John Kunz

Cymatics Pattern Karma XPU Render Tutorial

Here's part 2 of the Cymatics tutorial.

Part 1, which covers the simulation can be accessed here.

This covers rendering and lighting using Karma XPU, camera constraints in Solaris, applying time remapping from SOPs in Solaris and some techniques to add a more photographic feel to your renders.

Watch the tutorial 2024-10-27 12:26:28 +0000 UTC View Post

Cymatics Pattern Simulation Tutorial

In this tutorial, I cover how to generate cymatic inspired patterns using particles, grains, hieghtfields and calculating the gradient of height to produce a velocity force.

Apologies for the lack of updates, I'll be trying to post more frequently here the rest of the year.

Hope you enjoy it and more updates soon!

Watch the tutorial 2024-10-12 15:51:16 +0000 UTC View Post

Karma Particle Rendering

This is a quick introduction covering importing and rendering particles in Solaris using Karma XPU.

I've also included a walkthrough of a scene which uses the grain POP solver as well as the volume gradient to push the particles into an interesting 3D form pictured above. I also show how volumes can be used to color particles after the simulation so that the have patterns that evolve with the simulation.

Lastly for the camera motion, I show you how you can track you...

Evaluating the Laser Scan Effect in Solaris, Redshift and Karma

This is a quick look at how the laser scan effect can be implemented in Solaris and tested with both Redshift and Karma.  In this video, I go through Redshift, in both the OBJ and Solaris contexts and lastly Karma XPU.

This is focused on implementing the previous laser scan effect in the different contexts and renders engines.  I try to lay out some of the advantageous and disadvantageous with the current state of development of things from the perspective of a single artist w...

Laser Scan Effect Tutorial

How to set up a spotlight in Redshift to simulate a laser scan lighting effect.

We also take a look at how you can generate your own projection textures procedurally using SOPs and then have them load on the fly with Redshift.

We also cover how to convert an .mp4 video file to an image sequence which can also be used as a scanning light projection map.  In this case I downloaded a video from this user (2024-02-10 12:25:18 +0000 UTC View Post

Knit Reveal Effect Tutorial Part 2

Part 2 of 2

(Part 1 can be found here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/knit-reveal-part-91818428)

This covers the animation of the knitting reveal effect.

This part covers using VOPs to manipulate the scale and orient attributes over time to slowly reveal the entire form.

Adding secondary knit curves to help add some variation and detail to the knitting area.

Combining Vellum with Packed Knits

Here's an example file showing how you can apply the packed prim knitting workflow to a Vellum simulation.

I recorded a quick walkthrough of scene file here: https://youtu.be/ZoHVjIb3uyk 

.hip included below.

Knit Reveal Effect Tutorial Part 1

Part 1 of 2 creating a similar knitting reveal effect as the Givenchy TK-360 Ad

This covers how packed primitives can be used to represent knitted surfaces.

How to take a curve based knit and convert it to points with transform attributes.

How to create and style a clump o...

Sleeve Machine Scene File Walkthrough

Continuing along the topic of knitting, I wanted to breakdown and share the process of my recent project which uses the same techniques I just covered recently.

You can view the final project on Behance here https://www.behance.net/gallery/173591445/Sleeve-Machine

In this project, I animated a bunch of curves using KineFX, these are then used to drive a Vellum simulation by influencing...

Knitting, Weaving and Patterning on 3D Surfaces

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to transfer over all of the previous weaving and knitting techniques so that they can be applied to any 3D surface.

This technique uses the UV's to move any curves or geometric patterns to the 3D surface using VEX.  Special attention is paid to cutting the curves cleanly where they reach the borders of the UV patches.  The thickness of the knitting or it's distance from the 3D surface is also taken into account to accurately repres...

Weaving, Ribbed Knit and More Textile Techniques

In this tutorial, I show how a basic knitting style covered previously can be extended to produce more complicated knit, woven and lattice fabric  structures.

Watch the tutorial here:
https://youtu.be/Tfhqsai8Hnc

The first scene file can be used to follow along with the pattern building steps and the second...

Knitting Fabric Textile Tutorial

Hope you enjoy this 2 part knitting lesson, this covers the basic of generating knitted curve structures using highly modular and flexible approaches.  These base curves are then used to generate individual fibers that make up the yarn which produces a highly detailed and fuzzy look.   Rendering and lighting is done using Redshift strands with a hair shader and some material based optimizations are covered which can reduce render times by limiting the number of reflections that...

Printer Papers Part 4 | Final Delivery, Post Production, Editing, OCIO and ACEScg

https://youtu.be/2u2UTq9ZToM

In part 4 of this series, I cover the ACES color profile and how it can be applied using  OCIO to ensure that colors remain consistent from the Houdini viewport to your final delivery format.  Please ch...

Printer Papers Tutorial Part 3

Part 3 of this series is ready!  Finally some of the fun stuff :D (lighting, shading and rendering)

I cover how to build out the paper shader for Karma XPU, override texture maps for front and back faces as well as override other aspects of the scene on a shot by shot manner in Solaris.

The tutorial can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/d5o94KrnoY0

The scene files are at...

Printer Papers Tutorial Part 2

Part 2 of this multipart tutorial breaking down my papers project 

This covers creation of motion paths for all the papers, how these motion curves can be used in Solaris to create procedural camera rigs and creating and managing multiple shots in the Solaris context.

The tutorial can be viewed here

The scene files and other data are ...

Printer Papers Tutorial Part 1

Part 1 of this multipart tutorial breaking down this project https://youtu.be/UmeqVHc9_HA

This covers .usdz import of the printer geometry, collision proxy generation as well as vellum simulation set up, emitting geometry, caching and post processing and efficiently working with large cloth caches.

The tutorial can be viewed here:

2022-11-03 19:21:19 +0000 UTC View Post

Adidas Color Slice Effect Part 2

Back with part 2 of this tutorial!

This time covering coloring, shading, rendering and lighting side of things, everything done in Solaris with KarmaXPU.

Karma and MaterialX seem to be pretty powerful with a bright future ahead of them. The standard surface is much better then any surface shader model previously implemented y SideFX in my opinion. It's based off of this https://autodesk.git...

Adidas Color Slice Effect

Hello everyone, I really appreciate your continued subscriptions and support :)


This is part 1 of a tutorial showing how to make this kind of logo animation you might see at the end of an advertisement.

Covered here is the geometry (SOP) portion, part 2 will cover lighting and shading.

The tutorial can be viewed using the link below.
https://youtu.be/Ek-mUOqSqtc

Some key as...

Torus Knot Braiding (Scene File & Walkthrough)

Hello, these are some additional techniques I wanted to share that are related to the previously posted curve braiding tutorial.

This is building on the concepts that are covered in the tutorial and looking at how you can further customize aspects of the braiding technique.

I also cover the torus knot creation using VEX in depth at the start of the walkthrough video.

Hope you find this helpful, I always like to push techniques in Houdini and see how...

Curve Braiding Tutorial

Building on the techniques from the rope tutorial, we're moving on to braiding techniques.

Learn how VEX can be used to create "over under" basket style woven threads.

Point attributes are also used to further enhance and shape the weave.

Any remaining interpenetrations of the woven geometry is then resolved using the detangle SOP to procedurally resolve collisions.

Animation and color cycling is also driven by some useful VE...

Tutorial: Twisted Rope

Hello!  Thanks to everyone that's stuck around during the lull in content.  I was busy with a few different projects at work that were overlapping on deliveries as well as moving.  Hoping to have for time going forward and get into some similar topics such as yarn, knitting, knitting, knots and other techniques.

Step by step tutorial showing the process of creating a highly detailed closeup of a rope.

Procedural modeling of the twisted curves u...

Tutorial: Vellum Caged Inflation

Hello, I'm happy to share my first step by step tutorial.  In the past I've shared some walkthroughs breaking a scene but I feel that this may be easier to follow along with for most people.

Please let me know what you think about the depth and duration of this type of tutorial.  I got pretty deep into some VOPs and VEX stuff as well as my Vellum debugging/visualization process so the entire video is around an hour and a half.  Please feel free to let me know i...

Wedging Inflated Balloon Generation with TOPs

This setup builds on the previous balloon bash setup so feel free to reference that setup if your interested in a deeper look into the Vellum constraints and specifics behind the inflation simulation.

Here, we're basically extending the Vellum-drape inflation process to work over a set of inputs so we can generate a small balloon model library.  In this setup we generate inflated balloons for the numbers 0-9.  This is done using TOPs, which allows us to wedge the in...

Balloon Bash

I've been starting to experiment with cloth modeling using the Vellum solver.  This is a bit similar to the Marvelous Designer workflow, where the fabric is laid flat and then sewn together during a simulation which allows the fabric to produce all the nice wrinkles, folds and bulges that make it feel real.  In Houdini we have Vellum Drape node to replicate the Marvelous workflow https...

Rose Blossom Rig / Simulation

Apologies for my hiatus from posting!  I'm hoping to get back in the swing of things now and have some really exciting stuff I've been working on to share with you.  I really appreciate everyone's continued support and for sticking around :D


This is one of the most challenging KineFX / Vellum plant setups I've made yet.  It took me a while to simplify things enough that it could be shared and still make sense (hopefully).

The basic steps are as follo...

Procedural Succulent Plant Rig

In this setup we use KineFX joint chains (https://www.sidefx.com/docs/houdini/character/kinefx/skeletons.html#turning-a-polygonal-line-into-a-joint-chain) to rig and animate a succulent plant.

Previously, we used KineFX only to only scale, bend and deform curves.  In this approach, we also use the skeleton to capture and deform the leaf geometry which gives greater...

Phyllotaxis Flower Blossom

I wanted to expand on the previous setup and possibly do a little series of techniques revolving around plants and getting into more advanced aspects including simulation, shading and rendering.  (The last two images are reference photography that I used to inform this technique)

This setup uses the same VEX code from last time to arrange the the flower petals.  To keep things easy to control, the petals are initially treated as curves with each petal being represen...

Plant Phyllotaxis with VEX

In the spirit of the beginning Spring (for us on the Northern Hemisphere at least), I thought I'd share a simple and straightforward way to generate these plant seed arrangements.

I find this really handy to have on hand for tons of procedural modeling and effects setups so I've tried to simplify the code to be as bare bones as possible while still providing the ability to set point orientation as well as 3D depth so there's a bit of curvature if needed.  Hopefully this ...

Illusion of the Sweep

Continuing our explorations of the new Sweep and Orientation Along Curve nodes, I came up with these hypnotic spinners :)

You can get some really complex results by feeding the  results of one Sweep operation into another Sweep node.  Check out the file, each one is a simple chain of about 10 nodes.

Twisting Ring of Spheres

I wanted to find a really simple way to recreate these kinds of animations with Houdini

https://dribbble.com/shots/11644212-MOBIUS-RIING-C4D-ANIMATION

https://dribbble.com/shots/5060881-Infinity-Circle

The twisting motion and distribution can be achieved really e...