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KineFX 101 – pt. 30: Tree Rig 03: Simulating the Twig

In part three of our tree rig series, we’ll simulate small scale wind forces on a single twig and replace the static twigs on our tree with our simulated one.

KineFX 101 – pt. 30: Tree Rig 02: Rigging the Tree

In part two of our tree rig series, we’ll build a working rig for our tree, add large scale wind animations onto it and capture the trunk, branches and twigs.

KineFX 101 – pt. 30: Tree Rig 01: Generating a Tree

Welcome to our second huge nature setup in KineFX. Over the next two weeks we will build a tree swaying in the wind and develop techniques to add lots and lots of detail while keeping our setup fast and art directable.

This is a four part series. Part 1 and 2 will be released this week, part 3 and 4 the week after:

Part 1 – Generating a Tree
Part 2 – Rigging the Tree
Part 3 – Simulating the Twig
Part 4 – Rendering in Karma

Advanced Setups 25 - Controlling Stable Diffusion With Houdini Pt. 3: ControlNet

EDIT: Added updated scene file for new controlnet extension API calls

In part three of our small series on stable diffusion in Houdini, Mo uses Automatic1111’s API together with its controlnet extension to build a “render engine” based on AI.

Geometry Nodes Ep23 – Finishing The Effect

We’re ready to finish our transformation effect by adding a third layer.

Advanced Setups 24 - Controlling Stable Diffusion With Houdini Pt. 2: img2img

In part two of our small series on bringing stable diffusion to Houdini, Mo uses Automatic1111’s API for some image to image work, which builds upon our previous tutorial.

Advanced Setups 23 - Controlling Stable Diffusion With Houdini

Of course Mo could take the high road and build a stable diffusion pipeline using Huggingface’s Diffusers library… But let’s not kid ourselves. Thanks to Automatic1111’s API Mo can duct tape together Houdini and WebUI to use both of these awe inspiring powerful tools to generate… dog images. Welco...

KineFX 101 – pt. 29: Rigging Volumes

Lets face it: One of the really fun things with KineFX is just finding new, weird things to rig and animate. And … why wouldn’t you want to rig a volume?

This is our challenge for today and the solution is a really simple and straightforward one, using the somewhat new volume deformation workflow and some capturing tricks.

Geometry Nodes Ep22 – Coloring the Yarn Sculpture

This time we sample the weights of the original points as a basis for colorizing the connecting yarns.

Geometry Nodes Ep21 – Creating the Second Layer: The Yarn Sculpture

Finally it’s time to implement the second layer of our Mograph effect: The yarn sculpture. Utilizing the “plexus” technique, as AE users would refer to it, we’ll fill the psyche model with points and connect these with lines controlled by their proximity.

KineFX 101 – pt. 28: Building a Curve Controller for KineFX

We’ve all been there: You just spent hours upon hours building, recording and editing a huge five part series on building a flower inside Houdini and you look back and think: Maybe controlling *everything* with ramp parameters wasn’t that great of an idea…

So welcome to this weeks video where we’ll build an alternative way of shaping a flower blossom, using curves instead of ramps. And while the example here is again a flower, this technique may be very helpful in other setups a...

KineFX 101 – pt. 27: Flower 05: Fur, Karma and Variations

Welcome to the final episode of the flower mini series. Today we'll start by adding some fur to our stem, going over the render settings in Karma and finally build the other two flowers you know from the bouquet shot of the teaser.

Geometry Nodes Ep 20 – Implementing a Linear Falloff

In this video we’ll learn how to solve the issue with the spherical falloff, that the object reappears as soon as the falloff gizmo crosses the object. Using a vector dot product we’ll implement a linear falloff that uses a line as a gizmo to create a gradient of weight values for our points.

Advanced Setups 22 – Jeroen Claus: Comparing Clustering Algorithms

Thrilled to have Jeroen Claus back again for this final video in his series on clustering algorithms, this time comparing the techniques we covered so far.

Go check out Jeroen's Work: https://www.phospho.co.uk/

KineFX 101 – pt. 26: Flower 04: Blossom Animation

Welcome to episode 4 of 5 of the flower mini series. Today we’ll connect all the bits and pieces we built over the last three episodes and rebuild the first part of our teaser animation: A flower opening! We also can finally make real use of the entire KineFX toolset to animate our flower.

KineFX 101 – pt. 25: Flower 03: Extra Bits

Welcome to episode 3 of 5 of the flower mini series. Today we build all those little extra bits that make a flower. Those are the small, green fleshy leaves at the bottom of the blossom, the central seed pods and of course the stem.

KineFX 101 – pt. 24: Flower 02: Blossom

Welcome to episode 2 of 5 of the flower mini series. Today we take the single rigged petal from episode 1 and turn it into a full blossom. We’ll use rig attrib wrangles, inverse kinematics, vellum and a few other tricks to give you all the tools you need to shape your flower.

KineFX 101 – pt. 23: Flower 01: Petal

It's finally time to build a big rig. A really big rig. Over the next 4 to 5 episodes we will create a flower setup that is completely build around KineFX. This means you get a fully rigged flower in the end, which is fully compatible with rig pose nodes, inverse kinematics, motion clips, rig attribute vops, wrangles and so on.

The setup we are building is highly modular, so you can easily remove, modify or replace parts to fit your own needs.

In this episode we're starting with a...

KineFX 101 – pt. 22: TD Techniques: Copy Rigged Characters

We need to take a look at something that seems easy, yet is surprisingly difficult: Creating copies of a rigged character with either a Copy To Points or Copy And Transform SOP. This tutorial will show you how you can fix all problems that will arise after copying and give you some ideas on how to optimize the process for your own setups.

Advanced Setups 21 - Jeroen Claus: HDBSCAN

Jeroen Claus covers another important clustering algorithm in the thrid part of his series on popular algorithms used in data analysis and visualisation. In this episode he’ll cover an improvement over DBSCAN, called HDBSCAN. Of course Jeroen goes over implementing it in Houdini using VEX.

KineFX 101 – pt. 21: CFX Fur – Part 2: Using and Misusing Fur Nodes in SOPs

In this episode we’re finishing our look into the Houdini fur workflow by building a complete fur setup just using SOPs and finding some new applications for it outside of character fx: Using Guide Process nodes to create organic looking splines and turning ordinary polylines into guide curves that can be rendered with Karma.

Advanced Setups 20 – Jeroen Claus: DBSCAN

Jeroen Claus continues his series on popular algorithms used in data analysis and visualisation. In this episode he’ll cover a more capable algorithm than your grandma’s k-Means clustering. It’s called DBSCAN and Jeroen goes over implementing it in Houdini using VEX.

KineFX 101 – pt. 20: CFX Fur – Part 1b: Karma Hair Procedurals

We’re still on our field trip into the world of character effects tools inside Houdini, continuing this episode with fur. In this two part episode we’ll look at how to add fur to your character using the standard (and somewhat old) obj level workflow as well as rendering it with karma using the (brand new) fur procedurals.

The teaser art is inspired by the amazing short film Magna Mater by Martín Salfity and the Playfu...

KineFX 101 – pt. 20: CFX Fur – Part 1a: Obj Level Workflow

We’re still on our field trip into the world of character effects tools inside Houdini, continuing this episode with fur. In this two part episode we’ll look at how to add fur to your character using the standard (and somewhat old) obj level workflow as well as rendering it with karma using the (brand new) fur procedurals.

The teaser art is inspired by the amazing short film Magna Mater by Martín Salfity and the Playfu...

Geometry Nodes Ep19 – Cleaning Up and Creating Reusable Node Groups

To finish off the first layer of our Mograph effect we’ll clean up the setup in this video. We’ll create reusable node groups for the transformation of the instances and for point generation.

Advanced Setups 19 - Jeroen Claus: Dataviz Excursion - K-means Clustering Explained

Thrilled to have Jeroen Claus back for a series on popular algorithms used in data analysis and visualisation. In this first (free) episode he'll take you through what k-Means clustering is and how it works.

Geometry Nodes Ep18 – Creating Instances and Manipulating them

Now it’s time to replace the surface geometry with individual instances that can be manipulated. We’ll use the weight value, that we create using the Spherical Falloff form last time, to translate, scale and rotate these instances to make the object disappear.

KineFX 101 – Pt.19: CFX: Muscles Part 2

Alongside KineFx SideFx has launched or reimagined a range of character fx tools like muscle or fur simulations or ragdolls. So we should take a look at them, starting with muscles. In this video we’re finishing the simple minimalist muscle sim, that should give you a quick overview over the system as well as a playground to easily adjust settings and see results quickly.

For a more production...

Geometry Nodes Ep17 – Finishing the Falloff and Node Groups

In this video, we’ll polish the linear falloff setup from Ep 16 and add more features. We introduce a way of telling where the falloff gradient starts and warp the falloff using perlin noise. Then, we package the setup into a node group for easy reuse.

KineFX 101 – Pt.18: CFX: Muscles Part 1

Alongside KineFx SideFx has launched or reimagined a range of character fx tools like muscle or fur simulations or ragdolls. So we should take a look at them, starting today with muscles. In this video we’re building the first half of a simple minimalist muscle sim, that should give you a quick overview over the system as well as a playground to easily adjust settings and see results quickly.

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