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 […]

Nerd Rant 2.0 – Ep.13: Learning Houdini With Vincent Schwenk

This is a special nerd rant – just an excuse to upload well over an hour of Vinz and Mo struggling with understanding / teaching Houdini to an absolute beginner. So if you’re thinking of learning Houdini, this call where Mo introduces Vinz to the […]

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 […]

Nerd Rant 2.0 – Ep.12: Digital humans

While pondering what makes a decent digitally created human figure, Manu & Mo go almost toe-deep into the philosophical aspects of what believable digital humans would mean technologically and for society. Don’t expect mentions of elk meat, saunas or chimpanzees though.

Simulating A Rubber Band Ball In Vellum

Again Patrick triggered this one by asking if we could have a look at a setup he’s been working on. And boy did we like what we saw. Mo decided to simplify it a bit and slow it down so it could be used to […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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.

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KineFX 101 – Pt.0: Intro & Overview

Woohoo! A new course! This time all about SideFX’ new animation darling: KineFX. In this very first episode Chris gives a short overview over the topics we will cover, as well as a small introduction into the different parts and subsystems of KineFX.

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]