entagma

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 23: Houdini Simulations Overview

With this episode we will start with the next big chapter of Adding Houdini To Your Arsenal. In this specific episode you will get an overview over the most important Houdini simulation solvers as well as the most important aspects when working with solvers and simulations.

Advanced Setups 29: Python State Sculptures

It’s time for another niche, but sometimes very handy technique in Houdini: Creating Python States and scripting your own viewport handles for your Digital Assets. While this is usually technical director territory, today we’re all about exploring art and design based on this technique, by creating our own sculpture tool!

One small disclaimer: This setup was built back in Houdini 19.5. When following the tutorial in Houdini 20, the digital asset creation window (shown at 06:50) will...

Advanced Setups – pt.28: PyTorch Series 2b – Battle of the Latent Spaces

Chris has been busy with PyTorch again! In part 2b we will learn how to create 3d maps of our latent spaces, even if those spaces themselves have a couple hundred dimensions. We will also compare the latent space of our own custom net to OpenAI’s Clip model as well as some good old fashioned algorithms to see, who can represent our datasets the best.

Kaggle Notebook on Autoencoders and TSNE 2024-01-11 14:22:34 +0000 UTC View Post

Advanced Setups – pt.27: PyTorch Series 2a – Upgrading the Autoencoder

Chris has been busy with PyTorch again! In the next two videos we will continue where we left off with our MNIST autoencoder in the last Advanced Setups video. In part 2a we will upgrade our autoencoder to process larger color images and feed it two custom datasets – One that works pretty well and one that will show us the limits of our network architecture. In part 2b we will learn how to create 3d maps of our latent spaces, even if those spaces themselves have a couple hundred dimensions....

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 22: Swirly Rocks Projects Part 3

In this episode we’ll finally finish our Swirly Rocks project. This time we’ll build all forces necessary for our cyclones: Forces that pull each piece towards and up those cyclones, as well as swirling forces surrounding them. As in the last video each force will be custom built using the vector math we learnt in the previous video.

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 21: Understanding Vectors Part 2

It’s time we finish our section on vector math! We’ll cover the cross and dot product as well as measuring vector length and a simple way to rotate vectors. And of course each vector operation will get it’s own mini-setup in Houdini.

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 20: Swirly Rocks Projects Part 2

We’re back at our Swirly Rocks project! Last episode we got an intro into vector math in Houdini and in this one we’ll use our knowledge to build custom forces for our simulation: We’ll get A little overview over how physics solvers deal with forces first and then build our own gravity and noise force for our rocks.

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 19: Understanding Vectors Part 1

Today’s the day we finally bring vector math into our Houdini setups. And this is actually a lot less daunting and complicated as it sounds – for the most part this will honestly feel more like a puzzle game than high school math. So in this video we’ll learn why you should care about vectors and why it’s a great entry into math in 3d graphics. We’ll also cover the first set of vector operations and build little example scenes around them.

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 18: Swirly Rocks Project Part 1

We’re starting our next big section in AHTYA 2.0! Over the next five videos, we will build the swirly rocks setup from the teaser and learn, how we can use vectors to art direct the forces driving our rocks simulation. Part one is all about the prep work for our project: We’ll learn about Houdini’s rigid body solver, build a custom rock generator and set up the base for our final simulation.

KineFX 101 – pt. 31: Fixing Faulty FBX Files

KineFX doesn't always like the FBX files you load in and this turned out to be by far the most common problem you guys had, while following the course. So in this video we're showing how to identify a problematic file and a number of different ways to fix it.

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 17: Dataviz Mini Project

In this video we're building a setup that's almost a rite of passage for every new Houdini user: Taking what's essentially a spreadsheet and turning it into a beautiful visualization - all through the power of attributes and vops. 

Worldcities Dataset: https://simplemaps.com/data/world-cities

Earth Textures: https://ww...

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 16: Understanding VOPs in Houdini

We're continuing our work on attributes and take a look at a node that allows you to build really granular and custom systems for modifying attributes: It's time to look at VOPs (and also taking a tiny glance at VEX as well)!

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 15: City Model Mini Project

After our little detour covering for loops, it's time to get back to attributes. Until now we used attribs just to add variations to our setups. In the next set of videos we want to get a lot more thoughtful about how we create and tweak attributes to suit our needs - In this case by building a tiny model city.

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 14: Intricate Torus Project

Last video we learned a lot about For Loops in Houdini. This video it’s finally time to put this theory into practice by using them to build a very intricate torus!

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 13: Understanding For Loops in Houdini

We’re back with a new section of our AHTYA beginner series. This time we’re talking about a somewhat odd but sometimes necessary part of Houdini: For Loops! When do you need them? How do you use them? And why do you find such mixed feelings about them online? We’ll answer all those questions in this video!

Download Project File

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 12: Rendering B: Octane Walkthrough

Octane? Redshift? Karma? Mantra? Solaris? Blender? – When it comes to rendering, Houdini has quite a lot of options for us to choose from. So in the next two videos we’ll look at what method of rendering is best used for which situation and how to prepare your scene for all of them. We’ll also take some quick glances at exporting to Blender and rendering with Karma in Solaris and finally, we’ll build the entire Teaser Setup step by step using Octane.

Download the textures here:<...

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 11: Rendering A: Overview and Preperations

Octane? Redshift? Karma? Mantra? Solaris? Blender? – When it comes to rendering, Houdini has quite a lot of options for us to choose from. So in the next two videos we’ll look at what method of rendering is best used for which situation and how to prepare your scene for all of them. We’ll also take some quick glances at exporting to Blender and rendering with Karma in Solaris and finally, we’ll build the entire Teaser Setup step by step using Octane.

Download the textures here:<...

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 10: Flower Tube Project Part 2

We’re finally back at our main project of this section! In this video we’ll use our newly gained knowledge of attributes to add lots of little variations to the setup we built last time, making it look a lot more natural and interesting.

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 09: Understanding Points, Verts, Prims, Details and Edges

In the last two videos we only took a glance at the different types of geometry we can put attribs and groups on. In this video, we’ll answer all questions you might have about them, like: What’s the difference between points and vertices? Why are faces called primitives? Where are my edges? What does ‘detail’ mean? And why does all of this matter anyway?

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 08: Understanding Attributes in Houdini

In the last video we took a deep dive into working with groups in Houdini. In this episode we’ll do the same with attributes – the (arguably) most important concept in Houdini. We’ll take a look at the differences and similarities of attribs and groups, why attributes are pretty much everywhere in Houdini and how we can use them to create effects we simply can’t achieve with groups..

D...

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 07: Understanding Groups in Houdini

In this video we'll explore the first of two very important topics in Houdini, which are Groups. We will take a look at different use cases for groups as well as all the nitty gritty details you need to make use of and manipulate groups in pretty much any setup imaginable.

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 06: Flower Tube Project Part 1

Welcome to the second big project of our AHTYA Starter Kit Section. Over the next weeks and videos, we'll create the Flower Tube you know from the teaser, we will explore two very important concepts of Houdini (Groups and Attributes) and we will take a look at different ways of Rendering in Houdini.

In this video, we'll build the base of our setup, with more polymodelling and Vellum.

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 05: Squishy Vellum Project Part 2

In part 2 of our Squishy Vellum setup, we create our actual vellum simulation, add speed ramps and export everything as alembics to render in your own preferred DCC. Inside the scene files you can find a blender file for rendering as well as another version of this scene prepared for rendering in Houdini with octane, that I used for the teaser.

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 04: Squishy Vellum Project Part 1

In this episode we start our first actual project: The squishy Vellum setup you know from the teaser. In the first part we model our squishy objects and talk about general project organization using project folders and relative file paths.

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 03: Parameters, Keyframes & Basic Expressions

Our last area in the UI of Houdini is the parameter editor. And apart from talking about typing in values and using sliders, we'll also take this opportunity to look at animating with keyframes and using small expressions like driving animations via the current frame number and linking different parameters between nodes. If you used expressions in After Effects, you'll feel right at home here as well.

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 02: Node Editor

In this video we move on to the node editor and explore the basic concepts of navigating the editor, node connections, flags and contexts. We also look at different ways of making your node trees more readable with sticky notes, network boxes and node colors and shapes.

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 01: User Interface

In the first video of this series, we'll make sense of the general user interface of Houdini via the art of simply ignoring most of it!

AHTYA 2.0 – pt. 00: Course Overview

We’re renewing our beginner course for Houdini. We’re creating “Adding Houdini To Your Arsenal 2.0”. The first version was one of the earliest courses on our Patreon and is now already four years old. Houdini has changed and so should this video series. So, get ready for newer workflows, many more projects and lots of videos to get you going!

This course is meant for 3d artists proficient with a different piece of software (Cinema 4d, Blender, Maya, etc.) who want to add Houdini...

Building a Latent Space in Houdini: Part 2 – Implementation

Welcome to the second part of our latent space miniseries. In this video we'll write our training loop as well as two visualizers in Houdini and Pytorch.

Make sure you have watched Part 1 first:

https://entagma.com/building-a-latent-space-in-houdini-part-1-theory/

In both videos we only take a short glance at deeper topics of machine learning, l...

KineFX 101 – pt. 30: Tree Rig 04: Rendering in Karma

In part four of our tree rig series, we’ll bring our tree into Solaris and render it with Karma.

Download the leaf texture here
Download the bark texture here
Guide on rendering animated packed prims in Redshift by Paul Esteves