All posts by “Moritz”

Nerd Rant 2.0 – Ep.10: Working Remotely

Suffering through German autumn part two: Manu & Mo finally got the heaters running and aren’t freezing anymore. Fantasizing about working from some warm and sandy beach, they discuss the pitfalls of and solutions for working remotely.

Smearing Paint using FLIP

We’ve been asked by Patrick how to pull off something like these beautiful paint smears in Houdini, so we got to work. Using basic FLIP techniques will get us quite far, we just have to find the right settings. (Haha. “just” finding the settings…) In […]

Quicktip: New Grouping Behaviour In H19

By a comment on one of our videos on YouTube we stumbled upon a strange behaviour in H19 which took us a few minutes to figure out. Turns out grouping expressions are evaluated slightly differently in Houdini 19. A single short forum post got us […]

Ribbon Knot pt.2: Art Directing Wrinkles

In our last free tutorial we tied a ribbon into a knot, but what if you want (or need) to work on details like wrinkles or want to reshape parts of the knot? In this tutorial Mo covers one technique to arrange the detailed shape […]

Nerd Rant 2.0 – Ep.8: Dynamic Solvers

Mo dusted off his best shacket (yes, that’s a word!), Manu is donning his best summer shirt – at this point the guys are just trying to mentally escape winter. What better topic than dynamic solvers to get their minds off the muddy weather.

Tying A Ribbon Knot in Vellum

That special season of the year is creeping ever closer and you might be starting to think about gift wrapping. One important aspect of which is the decorative ribbon that goes around it. Not that we’re particularly talented at arts and crafts, but we were […]

Nerd Rant 2.0 – Ep.7: Photogrammetry

Manu dons his finest T-shirt, Mo is going all lumberjack, the audio offset still hasn’t been fixed and the guys discuss their experience turning photos into 3D meshes.

Nerd Rant 2.0 – Ep.6: Houdini 19

Mo is back from holidays, Manu’s winter semester started and both guys are freezing through the German autumn. Yet a ray of hope shines on them in the form of SideFX’s new Houdini 19 release.

Test Driving Houdini 19: Creating Wrinkles & Rendering Them In Karma XPU

It’s Halloween(ish). – so Mo decided he’d create something creepy. And this is as creepy as his mind gets. No judging. In this tutorial we’ll cover the creation off stress maps to drive the procedural generation of wrinkles using Houdini’s Karma XPU and MaterialX displacement. […]

Test Driving Houdini 19: Poisson Image Blending

Houdini 19 has been released and Mo is taking it for a test drive. As far as you can drive any software. (I mean a car’s firmware you’d definitely drive…) In this video, Mo demonstrates the canonical example for one of the more popular image […]

Test Driving Houdini 19: Injecting Packed Primitives

Houdini 19 has been released and Mo is taking it for a test drive. As far as you can drive any software. (I mean a car’s firmware you’d definitely drive…) In this video, Mo modifies the abstracted sculpture we built in part one by using […]

Test Driving Houdini 19: Karma XPU, MaterialX And A Hidden Gem

Houdini 19 has been released and Mo is taking it for a test drive. As far as you can drive any software. (I mean a car’s firmware you’d definitely drive…) In this video, Mo builds an abstracted sculpture out of minimal surfaces by using H19’s […]

Nerd Rant 2.0 – Ep.4: Our Software Biography

We still have offset audio, one camera is slightly out of focus and Mo starts requiring a haircut, but on the plus side we discuss our weird origin story in terms of apps and tools we used. To at some point in the future arrive […]

No VEX Houdini: Organic Modelling Using Winding Numbers

Continuing our “No VEX Houdini” tutorials, Mo covers implementing a very clever technique to model organic surfaces using a mesh’s winding number, as presented in this thread on Twitter by Daniel Piker. In this quick (sub 10 min) tutorial, Mo will use one of Houdini’s […]

No VEX Houdini: My First(ish) Setup: Abstract Sails

Continuing our “No VEX Houdini” tutorials, Mo presents one of the first setups he built when he started using Houdini. He also rambles a bit about what Manu and Mo actually mean when they talk about using VFX tools for abstract design. In this quick […]

Nerd Rant 2.0 – Ep.1: Blender Geometry Nodes

Yes we still have some black frames in there, yes the audio is still slightly offset, no we don’t have a proper intro yet… but… you get the idea. In our second (or first depending on how you count) episode of our new nerd rants, […]

No VEX Houdini: Dancing Mocap Trails

Houdini without using VEX? It is possible. Although Mo doesn’t enjoy it, he guides you through setting up a simple abstract mocap animation using nothing but built in SOPs. No scripting in this one. Promised. Of course everything is heavily inspired by Method Studio’s seminal […]

Tearing A Spider Web In Houdini Using Vellum

Been pointed to Philipp Pavlov’s great spider web animation, felt in a mood to try setting it up using Vellum grains. Somehow succeeded. Recorded tutorial. Feeling cute. In this tutorial we’ll set up a simulation which allows us to tear a spider’s web. We’ll be […]

Shadow Projections

When stumbling upon Kumi Yamashita’s amazing artworks, we felt inspired to try our hand at the underlying technique of projecting shadows from a light source. In this tutorial we’ll be creating shapes and object arrangements that form a shadow image when hit with a single […]

Rope Typography Using Houdini’s Vellum & Octane Render

After seeing polygonpen’s C4D Rope tutorial on Lesterbanks, we though – why not give it a go in Houdini. So in this tutorial we’re gonna go over creating a basic vellum sim which will form the backbone of our rope typo, then creating said rope […]

Guest Tutorial – Jeroen Claus: Origami Bunny

Super happy to have Phospho’s Jeroen Claus back to present one of his production setups, this time covering how to turn any geometry into an origami version of itself, inspired by the amazing work of Robby Kraft. Project Assets Download Project File

Advanced Setups 00 – Intro

It’s time for a new premium course – and Mo has been looking for a topic that’d allow him to bundle together a few of the more involved setups he built. So “Advanced Setups” it is. How original. In this course we’re gonna dive into […]

Houdini: Baking Point Attributes To Textures

EDIT: For more point to texture attribute trickery have a look at the scene files. In our tutorial on dissolving geometry we hinted at baking point distances into a texture rather than using highly subdivided geometry to store attributes from a point cloud. While this […]

Axiom Solver: Dissolving Logo

In our tradition to being late to the party, we’re giving Matt Puchala’s Axiom solver a spin. It’s a lightweight and fast pyro solver for SideFX Houdini, enabling interactive workflows with smoke or fire simulations. In this video we’re gonna use it together with Houdini’s […]