All posts by “Moritz”

Giveaway: Redshift Thinfilm Shader

Head over to our Patreon for the free .hip files. We recently had to create a physically based thinfilm shader in Redshift. This is the result. It’s a slightly simplified version of this OSL shader from gamedev.net, implemented using purely Redshift nodes.

Nerd Rant: DOPs

Recorded back in October when Mo was cranky due to reasons, Manu decided to discuss his (then) favorite topic when it comes to Houdini: DOPs. Turns out it is not so much Mo’s favorite topic. Watch this nerd rant to see us being cranky and […]

Houdini 17 Quicktip: Setting Up Colored Smoke

Smoke and mirrors! Well Smoke mainly in this quicktip. We’ll look at a few of Houdini 17’s new pyro features – namely the new sourcing workflow and the ability to (easily) color your smoke simulation using a mesh’s colors.

Houdini 17 Quicktip: Packing Geometry Using the UV-Layout SOP

With the Houdini 17 party still going, let’s have a look at a somewhat hidden gem in H17’s tools: The UV-Layout SOP. “Wait! I don’t care about ’em UVs!” you might say. We hear you, but they are not really the focus of this tutorial. […]

Houdini 17 Is Here – A Quickstart to Vellum

One of the most exciting features that Houdini 17 introduces is Vellum: A new simulation framework based on XPBD. (Extended Postion Based Dynamics – In essence grains on steroids.) That means stable and fast simulation of (almost) everything softbody: Cloth, Wires and well – softbodies. […]

Houdini Game Tools: Assembling a 3D Scan Of The Earth

Although they are technically called “Game Tools” there are quite a few cases in which you might want to use these assets built by the talented folks at SideFX. For example when you’re gonna do geodata visualisation.

Building Your Own Houdini Workstation

It finally happened – here is the long feared hardware episode you’ve not been waiting for! As Mo recently started freelancing, he decided he’d need a new computer. Also he decided to build it himself. Enjoy the resulting chaos.

Quicktip: Instancing In Redshift (Bonus: Particle Advection)

Last week Germany was still under a massive heat wave. And an office doesn’t get colder by running smoke sims and rendering. That’s why I had to keep this one relatively short (let’s call it a speedrun): We’ll build a particle system advected by a […]

Isocontours: Importing & Exporting Vectors to/from Houdini

Niklas Rosenstein is with us again! And if Niklas is in the house, chances for some Python code are pretty high. This time we’ll import vectors from Illustrator into Houdini, create an isocontour-effect and export the result back to illustrator.

Constraint Networks For Rigid Body Simulations

Ever tried having a bunch of instances rotating without intersecting each other? It’s a task we commonly encounter. The solution that usually works for us is a constraint network that’ll pin our instances to their position while still allowing them to rotate freely.

Interference Patterns

While on season break we received quite a few questions. One of those mails pointed us to the amazing work of Loris Cecchini, a sculptor who created (among other stunning artworks) those wave pattern sculptures. At first it didn’t seem clear what’s going on there.

Season Two Is Coming To An End

With our new years resolutions still fresh and our bellies still full with cookies and christmas cake, we decided that in order to deliver everything we have in mind for 2018 it would be good to start the new year with… a break. Season two […]

Fakebroidery: Needlework in Houdini

There are very few things more hypnotic than watching an embroidery machine do its work. When watching my wife’s machine working on festive decoration, I thought about how I’d create something similar in Houdini. Turns out it isn’t too complicated once you’ve figured out how […]

Creating A Procedural Snowflake

we have something special for the upcoming holiday season for you: Snowflakes! This was the very first paper I ever implemented in Houdini – what a feeling! I recorded it a while back in summer but then decided to wait until the right season. As […]

Procedural Modeling: Quilling

What popped up as some random images on my pinterest feed turned out to be a whole universe of an art form in itself: Quilling. The art and craft of rolling and shaping paper to form intricate mosaics depicting a wide variety of subjects.

Yarnworks: Wire Solver and Constraint Networks in DOPs

To complement our PBD Wire Setup, here is a tutorial on a topic I’ve personally been struggling a lot when I first tried wrapping my head around constraint networks. Similar to what we’ve been doing in PBDs, we’re gonna build a network of interconnecting wires […]

Artistic Quadtrees

You might not be aware of the fact that you most likely have been using the algorithm we’re discussing here – at least if you’ve ever worked in 3D. Quadtrees (and their relatives, KD-Trees and Octrees) are used to accelerate point queries (ever used pcfind() […]

We’re on Patreon!

Whoopee! The inevitable just happened. We’re on Patreon now. If you wanna show us your appreciation, we’ve got some special things prepared for you. On our patreon page we offer several options of in-depth content: Hi-Res Renders For those who longed for that high reasolution […]

Quicktip: Visualizing Flight Paths

The past decade has seen a wealth of data visualization elements in UI design, movie sets and motion graphics. When it comes to creating these elements you’re left with two approaches: faking it vs. the real thing. In this quicktip we’re doing the real thing […]

VEX & VOPs: Perspective Halftone Illusion

Occasionally we find an E-Mail in our inbox that asks how to achieve a given effect. This time Jesper asked us how we’d go about creating something like this – spheres arranged in space to create the illusion of a halftone image when viewed from […]

VEX in Houdini: Movie Color Visualisation

Quite some time ago I was trying to cook up something like the guys at moviebarcode.com: Some setups that’d deconstruct a given movie into its individual colors in a visually pleasing manner. Recently I thought it was time to try another attempt. Instead of linearly […]

Easy Soap Film Shader

By far the most frequent question we received after our minimal surfaces tutorial was “how do you build that bubble shader?”. The wait is over – in this tutorial we’ll go over how to build a plausible soap film shader in Houdini’s Mantra and Octane […]