Week 1: Introduction to Houdini
Houdini is a powerful 3D animation and visual effects software used in the film, TV, and gaming industries. It specializes in procedural generation, allowing users to create complex simulations like smoke, fire, fluids, destruction, and crowd simulations. Houdini offers robust tools for modeling, animation, rendering, and compositing, but it’s particularly known for its advanced particle systems and VFX capabilities. The software uses a node-based workflow, which makes it flexible for creating dynamic, repeatable processes. It’s widely used in high-end visual effects production.
Demonstration:
I added a sphere mesh and its properties showed up as a node and hotbox.
[Tab] to open the “shelves” menu which allows the user to add various features as shown in the screenshot above.
I added a camera so I can view my render.
Like any other 3D software, I can alter the scale and rotation of my object alongside moving it freely in the 3D viewport.
I can change between vertex, point (vertices store more infomration than points but consume more computing power), face and edge select mode.
I can move/scale/rotate any selection I want on my mesh.
I can switch the main menu for specific HUD that suit my needs.
I can reshape my layout to match my needs once again.
I can label my layouts so they can mimic each other.
An alternate way to switch between specific menus.
The geometry spreadsheet give me individual information for each of the faces on my object.
Press on the blue tab to access each node’s properties individually.
Classroom exercise: creating a block of cheese
I added a cube mesh which was going to be my wooden cutting board which the cheese was going to be on.
[space] +[G] to open the mesh’s properties.
I added a UV unwrap node to eventually properly fit my image texture.
I switched layouts to work in my UV viewport.
I imported my wood imagetexture
I can rename nodes to remain organized.
[L] to automatically re-arrange your nodes.
I typed in a Doller sign to set a value to one of my wood’s attributes which changes when I change anything with my mesh.
I added a scatter node
I added a sphere to the scatter node so it can be my eventual Boolean.
I added the Boolean node
i used the “pscale” code to scatter my Boolean holes in a more randomized order.
The final result.
Node puzzle activity:
Goal
Before
After
Goal
Before
After
Week 2: Tripping Dominos
