cmiVFX | Learning Houdini Fundamentals And Migration Concepts

Houdini Procedural Modeling
Introduction to Procedural Modeling

Designed to be a detailed map and extension of the fundamental concepts of procedural modeling, this innovative video is the first entirely project-based video released by cmiVFX for Houdini. This video will take you through a functional tour of the modeling tools in Houdini, to get you started in creating large scale sets for your later visual effects style construction OR destruction. The challenge was to find which effect could combine the maximum diversity of training content, while keeping the consistency and the realism/reality of a project-based approach. Let's suppose we wanted to explode a military style vehicle into a bunch of smaller portions, we would need to build it with the procedural deconstruction in mind. Let's also assume that we want some tanks to follow a parade, or to move in synchronicity, or interacting with their enemies, this allow us to teach advanced CHOPs and particles for behavioral animation. That's the only way to show you that you can do absolutely everything in Houdini and from A to Z, with total flexibility.
Houdini has the reputation of being the most powerful effects application in the world. cmiVFX aims to show you how and why.

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Houdini Videos:Fundamentals, Cities, Lsys1, Lsys2, VEX1, VEX2

APPLYING CONCEPTS
Knowing theory is good but it's just the first part of the journey. This video is meant to teach application and a truly fathom the fundamentals. Put all your knowledge together and create a real scene. We chose to model a tank, inspired from the T-55 russian model, because it had a rich set of modeling features. Learn new modeling techniques, both procedural and non procedural.

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RIGGING THE CATERPILLARS
The tank follows a path on a bumpy terrain . One of the main challenges of the modeling is to create a pair of caterpillars and a set of wheels that properly adapt to the terrain as the tank goes on.The tank is modeled in relation to a future animation. The same as with characters we refer to this process as rigging a vehicle. Here, Houdini's non-procedural paradigm fuses with animation, since the animation now become the input of your modeling process ( like in the famous CHOP-based scene of the film The Grinch).

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VARIOUS TYPES OF MODELING
This project has all the types of modeling, polygonal, nurbs, subdivided polygons, and painting details. We show you a great diversity of SOPs. Extrude, bevel, creep, refine, trim, carve, intersect, fillet, join polywire and the list goes on. Some tactics are more explicitly procedural. Some other are more artistic. Like real-world scenarios which are always a blend of both.

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POLYGONAL MODELING
Groups, procedural selection, beveling, creeping, and joining... Houdini has an extremely powerful set of polygonal tools, and we will show you how to make the best of them in a fair amount of time.

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NURBS MODELING
Before we dive into nurbs modeling, we make a quick yet thorough reminder about NURBS, their properties. Isoparms, profiles, parameterization, topology, stitching, detailed u/v skinning scenarios are covered. These are some concepts you must be familiar with to be proficient with NURBS. Learn Houdini's very specific way to work with NURBS and how you can define more complex NURBS surfaces than in the other softwares.

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CREATING DETAILS
In this section, we introduce you to a very Houdini way of working. Add some details on your tank, like grips for the driver of the tank or rivets. Instead of tediously placing them, or using a displacement map, paint them. Learn how you can combine painting with any operator of Houdini to interactively and artistically create some details like grips on the tank.

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PUTTING YOUR KNOWLEDGE TOGETHER
This video is intended to be the first step in creating a scene. You want to apply a camouflage shadier for you tank, you want to add grass, global illumination. You want to instantiate your tanks, and drop a bomb on them. Instead of creating a scene out of pre-built elements coming from nowhere, we build each step with Houdini.

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A strong foundation
Instead of a quick fly through, this is, as always with cmiVFX, a solid foundation where we lay the stones one after the other. We don't dwell on cosmetics. We focus on understanding. We don't want to leave any gaps in your education that make you say: "oh if only i had known that, i wouldn't have spent so much time on this ". Our intention is to fill the gaps that manual exploration always leave behind. If video tutorials aren't for that. what are they for?

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The Author
David Gary is 27 years old, french, and has a Bachelor Degree in Pure Mathematics, a Master Degree in Philosophy and is preparing his PhD in the interdisciplinary field of philosophy of mathematics, phenomenology and cognitive sciences. Aside of his studies, he's directed a dozen of short movies and video clips, being a director/video instructor. He began to be a strong CG specialist since a long time using various tools as 3dsmax, Maya, Houdini.

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