Just some more teaser images for some stuff coming out soon.
Random Bevel in Houdini
Some things in Houdini are just stupid simple to do, this 1-minute tut from Simon Houdini is just pure gold. His whole channel is pure gold FWIW.
I never knew about the “Exclusions > Ignore Flat Edges” option in the PolyBevel node…. yeesh!
Teaser
Screen shot teaser image from a flip book of a animation I have been working on for a music video. I think it comes out in early September?
Doodles!
Some bends, vdbs and other such things in Houdini.
Abstract Doodle
Messing around with some concepts from a class I am working on.
Basketball still life
Here is the finished render from the sim below that was glitching out. Houdini vellum and Redshift render.
Still Life Study
Way back in September, I talked about doing a lighting study on some of Niall McDiarmid images. Well I finally got around to one of them! Took me long enough….
Built it out in Houdini with a quick Vellum sim for the napkin and towel thingy. The new vellum brush tool is quite handy to use. Lots of fun as well. I did learn how bad Redshifts Sub Surface Scatter is though trying to get the ketchup, mustard bottles and bread to look like anything other then plaster. It took a mix of roughness settings and coating to get it looking close to how I wanted. Using both the Sub-Surface and SS Multiple Scattering was not getting it there. Adding detail like the lipstick and coffee stains was super easy though.
Made a simple markup of the lights as well. Nothing too fancy. The super narrow spotlight for caustics is the only little trick in there. The light in back of the bottles was originally just there to help me work on the SSS, but I liked how it made that highlight on the table. Kinda looks like a window or something.
More Album Artwork
The band that I did the Shatter Bust artwork for liked that one so much they asked for something for a Single. So I blew up a disco ball, as one does.
Houdini Abstract Study
Messing around with the “Connect Adjacent Pieces” SOP in Houdini.
Revisiting some album artwork
A band I did some album artwork awhile back asked me to rework it recently so I took a project that was originally in C4d using the default render engine into Houdini and Redshift. Quite happy with the results. Did a proper glass shatter sim instead of just a Voronoi fracture as well. Here are the Houdini results with the C4d being last.
Houdini hair / fur with Redshift Render Engine
So I spent an insane amount of time last week trying to get hair / fur in Houdini to show up when using Redshift render engine. I was looking at all sorts of tutorials and not one of them mentioned this freaking setting to make it work. You have to toggle the Hair Generation from “Generate Geo in Mantra” to “Use SOP Geo”. BAM, everything works. Took me forever to find it. Hopefully, this saves you the same headache.
Moon Hooch
I keep trying to come up with a better name for this one, but “Moon Hooch” seems to be the one that sticks for some reason, lol! More of the “jar” series I am messing with.
Not a Drop to Think.
Water, water everywhere….
Newest little jar study I worked on over the weekend. Pretty happy with the sand texture I was able to come up with. The water itself works but is a hacky bit of shading held together with duct tape and chewing gum. I did one version where I punched in with a 110mm lens instead of a 90mm like in the first and added some volumetrics to the lights, but It kinda broke it out from the series too much. So now the whole series will have the same lens and light settings. I don’t even think I’ll rotate the jar. Just change up floor textures along with what’s in the jar. Might drop some cloth in the background for some texture and see if that works though. The light rig is basically a room with a slight gap to the “front” and two windows on the side. It’s giving it that nice classic still life look. As always, click the thumbnails to see bigger images.
Pretty happy with this series so far. Next one will be fire.
Been enjoying staying off of social media and my very limited news diet. Highly recommend a news detox to anyone. Also, facebook is mostly made of evil. Check the links on the right for non, “Walled Garden” content. 3 Quarks always has some good long reads to check out.
Lightning in a Bottle
Working with clouds some more and went for a clean still life for this one. The “trace_psd_file” node works a lot better then I thought it would, it’s how I made the lightning. Pretty handy thing. Makes type much more usable in Houdini.
Cloud Study 2
Here is another take on those VDB clouds. This time I went for a bit more abstract, odd angular shape on them. Kinda like if it was, “At the Mountains of Madness” vibe.
Just got back from the Oregon Coast and I am shockingly exhausted for some reason. Wanna work on some of my photos from there but just kinda staring blankly at Bridge.
Some VDB Clouds and words from Wil Wheaton
Was playing around with the cloud and cloud noise nodes yesterday in a attempt to make a abstract cloudscape. Here are the results of that. Today I might get away from round shapes and see how they behave when I use angular shapes for the base. Possibly grids scattered like broken shards? Dunno. The Amplitude and Element Size settings in the cloud noise node can really change things up. Rendered in Redshift because Octane in Houdini hates me.
In my efforts to get off social media I am searching out blogs and other sites that allow me to escape the “walled garden” of insta, facebook etc… Go back to the day when the web was more based on people and not giant hoses draining all content, lol. Anyways, Wil Wheaton wrote a nice piece the other day and I thought I’d link it here. I can fall asleep on a dime, but I’ll wake up around 2-3 for a few hours with this crap spinning away in my nogging.
“It’s tough to fall asleep for me, because that’s when my anxiety does its most aggressive work expressing itself. Before I even hit the pillow, my brain is replaying everything I’m pretty sure I did wrong that day, taking occasional breaks to worry about, well, everything. My brain will work itself up so much it actually makes my heart speed up. When I’m supposed to be relaxing.
It’s not great, Dan.
But I started doing something that’s been incredibly helpful, and I thought I’d share it.
Every night as I’m getting ready for bed, I focus on a list of things for which I am grateful. I call it “doing my gratitudes”. I just start somewhere, like “I am grateful that I am going to sleep in a warm, safe bed. I am grateful that I get to share this bed with Anne. I am grateful I have enough food.” Stuff like that. I remind myself that there is so much that is good in my life, and by thinking about those things, recognizing those things, and making space to feel grateful for them, I do not give my anxiety an opportunity to grab hold of anything and go to work on me.”
Houdini "Wired" study / doodle.
I was thinking about ways to run wires over stuff and here is a little exploration on a way to make that work. Houdini and Redshift render.
Lego Sim with Houdini
Made a sim using a Lego model I imported into Houdini. Started out just as a test to see if I could get the model imported, then I end up making the full sim out of it. Fun stuff.
Houdini Doodle 3
Todays doodle is brought to you from a failed animation. Way to much flickering to make it look good. But here are 3 frames from it that look pretty good.
Flipbook Houdini Sim
Working up a sim of a pretty serious fire sim and here is the flipbook of it ATM.