As much as we love automation here, there are some tasks that just have to be done by hand. Things like picking the right shader for every part of a cad model or finding the right orientation for 3D scans. So can we integrate these manual edits into our topnets as well? In this Video Chris shows you a somewhat brute force approach to automating as much as possible, when faced with such a problem.
2021-06-17 13:50:44 +0000 UTC
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One of the consistently amazing source for new techniques in geometry processing is the research group around Keenan Crane. Not only are their publications exploring robust, stable algorithms to pull off what some describe as magic, they also document their research wonderfully.
Additionally some of their algorithms are now packaged up into an easy to use python library called 2021-06-10 07:00:07 +0000 UTC
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FOREWORD: We think this should be common knowledge, so we decided to make this part of the premium course publicly available.
It’s finally come so far – we’re accepting that we can’t (or rather don’t want to) write every complex algorithm out there ourselves in VEX. Enter Python. Not necessarily because Mo loves Python so much, but because there is a wealth of highly interesting libraries out there which enable us to do elaborate Geometry processing easier than purely relying...
2021-06-10 06:57:40 +0000 UTC
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The time has finally come! We will add Python to our PDG toolset and gain a lot deeper access to Houdini with our node trees. Let’s use PDG to create nodes, change parameters and push buttons!
PDG Python Reference
Houdini Python Reference
2021-06-03 11:00:38 +0000 UTC
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Like probably a lot of people, Chris has been playing with Unreal over the past months. So since Houdini Engine has a new plugin for UE4 and APIs are still super fun to play with, why not try building a setup that let’s you turn any point on earth into a game map. Just by entering a latitude and longitude coordinate and pressing a button. And now, after a couple days of building, lots of learned lessons and a moderate amount of cursing, Chris is finally ready to share his results!
Map...
2021-05-20 10:29:40 +0000 UTC
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We've been awed by Kohei Nawa's Pixcell artworks: http://kohei-nawa.net/works/pixcell - and of course we thought this would be a walk in the park to rebuild in Houdini. Of course it turned out there's slightly more to it than just using a scatter-SOP and point relax.
In this tutorial we'll use Vellum Grains to quickly pack a surface with spheres.
2021-05-13 08:41:36 +0000 UTC
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Does your 3d print take to much time? Why not try printing virtually then! In this video Chris shows you how to (ab)use a software originally created for 3d printing to add a unique stop motion effect to your animations.
Download PrusaSlicer here:
https://www.prusa3d.de/prusaslicer/
Mixamo FBX (Yes, it's really called "Walking with a swagger...):
2021-04-29 12:25:48 +0000 UTC
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In this course's first episode we're diving into an optimization algorithm inspired by natural selection. Although the idea itself is quite simple, it is able to reproduce given images using only a bunch of circles quite successfully.
For more Info on genetic programming check out:
Daniel Shiffman on genetic algorithms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zfeTw-uFCw
2021-04-22 09:34:29 +0000 UTC
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It's time for a new course - and Mo has been looking for a topic that'd allow him to bundle together a few of the more involved setups he built. So "Advanced Setups" it is. How original.
In this premium course we're gonna dive into more elaborate Houdini setups, using VEX, a bit of math here and there and maybe bits of Python. Enjoy :)
2021-04-22 09:33:45 +0000 UTC
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It's still space time here on PDG101. We finish the setup from last episode and take this as an opportunity to explore automated comping as well using COPs.
2021-04-15 06:32:16 +0000 UTC
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We’re continuing our journey into using PDG instead of Python in our setups. In this episode Chris shows you how to get data from online services using APIs and how to create a space-selfie using one of NASAs satellites!
NASA Open APIs
2021-04-01 07:10:37 +0000 UTC
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Happy to have Simon Fiedler back for another guest tutorial. Actually three tutorials covering different aspects of a setup he built to simulate the sewing together of two pieces of cloth. Apparel commercial anyone?
I this third and last part, Simon goes over setting up the stitches that pull together the individual cloth pieces.
2021-03-18 11:33:23 +0000 UTC
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Happy to have Simon Fiedler back for another guest tutorial. Actually three tutorials covering different aspects of a setup he built to simulate the sewing together of two pieces of cloth. Apparel commercial anyone?
I this second part, Simon creates the main stitches forming the seam.
2021-03-18 11:33:05 +0000 UTC
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Happy to have Simon Fiedler back for another guest tutorial. Actually three tutorials covering different aspects of a setup he built to simulate the sewing together of two pieces of cloth. Apparel commercial anyone?
I this first part, Simon goes over setting up the underlying Vellum simulation.
2021-03-18 11:32:44 +0000 UTC
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PDG is all about working faster and one vital aspect of this is creating digital assets. So in today's episode Chris shows you how to turn the last setup into a custom TOP node and how to rebuild some core features of tops using file tags.
Texture Synthesis (from last episode)
Pre-built HD...
2021-03-11 08:00:02 +0000 UTC
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After our latest free tut one of the first questions that came up was “How do you render additive particles in engine XYZ?!” – luckily Simon Fiedler agreed to shed some light onto how he pulled off that Krakatoa signature look.
2021-02-25 13:53:31 +0000 UTC
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In this two-in-one episode Chris shows you how to control external programs with tops while creating custom aerial photography for your Houdini heightfields using the amazing texture synthesis tool by Embark Studios. Weird? Maybe. Fun? Definitely!
Download Texture-Synthesis here:
https://github.com/EmbarkStudios/texture-synthesis
HDA for Texture-Synthesis by Manue...
2021-02-18 09:22:31 +0000 UTC
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Another question we found in our inbox which turned out to be more involved than anticipated is: “How do you attach Vellum hairs to softbodies so they can be both simulated together?”
In this case we settled on writing a few lines of vex to give our hair’s roots proper orientation while the simulation is running. However if you’ve got more straightforward techniques of achieving the same behaviour, we’d be more than happy if you let us know.
2021-02-11 08:00:01 +0000 UTC
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You ask for it, Mo tries to cook up something. This time we received a few questions on how to achieve this effect done by Matt Taylor. And while we’ve seen a few other (quite involved) techniques relying on POPs, in our opinion this can be neatly done in Vellum using grains.
2021-02-04 08:16:04 +0000 UTC
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It's time to tackle that one job everybody hates: The product lineup! In this episode, Chris shows you how to render hundreds of products, while keeping the client happy and yourself sane.
For more insights on the scene setup watch Mo's tutorial on rendering glass in Redshift: https://www.patreon.com/posts/rendering-101-pt-35806402
And for a second view on automated product renderings...
2021-01-28 08:01:00 +0000 UTC
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Render managers like HQueue or Deadline can be a huge help in rendering large projects. But they can be quite difficult set up and, if you're using only one machine, a lot of features are no use to you. So in this episode we'll see just how much functionality we can get out of tops, if all we want to do is render image sequences.
2021-01-14 10:17:29 +0000 UTC
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It's time for our first meta-episode in this course! Chris shares his best practices for coming up with top nets to solve more unusual problems, that might appear in your projects.
You can find the model used in this episode on Grabcad. This needs a little extra preperation for houdini though, so we recommend starting with the smaller example bgeo file, you can find in the project folder.
...
2020-12-31 09:45:41 +0000 UTC
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Got tons of files on disc, you need to process? Let's automate this using tops!
In this video, Chris Kopic creates a batch processor in tops that takes stl files from threedscans.com, polyreduces them to a more manageable size and bakes textures to preserve small details.
2020-12-10 08:28:05 +0000 UTC
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In the final video of our Blueprint workshop we're creating a for-loop to spawn multiple actors.
2020-12-03 07:55:58 +0000 UTC
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We're tweaking the scale of our animation.
2020-12-03 07:54:41 +0000 UTC
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We're tweaking our particles velocity.
2020-12-03 07:53:44 +0000 UTC
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We're adding impulse to our particles to make them behave more like popcorn.
2020-12-03 07:52:26 +0000 UTC
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Tweaking simulation parameters until you end up with something that looks decent can be a pain. Why not automate that task and let Houdini try out a bunch of paramters by itself while you grab some lunch?
In this video, Chris Kopic walks you through another extremely helpful use case for wedging: Automatically running sims with different parameter values.
2020-11-26 07:54:04 +0000 UTC
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Quick recap of what we did and finalizing the color section of our Blueprint.
2020-11-19 08:04:00 +0000 UTC
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Let's tell our blueprint actor which color it should use.
2020-11-19 08:03:01 +0000 UTC
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