object. But scattering points inside of the volume of a object is not as simple. In this tutorial Manuel explains how to build a Geometry Nodes setup that does just that. First […]

Nerd Rant 2.0 – Ep.13: Learning Houdini With Vincent Schwenk

This is a special nerd rant – just an excuse to upload well over an hour of Vinz and Mo struggling with understanding / teaching Houdini to an absolute beginner. So if you’re thinking of learning Houdini, this call where Mo introduces Vinz to the […]

Houdini Tutorial: Melting Things using FLIP

Learn how to turn any object into molten lava by adapting one of Houdini’s presets to liquify any geometry. Ben Watt’s tutorial that triggered Mo to look into this. While we’re not talking about shading & rendering in here, we provide a scene file that’s […]

Nerd Rant 2.0 – Ep.12: Digital humans

While pondering what makes a decent digitally created human figure, Manu & Mo go almost toe-deep into the philosophical aspects of what believable digital humans would mean technologically and for society. Don’t expect mentions of elk meat, saunas or chimpanzees though.