Mirror Connection | Community Challenge #1

For quite some time I was thinking about ways to make this group feel like a community. Have active conversations, people picking each others brains to solve a common problem.

And this is what I came up with, refined after some back and forth on discord.

For this first time I already delivered the initial idea. But in the future I see us vote on the next community challenge. This can be the functionality of a single vex function, a problem to solve or an idea that you got from a movie.

In this case - the first ever community challenge - It is all about this scene from the mummy. The moment where he shoots the mirror and it slips right into the right angle to reflect the sunlight into the next mirror. That creates a chain reaction of the beam connecting all mirrors - creating enough light to illuminate the whole tomb.

Pushing physics asside - how could we build something of that nature in Houdini. My initial thought was the cross product. But there might be a whole lot of different solutions.

Here is a quick simple idea with just the intersect function

You could carry that idea to a complete system to control a render setup where lights are influenced by active mirrors. But for this challenge we just look at the situation of mirrors connecting a never ending beam. 

If you want to enter this challenge - do whatever you want. Recreate this exact scene with static geometry, Create a ray solution in vex or just a funny meme.

We are all busy people so let's give this some time. 1 Month. Entries are possible until the 21.11.  

If you want to contribute send your entry to davidkahlvfx@gmail.com, as a reply to this post or on discord. 

If you want to tackle the challenge but don't want to be in the pool just let me know.

We are a snugly group, so we can put all entries into a vote for the best solution. You guys will decide what was the best answer to this challenge. The best 3 results are celebrated by the epic trailer guy in the video centered around this challenge.

If nothing else I  think this is a great way to learn - not only Vex but Houdini in general. Thinking about a solution and then see the thought process of different people to tackle the same problem. 

I encourage everyone to enter regardless of what you think you can do. Whatever you do - it will push yourself further as a technical artist.

Or as a human being if you post a funny meme ;-)

So let's have some fun!

Cheers

Dave