All Posts filed under “Free Tutorials”

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

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Render Houdini Particles with Blender CyclesX via Geometry Nodes

Transferring data between DCCs is a cumbersome but necessary task. Particles are not yet supported via nodes inside of Blender for example and usually come in from somewhere else. In this tutorial Manuel shows you how to create a surface flow particle effect inside of […]

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 […]

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 […]

Geometry Nodes 3.0 – Plant Growth with Fields

Now that Blender 3.0 is in beta it is time for a little more advanced setup. In this tutorial Manuel will build a multi-layered growth effect. Fully procedural plants are scattered on a procedural terrain and controlled by an effector empty. They all grow individually […]

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 […]

Geometry Nodes 3.0 – Cube Grid with Fields

The Geometry Nodes Team decided to redo the architecture of Geometry Nodes for the Blender 3.0 release. Fortunately we can have a look at the new way of working immediately by using the 3.0 Alpha. This tutorial creates a similar effect as my older Cube […]

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: Dual Surfaces, my favourite setup

A new tutorial in the No VEX Houdini series. Here Manu explains one of his all time favourite setups: Dual Surfaces. By calculating the dual graph to the initial delaunay mesh, the triangle mesh that is, we end up with a very interesting voronoi-style surface […]

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 […]

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 […]

TD Essentials: Create a Swept Phyllotaxis Operator in Houdini

Plant growth has a strong connection to mathematics. Especially the special phyllotactic distribution pattern shows up a lot in nature. Be it the head of a sunflower, a pinecone or a pineapple. The dense packing of seeds and other organs on the surface of these […]

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 […]

Cube Grid – Use Color on Geometry Nodes Instances

Geometry Nodes inside of Blender is constantly updated and expanded on. Using the latest Blender 3.0 Alpha we can now transfer color to geometry generated through instances. This wasn’t possible before and opens a wide range of possibilities for creative expression in Blender. Follow Manuel […]

A Procedural Polka Dot Shader with Analytic Normals

Today we’ll build a procedural shader that produces a polka dot pattern. While this is quite informative, as we learn how to tile the uv space, the interesting part is creating the normal map. We want to use the implicit sphere equation to derive z […]

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 […]

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

Create a Procedural Hatching Shader in Blender Cycles

Today Manu looks at another porcedural area of Blender, the shader editor. We build a procedural hatching shader that will come in handy for your next NPR project. You’ll learn about generating procedural lines and doing 3D shading yourself inside of the shader using the […]

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 […]

Blender Geometry Nodes: Vertex Normals – Alien Orb

The development of Geometry Nodes inside of Blender does not slow down. Recently they added support for vertex normals on input meshes. Manu guides you through the stages required to build this space orb effect that relies on vertex normals. You’ll learn some procedural animation […]

Production Setup: Audioreactive Particles Using Vellum & POPs

You wanted to know how to set up something similar to Daniel Sierra’s “Oscillate” in Houdini. So in this tutorial we’ll walk you through the steps necessary to not only create an audioreactive Vellum simulation but also add secondary particles into that simulation and create […]

Dynamic Outlines with Blender Geometry Nodes and Eevee

Now that Blender features procedural workflows with its lates feature addition Geometry Nodes its time for us to have a look at the other side of the fence. This tutorial mini-series looks into GN from a Houdini users perspective and explores what’s already there and […]

Mograph Liquids: Controlling FLIP Fluids Via Curve Forces

Been going through a few of Jeff Wagner’s feature presentations from a the last few Houdini releases and stumbled upon a gem which I thought I’d base a setup on: Controlling FLIP fluids using a curve. Throw in a tiny bit of VDB/VEX magic and […]

Guest Tutorial: Simon Fiedler – Controlling Swirly Particles

It finally happened – our dear friend Simon Fiedler agreed to record a guest tutorial for us. He decided to share one of his production tricks for controlling particles: Building a swirly vector field to advect particles. Although it looks organic and natural, it’s highly […]

Morphing Point Portraits

You just want to distract yourself on twitter and you stumble upon this tweet by Daniel Piker. Naturally we had to give it a go in Houdini. And it turns out it can be done with surprisingly few nodes and without any sort of scripting… […]

Keycap Sculptures (Disco Ball Tiling)

When we received an E-Mail by Eduard, asking if we had any idea about disco ball packing, we were intrigued. Eduard pointed out that his (apparently very patient) wife manually tiled this sculpture and was wondering if there’s any way to automate it. He also […]

Bubbles Yet Again: Implementing Glassner’s Bubble Triplets in VEX

Bubbles. Again. How thrilling. Wait – before you leave hear me out: Building this setup was one major step for me towards becoming brave enough to tackle implementing my first computer graphics paper. Andrew Glassner wrote a fantastic article about how soap bubble triplets form […]

Holiday Giveaway: Mantra Thinfilm Shader

Happy Holidays! Turns out rendering spherical objects has become our very own tradition by now, so as an addon to Monday’s tut and the question “But can u do it in Mantra?” – Here’s a small present hastily thrown together by yours truly: A VEX […]

Bubbles Again: Simulating Soap Swirls Using FLIP

By now it might have become apparent that Mo might be a bit fixated with soap bubbles and soap films. We covered Minimal Surfaces, soap film shading in Octane and in Redshift. Yet we deliberately omitted one crucial step in rendering nice soap bubbles: Creating […]

Sloppy Unreal 03: Correcting Mistakes & Bevelling Legos

EDIT: Damn it, I think specular in UE and me are cursed. When I was testing this setup I had post processing exposure cranked up, which messed up my results. Turns out that specular expects a value between 0 and 1 which internally is remapped […]