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Vellum 101 - Manually Creating Vellum Constraints

EDIT: As Morgan pointed out in the comments, I made a huge mistake by setting my geowrangles to run over points. I've attached a second scene file with correct geo wrangle settings. Thx, Morgan.

When you're trying to create silly string in Vellum it suddenly hits you - you have to wrangle your own constraints in DOPs.

In this tutorial we'll tackle creating a silly string setup including manual constraint creation and a neat little hack to our Vellum Source DOP.

He...

Vellum 101 - Avoiding Jittery Simulations

With simulations you often run into situations where certain areas consist of many intersecting/colliding/interacting particles. This can become problematic, when you're trying to fill an area. Be it grains, softbodies or strings - your simulation will either become jittery or you'll be tempted to crank uop substeps and trade in computation time.

In this tutorial we'll look at a neat technique used to avoid jittery simulations: Velocity driven pinning.

Vellum 101 - Vellum In DOPs

Admittedly - Using Velllum in SOPs is super fun and really fast. However if you're planning to build more intricate setups, you won't get around diving into DOPs to unlock Vellum's full potential.

In this tutorial we'll look at what it takes to build a basic Vellum setup using a DOPnet.

Vellum 101 - What About Grains?

While the big deal about Vellum are its constraints, it can still be used to set up particles without constraints connecting them. Which for us means: Grains! In Vellum.

In this tutorial we'll go over creating a basic grain setup and tweking it to simulate clumping.

Status Update / Happy Holidays

Crazy eyes Mo is at it again - here's a hint at what we've got planned for 2019 and also what's up with Manu.

Thanks for a fantastic 2018 and happy holidays everyone!

Vellum 101 - Dynamic Constraints In Vellum’s SOP Solver

As mentioned in our previous video, some of Vellum's constraints only start to make sense when they're used/modified/created dynamically while your simulation is running.

In this video we'll have a look at four straightforward setups to put those dynamic constraints to use: Inflating geometry, releasing geometry, sticking geometry to a collider and sticking geometry to another simulated piece.

Grains & Vellum 101 - The Different Constraint Types

Let's take one step back from our previous video on Vellum and take a look at maybe the most prominent feature that discerns Vellum from your standard grains: The constraints.

In this tutorial we'll go over the different constraint types that Vellum offers and when you might want to use them.

AHTYA11 - Intro To DOPs: The SOP Solver

Let's start diving into dynamic simulations in Houdini by looking at the basics - what is it that sets a simulation apart from your bread and butter animation?

By taking a look at the SOP solver we start moving into the territory of all things simulation. We slowly start moving towards DOPs.

Grains & Vellum 101 - Animating Vellum Constraints

(If you're tired of seeing me - skip to 01:04. Tutorial starts there.)

It's been a while! Apologies for the delay. In the end I guess our (underwhelming) planning skills are to blame. We're working full steam ahead on creating new Patreon content & courses and well - life is what happens while making those plans. John Lennon. You Know.

Anyways - we didn't originally intend to release this as our first video in the upcoming grains/vellum/dop series but it happened to be one of the fir...

VEX101 - Quicktip: How About A Material Wrangle

Wrangeling our way through Houdini we've arrived at materials - how and where do you write VEX code when it comes to shading?

Writing code in materials can be a bit weird at times as the whole context is one giant VOPnet - but don't fret - snippets to the rescue!

Render Setup : Crochet

This is the render setup for the Crochet tutorial. It elaborates on the tutorial with some VEX to create center points for all the lines to be able to copy strand geometry on them. And it adds knots to the intersections. 

Textures are included. The HDRI used can be found at: http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html and is called "Old Industrial Hall

Full Res Artwork : Crochet

Here's the 4K crochet render.

VEX101 - Where's The Pixel Wrangle?!

Are you fed up of always (ab)using a grid to manipulate image data / Pixels in Houdini? Have you ever wondered where that darn Pixel Wrangle hides?

Look no further - we'll show you how to manipulate image data using VEX in this tutorial by writing a basic image generator and an image filter using only VEX.

AHTYA10 - Pathtracing and Adaptive Sampling in Redshift 3D

Here comes the last video about Redshift in the AHTYA series.  This time we have a look at pathtracing. After some theory about primary and secondary rays, we dive into Redshift to setup the adaptive sampler. While Redshift can be set up easily by just increasing the number of primary rays, it's often beneficial to spend some time, tweaking the secondary ray settings. That leads to faster render times.

AHTYA09 - Shading in Redshift 3D

This time it's about shading the procedural sculpture in Redshift3D using its point color. After revising the color creation we'll import Cd to the Mat context to be used by Redshift. Instead of defining the final colors in the geo context, though, we'll do this inside of the material, as Redshift has a less difficult time, updating only the shaders on the GPU. We develop a proper material network to define the objects final appearance.

The texture used in this tutorial is unfortunately...

Volumes 101 - Breaking Up Smoke Sims

When this neat video popped up on Discord ( https://vimeo.com/255293329 ), I decided to give this technique a go. But this time relying purely on volumes.

What's happening in the original is this: In order to break up the symmetry of a basic smoke sim, points are scattered in the sim's high pressure areas. These points are then used to mask turbulence which is added to the simulation.

In this video we'll buil...

VEX101 - Packed Primitives & Primitive Intrinsics

Let's put all that goodness about matrices and quaternions to use and build some basic motion graphics!

In this tutorial you'll learn the basic technique behind MOPS (www.motionoperators.com).

AHTYA08 - Introduction To Redshift3D

Now that we built and optimized the procedural model it's time to look into rendering. Redshift is a 3rd party GPU render engine for Houdini that combines fast iteration times with a good amount of control over your render. In this video I'll give you a walkthrough of how to use RS in Houdini and the rendering related contexts "Mat" and "Out".

You can find the HDR I used here: http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archiv...

Render Setup: Advected Particles

Here are our latest tutorial's render files - set up for rendering using Redshift 2.6.19. A golden shimmer.

Full Res Artwork: Advected Particles

In 4k one might even be able to see the particle's actual geometry! :)

VEX101 - Why Quaternions?

Quaternions - Why would you use them? How do they work?

To get this out of my head: The question "What are quaternions exactly?!" comes up somewhat frequently. Without going into the math too deeply, you can think of them as this: A really clever and elaborate way of encoding an axis/angle rotation into four numbers.

The angle will be encoded into a real number (remember those on the standard number line?), while the axis will be encoded using three imaginary numers (those that ex...

Render Setup: Recamán's Sequence

A bit late - admittedly, but here it is: The setup we used to render out the preview for our Recamán's Sequence tutorial.

Set up to use Redshift for rendering.

Includes an (ancient) After Effects file for grading.

Full Res Artwork: Recamán's Sequence

Better late than never... In UHD here's a still from our Recamán's Sequence visualisation.

VEX101 - Transformation Matrix Intuition

Under the hood of most 3D apps, transformation matrices are an integral part of how objects are moved (and scaled and rotated and sheared) in three dimensional space.

In Houdini sometimes you'll be confronted with a transformation matrix too - this is a basic primer on what a transformation matrix does and how we can manipulate it in VEX.

AHTYA07 - Finishing The Title Graphics Model

Before we dive into rendering the volumetric sculpture with Redshift3D in one of the next episodes, today we finish the model. To create a final scene some attention to little details has to be payed. We'll vary the gaps between onion skins, color the model by using an attribute, create caps and polsih the model to prepare it for shading.

Volumes 101 - Linear Volume Ramp

So your client gets specific about how and where he'd like to have a volume fade out? Fear not! We've got you covered with this simple setup to linearly dial in your volume's density values using a single guide line.

This is an addendum to our Volumes 101 - we just recently had to build this setup and thought it'd match well with the existing course. Enjoy!

VEX101 - Intersecting Lines

It's been some time since I (via Inconvergent's website) stumbled upon these beautiful images by Jared Tarbell: 

http://www.complexification.net/gallery/machines/substrate/

After quite a while fiddling around in VEX I finally managed to get the setup to work. And then stored it in some random folder. And forgot about it. Until recently. When I decided it'd be a neat addition to...

AHTYA06 - Procedural Modeling: AHTYA Title Graphics

Houdinis procedural workflow is perfect for modeling. In this episode I'll introduce you to modeling using volumes to create the basis model, for the title graphics of this course. In the process we'll have a look at SOP loops with feedback and touch on VEX in wrangles for the first time. After following this tutorial you'll have a good understanding how to create a procedural model in SOPs. We'll take it from there in the next episode to refine the model and render it using Redshift3D.

VEX101 - Pixel Sorting

Surely you've seen those gloriously glitchy images over the past years. They are the result of different algorithms but one of the more popular ones is called Pixel Sorting.

For each line (or column) in an image, we sort it's pixel's brightness - this results in those interesting, slightly off patterns.

In today's tutorial we'll go over how to build a pixel sorter in VEX.

AHTYA05 - Working With Clones Part 2

This time we implement a linear falloff to extend the setup from last time. The linear falloff makes use of the vector dot product. This video has a detailed introduction to dot products, what they are, how to calculate them and gives you the geometric intuiton for dot products. Then we create arbitary falloffs using Houdini volumes.