In the second part of our nerd rant with guest Marcel Casasola Merkle we talk about the nitty gritty of what game development means. To Marcel. We talk tools, techniques, opinions on what to best use when creating a game.
All posts by “Moritz”
Advanced Setups 14 – DIY Poisson Solver pt. 4: Designing Caustics
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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 […]
Advanced Setups 13 – DIY Poisson Solver: Jacobi Two Pass & von Neumann Boundaries
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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 […]
Nerd Rant 2.0 – Ep.9: Game Design, Mobile Games & Free To Play
We’ve got a guest! One that shares the same last name with Manu! It’s Marcel Casasola Merkle, game designer extraordinaire and we’re rambling about the state of games, game design and free to play.
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 […]
Advanced Setups 12 – DIY Poisson Solver: Jacobi Red Black & OpenCL
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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 […]
Advanced Setups 11 – DIY Laplace & Poisson Solvers: Jacobi, Gauss-Seidel & SOR
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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. […]
Advanced Setups 10 – The Urquhart Graph
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Test Driving Houdini 19: Pouring Quicksand/Paint Using Vellum Fuids
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 new Vellum fluids by using them to create a […]
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.5: THE BESTEST 3D App
In part two of their highly scientific and grown up debate about 3D DCCs, Manu and Mo go knee deep in apps to find out what’s THE BEST 3D APP (!!!) on the market.
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 […]
Advanced Setups 09 – From Formula to VEX: Winding Numbers
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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 […]
Advanced Setups 08 – From Paper to VEX: Electrostatic Halftoning
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Nerd Rant 2.0 – Ep.3: Understanding Scientific Papers
We still have laggy video and Manu is overexposed but we share our favorite tips, tricks and resources for getting a grip on scientific papers.
Nerd Rant 2.0 – Ep.2: Rendering in Houdini?
We finally fixed our streaming setup, Manu had a haircut and the guys discuss if it is a good idea to render your projects in Houdini or if you should rather export to other tools.
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 […]
Advanced Setups 06 – Yarn Art Using Metropolis Hastings Sampling
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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 […]
Vellum 101 – pt. 37: Abstract Cotton Candy – Hair & Glue Constraints
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Nerd Rant 2.0 – Ep.0: We redecorated, Manu is a professor, Mo struggles with livestreaming tech
Yes we’re aware there are some black frames in there, yes the audio is slightly offset, no we don’t have a proper intro yet… but… Took us some time, but we’re (a)live again. This episode should’ve ended up being a test, hidden away in some […]
Vellum 101 – pt. 36: Rigid Bodies In Vellum (2021 Technique)
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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 […]
Advanced Setups 04 – Field Guided Reaction Diffusion
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Advanced Setups 03 – Accessing Geo Attributes In Python / Using potpourri3d
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Advanced Setups 02 – Installing 3rd Party Libraries For Houdini’s Python
It’s finally come so far – we’re accepting that we can’t (or rather don’t want to) write every complex algorithm out there ourselves in VEX. Enter Python. Not necessarily because Mo loves Python so much, but because there is a wealth of highly interesting libraries […]
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 […]
Vellum 101 – Pt. 35: Sphere Packing A Surface
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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
Guest Tutorial: Simon Fiedler – Mesh Based Bubble Deformer
Simon Fiedler doing his thing again: This time he’s covering how to create this blistery/bubbly effect on a mesh without resorting to VDB conversion. Enjoy! Project Assets Download Project File
Advanced Setups 01 – Genetic Algorithms
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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 […]
Vellum 101 – pt. 34: Guest Tut – Vellum Sewing Pt. III
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