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. […]

Create and Simulate a Procedural Rope

Today we’ll create a procedural rope and simulate it using the grain solver. There are always many different ways to achieve stuff in Houdini. In this tutorial I chose the VEX route to generate the rope. This gives a nice self-contained node that can easily […]

Crochet – Blending between Delaunay and Voronoi

Here at Entagma we love to deal with yarns. This video extends the “yarn-effects” with a crochet approach. Using the delaunay triangulation of an input mesh and its dual diagram, the voronoi mesh, we build a procedural model that uses point color to blend smoothly […]

Nerd Rant: Render Engines

There are many render engines out there nowadays and it’s not easy to choose the right one. CPU or GPU, biased or unbiased. In this video we discuss the pros and cons of different render engines from our humble point of view. As a bonus […]

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.

Nerd Rant: Hardware – DIY vs. Pre Built

This is an experimental post. As we often sit down to discuss different topics from our Entagma life, this time we just switched the camera on and created a vlog-type movie for you. Just the right thing to watch on a otherwise boring “no-new-tutorial Monday”. […]

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.

Low Poly Transform

Blending smoothly between a high-poly mesh and its low-poly representation is a subtle but useful effect. In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create two versions of the same object, one smooth and one facetted, with the exact same topology. This enables you to blend […]

Kitbash Vein Growth Part 1

This tutorial shows you how to create a procedural vein, that is composed of small segments that you drawn by hand. This way the overall look of the vein is art-directable.

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.

Quicktip: Signed Distance Outlines

S Due to the fact that the SDF is defined in 3D space the setup can easily be animated, too, to create some fake water ripples. Download Project File

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.