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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Although Geometry Nodes does not support simulation yet, we can still use it to create effects that look like particles. In this tutorial you’ll learn how to implement a linear falloff using the dot product to control a lot of instances procedurally, We’ll then use […]
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
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
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 […]
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 […]
Today for a game related topic: Flowmaps. These can be used to fake flowing liquids inside of a quickly executing shader. We’ll create a flowmap in Houdini using the SideFX Labs tools in this Tutorial and then move over to Blender to build an animated […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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… […]
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. 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Part two of working sloppily in Unreal covers setting up raytracing and materials. Also we’ll tackle the generation of normal maps from a grayscale image in Houdini, talk a bit about different approximations for the Fresnel term and finally poke around in Unreal’s console in […]
Mo has been silent for a while. That’s due to him spending his days finishing projects and yelling at Unreal Engine. The goal is getting to a point where we’re comfortable bringing together Houdini workflows and UE. That road is long. To discover Unreal, the […]
Been watching This Old Tony, Wintergatan and Stuff Made Here a lot in quarantine. And while the idea of having your own home shop and being able to weld is quite romantic, our reality is that neither do we posses the space nor the skills […]
Full Playlist Here Revisiting an old technique Manu covered a while ago. But this time using H18.5’s new KineFX tools to make it a tiny bit less painful. Nevertheless Mo of course dives into VEX and a bit of linear algebra. Links Manu’s previous tut […]
Full Playlist Here Houdini 18.5 is out! And here are the features that got us excited! Of course there’s much more. (SOP based rigging anyone?!) We had great joy in seeing that Karma has come a long way and that real time pyro sims in […]
Full playlist here. Super hyped to have Matthias Winckelmann on board! You might know him from “Rachael is not real” where he built an AI design influencer bot that posts daily renderings to instagram. Matthias has been using Unreal Engine in his personal design process […]
Watch Matthias’ Unreal Engine Quickstart here. Matthias Winckelmann talks Unreal Engine, his perspective on realtime in the commercial space, AI design influencers and what to expect (and what not) from real time engines in a design context. You might know Matthias from “Rachael is not […]
EDIT: Thanks so much for the many comments & hints! Josh Rizzo on Twitter pointed out I’m missing a few import options when loading in the alembic. Here’s how to import animated attributes without a deforming/animated mesh:– Import Alembic– Check “Set Frame Range” and “Is Sequence” […]
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Watch Mo fail as he tries rendering out a 3D Scan in Houdini’s new (and very beta) rendering engine, Karma. The perils of using beta software… 3D scanned mushroom from www.aixterior.com Download Project File
We’re thrilled to have Houdini artist supreme Vladyslav Lavrenov for a guest tutorial. And quite a hefty one! Vlad takes us through his reasoning and steps to build a path solver in Houdini to have seemingly random momevements on a grid form a coherent behaviour. […]
For our final sprint we’re talking shading, lighting and rendering our simulation results in Redshift 3D. Download Project File
This might be the first time in Entagma history that Mo is touching CHOPs. And it’s for a reason: we’re gonna adjust and filter our simulation’s result. Download Project File
