CG_KungFu

Houdini Hip File Manager v1.0

Description, setup and how to use is posted below.

Houdini Hip File Manager v1.0

This is a super handy panel in Houdini that allows you to open your hip files latest version with just one click!

Important! You must have versions like this format "_v01". For now. If you have any other and its not working for you, let me know ill add it!

Simple setup:

1. Just move the file to you "documents/houdini ***/python panels" location, if there is no folder "python panels" create it.

2. Then in Houdini open Python Panel, and find this Panel called "HipFileManager"

3. After that you should see it as a regular panel (see screenshot)

4. If not, go to Settings in Python Panel and drag this panel from left side to right side in both Tabs.

5. Now you 100% should see it everywhere and add it as a default panel and save Layout so when you start Houdini you will see your list of hip files you working on right now!

How to use:

Simply click Add Path and choose the folder where is the Hip files, it shows you all hips in the popup windows and you select one or multiple and thats it. Then when you click the button with your hip it will ask to open it, in case if you accidentally click it. Also you can open Folder or remove it. And it understands the main folders of the same project and group it in the interface.

File uploaded in next post for paid subscribers!

Enjoy!

How to Improve Art Skills – Photography

It’s simple—grab a camera or your smartphone and go for a walk, looking for interesting angles and lighting. What’s the benefit of this? Let’s break it down.

Composition

When you take photos often, you start choosing angles and positioning objects within your frame. You look at other people’s photos and notice how they play with composition. You can place the subject in the center or on the edge, closer to left or to the right. You can add depth by positioning one object closer and another further away. You can tilt the horizon to add dynamism to the shot. You can even crop a person’s head out of the frame (yes you can do that!) to focus on their hands or an accessory.

Lighting

You begin searching for interesting lighting. Sunsets are great—they often provide one of the most beautiful lighting conditions. I love that short moment of the day when you get both warm and cool tones in the same frame—the classic teal and orange look, warm at light and cold in shades. But that’s the easy part. A much more valuable skill is learning to find angles and scenes where the light naturally highlights the subject, emphasizing its details and form. Or using strong contrast for a dramatic effect, adding depth to your composition. Or even try to create your own lights using basic technic key, fill and rim lights!

Color

Photography also teaches you to work with color grading and post-processing, which will benefit your renders and projects later on. You start noticing subtle nuances and shades—where to desaturate, where to boost contrast, or even change colors entirely to draw more attention to the main subject or character.

Materials

On top of everything else, you'll start noticing how reflections and wear affect materials. Not right away, of course, but over time, this skill will develop subconsciously—the more you observe, the better your eye will get. You'll begin to understand how different materials react to light, their texture, and their properties. Is the surface rough or glossy? How strong is the reflection, and what color does it take on? How intense is the bump mapping, and what’s its scale?

One common mistake I see among beginner 3D artists is cranking up the bump strength so much that it creates visible artifacts, and the scale is always wrong! Photography will teach you to handle this more delicately.

Imagination

This part is one of the most exciting aspects for me personally—I love the challenge. You walk through your own backyard or familiar streets that seem dull after years of seeing them, thinking there's nothing interesting to photograph. You might believe that to take great photos, you need to travel somewhere far, prepare in advance, research locations, etc. But that’s just an excuse—a beginner’s misconception.

The real challenge is finding beauty in the ordinary! That’s what makes it interesting. I love walking through streets I’ve grown tired of and searching for new, unexpected angles I hadn’t noticed before. It could be a tiny object captured in macro, a building, a window, a door, or even a single leaf resting perfectly on a bench with a beautiful bokeh effect in the background. That’s the challenge! And by doing this, you train your imagination. Sometimes, you might even arrange objects yourself—moving something slightly to frame it better.

Final Advice

The most important tip—don’t be afraid to experiment! Try different angles, lighting, colors, and techniques. Learn the rules of photography, but don’t be afraid to break them and see what happens.

Take pictures of everything—thousands of shots, even things that seem boring at first. If you hesitate, thinking, “Is this even worth photographing?”—just do it! Your camera or phone won’t run out of storage because of a few extra photos. And often, when you get home, you’ll realize that what seemed like an ordinary shot was actually one of the best of the day!

And don’t expect instant results. You won’t feel your skills improve overnight, nor will you sit down at Blender or Cinema 4D, or Houdini and etc, after one photo walk and suddenly create a masterpiece—no chance! The real progress comes after thousands of photos. It’s a long process, and practice is key. Just like physical training, consistency matters. Go out a few times a week, take photos in the streets and at home, capture objects and people, and over time, you’ll start noticing your skills improving.

So take all your excuses like "I don’t have a real camera" or "There’s nothing interesting to photograph around me—it’s just a dull, gray courtyard!"—shove them somewhere deep, grab your smartphone, and start shooting everything you see!

Wtf are these balls?

Let me explain what are those balls you saw in previous my posts.

Shortly - Its a Super Useful Technique to Improve Creative Skills!

How it works? Just draw a concrete sphere on your photo!

I really love this practice—simple and useful. All you need is a phone and a cheap $5–10 stylus for you smartphone. Then, during lunch breaks or walks, sit on a bench or while waiting for food, or watching you kids playing, sitting on the toilet, spend 10–15 minutes sketching. Do this exercise every day, and not only will your skills grow, but your back won’t ache as much from sitting.

Why is this practice useful?

• If you’re not familiar with drawing at all, at the very least, you’ll develop a habit of drawing and holding a pen properly—not like a caveman, and not just for signing documents or writing essays in school.

• It will teach you to see lights, shadows, and reflections in scenes and locations. You’ll start paying attention to these details and observing objects. Sure, there’s a slight risk that police might stop you and ask what you’re doing (it’s not like you’re hiding something suspicious!), but hey, at least you’ll have stories to tell your grandkids.

• You’ll learn how to set up lighting properly on your objects, understand how the atmosphere affects the color of an object, and see how the sky and sunlit asphalt below create strong reflections on the underside of an object. In our terms, that’s global illumination. You’ll also analyze shadows—figuring out their direction, brightness, color, and how soft or sharp they are.

You might ask: Why do I need this in 3D if everything is automated there?

Firstly, this practice will develop your eye for colors and lighting, enabling you to understand what you want from your render when the time comes. No matter how physically accurate a render might be, it’s still fake and can often produce something unattractive or off. You’ll need to manually tweak it to achieve a satisfactory result, whether by adding fake light sources or adjusting it during compositing, especially in realtime (UE, Unity and etc).

Secondly, if you plan to integrate your 3D object into real footage (like the tons of videos on Instagram right now), you absolutely need to dedicate at least a month to this practice—just 15 minutes every day. Why? Because when I scroll through Instagram, I constantly see the same glaring mistakes in these videos: shadows with incorrect color, wrong softness or hardness, incorrect transparency, or even facing the wrong direction. And if it’s indoors, people often fail to match the light sources to the footage, and the whole thing falls apart. Enough is enough!

Thirdly, on a subconscious level, this practice will gradually improve your overall creative skills and your ability to craft visually appealing images. Don’t expect that after a month you’ll be ready to apply as a concept artist at ILM or Weta, and don’t expect instant results in your work. It’s like going to the gym—after 1-2-3 months, you might not notice much difference. But after 1-2 years, combined with other exercises, you’ll see an amazing boost and powerful results!

For a deeper dive into this technique, check out the amazing artist Marco Bucci and his video on this topic (link). His videos taught me a lot—I watched them in one breath and practiced everything he talked about daily. He gives incredibly helpful advice! I highly recommend starting with this video and exploring the rest of his channel.

Good luck, everyone! 🎨

How to improve Art skills?

First of all. Everyone has their own approach, it's all individual, and my way might not work for others. You need to find your own source of imagination and inspiration, but I hope my methods will point you in the right direction.

Drawing

Of course its Top 1 and the most important!

I love drawing since childhood, drawing every day at home and school, and everywhere, and still do it to this days. I take my tablet or smartphone and pen, go for a walk/way to work/on playground with my kids, and draw something, it could be something i see, or tasks and sketches for personal projects i have in mind. Back when I didn’t have a tablet, I bought a pen for my phone, downloaded Procreate, and went outside. I’d find an interesting spot, take a photo, and try to draw a concrete sphere into the scene, adding all the light and shadows falling on it, that cool technic i saw in awesome painting artist Marco Bucci (https://www.youtube.com/@marcobucci). This trained my eye to see color and light, understand where light and shadow fall, reflections, global illumination, etc. And be able to compose my CG to footages better. Also there is cool technic is from great concept artist Jama Jurabaev, to draw black-and-white concepts, limiting yourself to 2-3 shades of black and gray, and try to create cool concept like this. Then you can add gradients and work on multiple ideas to expand your imagination and see what you can create. There are tons of such lessons online nowadays—just be willing to search, and you'll find resources suited to your needs and skill level.

Photography

Take a photo of everything!

 I enjoy walking with a camera during my free time (no need to have a good camera, its just an excuse, sometimes i go with smartphone), searching for interesting angles in ordinary places. It’s about training your eye to see the extraordinary in the ordinary and finding unusual compositions. This is a valuable skill—walking into your backyard, which might feel dull after years, and discovering angles and compositions you’ve never noticed before or creating them yourself. My Achilles' heel is bokeh—I focus exclusively on it, often shooting evening or nighttime scenes to capture colorful and varied bokeh effects.
Lately, I’ve switched to street photography, capturing people and portraits. I’ve never been fond of this, but I’m a fan of experiments, so I decided to give it a try. My inner introvert strongly resists, but I force myself to step out of my comfort zone, often making eye contact with people and seeing their disapproving looks, like, "Why are you photographing me? What the heck?" I’ve taken thousands of such shots, and so far, no one has approached me or broken my nose—there’s still time for that!

Anyway this also train you eye to see materials and lights around, finding good camera angle and composition, how lights and color works and how to use it on CG. But it all takes time and better if you try to replicate it in CG and test it.

Music

Play music everywhere and always in you mind!

I play some music instruments, piano, guitar, drums, accordion and sing. I used to write songs and music in FruityLoops and Ableton. This is for the soul and to take a break and switch to another activity, which helps refresh the mind. And get emotional refill. For you work it helps like developing of your rhythm sense, which is helpful in video editing, motion design, where you need to always create super dynamic motion that synchronizes to music and sound you find. It’s valuable for everyone, sooner or later, we all make short clips, reels, etc., where music, sound, and editing matter. Developing a basic musical sense can help you avoid putting awful soundtracks in your reels that make people’s ears bleed, which i see a lot and its awful.

Sports

Do something not related to art at all to refresh you mind and get rest!

While sports themselves don’t directly enhance creativity, I’ve noticed that when I go for a brisk walk, take an hour-long stroll, or practice yoga—without music or, at most, with chill ambient sounds that don’t distract—it sparks good ideas in my mind. This is important! Physical activity gets the blood flowing, engages the brain, and thoughts start to accelerate. Sure, there are many unnecessary thoughts to push aside, but overall, this often yields plenty of ideas, which I quickly jot down to avoid forgetting. Also its refreshing you mind from many hours of working and starting to hate what you do.

Do whatever you like, dancing, joggling, cycling, swimming, tennis, boxing, anything you have fun with and that make you feel free and forget about art for 1-2 hours at least and you get that refreshing im talking about after which you would love to came back to your art work with fresh mind and see problems clearly or new ideas!

Final Thoughts

Try everything, experiment, except drugs of course!

These are just my experiences and methods. Find your own ways, try different things, and experiment. The key is to force yourself out of your comfort zone—get off the couch, put down your phone, and make the most of the tools at hand to push your brain to its limits. Watch tutorials, Google how things are done—we live in the internet age where everything is available. Don’t know where to start? Just Google it, use ChatGPT!
“How to start drawing from scratch”
“How to start photographing with a phone from scratch”
“Basic principles and tips for street photography with a phone”
Or even something as simple as “How to develop creative skills.”

So, let’s get to it!
Feel free to share your own methods.

P.S. This is a very brief summary. I plan to write a long-read with examples, tutorials, and links for each category if anyone’s interested.

Houdini Render Manager v1.2 zip

Description is in the post below.

Houdini Render Manager v1.2

Huge update!

• Added "Add Hip" button which opens a separate window that allow you to choose a hip and then scan it for Rop nodes and choose multiple, and use it for main manager tool, so no need to even open Houdini at all now!

• New layout buttons.

  Yes its for paid members, zip file posted above in next post, sorry but for $5 its very small fee for that work ive done and spent time on it! And many other useful tools i will share soon that i made for all years working in Houdini.

Discord Channel is here!

After some tests chats here decided to make a Discord channel which is of course much more useful with tons of features then here.

So here you go! Welcome!

I just made it and still working on guides, channels, names, groups and other visual stuff. So let me know what you thing i should add there, any requests are welcomed! Send it there in General chat!

See you there!

p.s. you automatically get access to it according to your paid tier subscription here, check Membership tab, if not you need to choose a tier again, it will not charge again, but you will get a discord button, seems like its a bug. If not let me know in the chat please!

Quickly add Hip Paths and Rop nodes to Houdini Render Manager Tool

I made an easy way to add rop nodes right from houdini to Houdini Render Manager for you. Its a Python Panel in the Houdini which allows you to add it easy. No need to copy the hip path or rop path manually! But still need to open houdini to do this, just when you finish your work dont forget to add it just in case and thats it!

IMPORTANT!

To make it work run exe of the Houdini Render Manager Tool it least once to let it create a json file in that folder, and then choose in the Python Panel described below.

Installation to install (also in screenshots):

• Place the HoudiniRenderManager.pypanel file to the houdini path "C:\Users\<username>\Documents\houdini20.5\python_panels" if the "python_panels" not created, create it manually.

• Go to Houdini, click Plus small icon right to the any panel you have, and choose Misc/Python Panel

• Then click on the right bottom part Gear icon/Edit Interface

• Go to Toolbar Menu, find HoudiniRenderManager and drag it to right side or click arrow in the middle

• Do the same in Pane Tab Menu and you can close this window

• Now you can find the panel in the if you click Plus small icon right to the any panel you have, and choose New Pane Tab Type/HoudiniRenderManager

• Done!

How it works:

1. Add you JSON file "Houdini_data" which is located in the folder where you unpacked exe of the tool (if its not exist, you need to run exe of the actual Houdini Render Manager Tool first, to let it create a json file in that folder)

2. Then select you nodes one or multiple, click Add Selected Rop Nodes

3. See its added to the table below, keep in mind its just a preview, all changes you can do in HRM Tool

4. There are two checkbox, first "Row Enabled to Render" is enabling or disabling the whole row to render when its adding to the tool, second "Place on top" adding the row at the top, by default its adding to the bottom.

Dont want to make it too complex and selecting or removing rows or change the texts. So made it as a preview in Houdini panel. But anyway if you have any bugs or requests i would love to hear!

Houdini Batch Render Tool v1.1 zip

Here is the file to download.

Description what fixed and what was added is below.

Let me know if there is any bugs, or if you have requests, here in comments or direct messages!

Houdini Batch Render Tool v1.1

• Added progress bar with "Cancel Render" button.

  Make sure you Turn on the check box 'Print Command Line to Console' in USD ROP node in Houdini, in Statistic Tab, to make the progress bar work. Otherwise you see  'Frames disabled, see Help to turn it on!' text and no frames or progress will show, but the render will still go fine.

  Also keep in mind that this checkbox is in USD ROP node, but the name and location can be different in other renders.

• Fixed bug with D:/ location extra files, now all files will be created in the same folder where you put your exe.

Yes its for paid members, zip file posted above in next post, sorry but for $5 its very small fee for that work ive done and spent time on it! And many other useful tools i will share soon that i made for all years working in Houdini.

Let me know if there is any bugs, or if you have requests, here in comments or direct messages!

Simple Houdini Batch Render Tool Zip

Here is the zip file!

Descriptions and preview are below!

Enjoy!

Simple Houdini Batch Render Tool

I just made something cool and super useful!
Its a Houdini Batch Render, simply its like a bat file but in this cool dark interface, and works super simple without any difficult setups like deadline, hqueue, and others. You can render as many hip files as you want and rop nodes without opening houdini, fill all rows, hit render and go for a walk/sleep/lunch and it will render all hips and ropes, of course you need to know the path to rop nodes and manually put it.

All you need to do is download this zip file, unzip it, and run exe or shortcut which has icon already and you can place in on task bar or whatever you want.

But need to warn you, its super beta version, i just made it for myself as a test and decided to share it cuz looks cool and maybe it will be useful for someone else who don't want to setup those complex render softwares. So there could be some bugs and issues, let me know and ill try to fix it if i can.

Features i added in this version, no many but the ones i needed:

• send to sleep PC after render is finished

• enable/disable those render you dont need to be rendered

• duplicate whole row of you have one hip but many rop nodes

• choose houdini version

• remember last rows and position and settings after closing

Dont want to make it too complex but let me know what you think and request something, i would love to hear some ideas, and if i like it and it will be really useful i will try to add it.

One more think, the prio of the rows works simply from top to bottom, if you need something to render first make sure its on top of the list.

Of course its for paid members, zip file posted above, sorry but for $5 its very small fee for that work ive done and spent time on it! And many other useful tools i will share soon that i made for all years working in Houdini.

Focus on Creative Skills, Not Technical Ones!

So damn tired of these type of questions.

What software should i learn? Where did you do this? How to learn it? Which one is better?

Honestly, none of them is to choose! Back in the day, I wasted a lot of time on this and can confidently say that it was almost entirely useless. I learned way too many programs: starting with crappy 3ds Max, then Softimage (my first love), Maya, Houdini, Blender, Nuke, AE, Mari, Substance, 3d coat, PFtrack, 3d equalizer and many many others. I tried a ton of render engines Mental Rays, 3Delights, Mantra, Redshifts, Octanes, Arnold, Karma, Maxvell and some other i probably forgot. Sure, it was fun during my school and college years when I had plenty of free time to waste on this nonsense. But none of it helped me develop real creative skills or brought me any real value and speed up my way to get a dream job. About 50% of that time could have been completely cut out without any loss.

Yes, this might sound harsh or exaggerated, but I want to warn those who just started, all beginners and juniors, not to waste time on technical stuff, do not focus on it please! Most of it can be done by tools, addons, plugins or soon by AI. Instead, develop your imagination, creativity, drawing, photography skills. Study the art skills, colors, composition, and so on!

The only thing that really helped me to get an art base is an art university, where I was given a solid artistic foundation: drawing plaster casts, still lifes, gouache and watercolor techniques, composition, and color theory. Big thanks to the university for that! Later, I kept developing my interest in concept art, drawing, and photography—something I still do now. But if I could change anything, I would trade the time spent chasing after new software (which you can never keep up with) for a deeper dive into concept art, colors, and composition. Now I’m having to catch up on that.

For those saying, "But job postings require specific software knowledge," yes they need it but not as a main skill. Big studios—like Lucasfilm, Weta, DNEG, MPC, and others—will retrain you on their tools (and they have thousands of them you cant even know cuz its all inside companies). They’ll spend 1–3 months or more getting you up to speed. Yes, they’ll ask what software you’re familiar with, and that might speed up the process a little, but it’s more of a bonus than a deciding factor. The first thing they look at is your skill: your eye for framing, lighting and lookdev, colors, and composition. The second thing is your English. Yes, your English skills will be almost as important as your creative skills because you’ll need to communicate daily, especially now in the post-pandemic world, with 5–6 meetings a day, damn we have too much of them. And you have to understand all vision explanation from Lead and Supervisors. How will you do that if your English isn’t at least B1?

And one thing is also important is your team work skill, be open minded, fun and small talks guy, big companies wants a friendly team mate not just employee that will close itself from everyone and silently trying to do his tasks without any questions, and yes the more questions you ask the more they see you getting deeper in the task and you are really interested to do it the best you can, they even tell us ask more questions, its fine, do not stuck with the task for hours or days, ask for a help always, they even insist you to do this!

Conclusion: Focus on Creative Skills, Not Technical Ones! Screw those softwares!

p.s. how to improve art skills and why and how it help to you 3d work will post soon!

And here are some photos how i draw and where and what i use, dont care if i dont have time or ability, always using whatever i have now, paper, smartphone (buy a $10 pen for it, how i did when i didnt have ipad), ipad, tablets and etc. Draw on spare time and anywhere, in the park while you watching you kids, in the cafe, on the plane, while watching shows, eating, shitting, sleeping, always! Do not make excuses like you dont have its a bullshit! Do it! Now!

Welcome! My CG Kungfu Bro.

Im so glad to see you here and happy to introduce my new channel!

And as a first post and as a gift for you i have something really cool for you, its a huge notion page with all my tips and tricks about Houdini and tools and scripts, and some other software workflows and tips but mostly Houdini, that i collected for many years! Its free for everyone, some of you probably seen it already.

Most of assets and tips are a bit old and here in Patreon im gonna go through all of them and update and share here with some small videos and explanations how it works.

Here is the link to it!
Enjoy!

https://houdini-cafe.notion.site/90af6cae797b436283087d7a0fc3d82a?v=5efafc7e8d6e46b3a3fda2e30ac74af7

p.s. soon there is gonna be more cool stuff and tools and advices and other stuff i have prepared for you! Stay tuned!