Course Overview

Class Description:

In Build your Brain…we build a brain! We will use 3 different techniques for doing this depending on how far in the building process and then seamlessly transition between them to create a convincing single-shot growth setup.

In the closeup section of the shot, we learn how to split our soft body objects in a vellum sim, which gives us the most detail. Here you learn how to split objects while your vellum sim is running. For the medium shot, we learn how to split cells using POPs and make them look similar to our vellum cells with some SOP-level magic. In the final section of the shot, we will use VDB advection to complete our growth into a brain. Then we will blend all of these sections together into one smooth animation. Finally, we will render everything in Solaris (LOPS) that was used redshift to render the sequence but we will also discuss how to do this with Karma and materialX.


Learning Outcomes:

Upon completion you will have a good understanding of how to tackle a complex shot in Houdini, combining various simulation and SOP-based techniques to mix it all together, as well as rendering a scene in Solaris using Redshift or Karma.

Course curriculum

    1. Files

    1. Session 1 Outline

    2. Session 1 Full Video

    3. 1-1 - Introduction- Tim Intro

    4. 1-2 - Introduction- Demo Overview

    5. 2-1 - Vellum Constraints for Cell Division- Balloon Vellum

    6. 2-2 - Vellum Constraints for Cell Division- Individual Pressure Constraint

    7. 2-3 - Vellum Constraints for Cell Division- DOP Aspect

    8. 2-4 - Vellum Constraints for Cell Division- Q-What is Rest Length

    9. 2-5 - Vellum Constraints for Cell Division- Types of Constraints in Vellum

    10. 2-6 - Vellum Constraints for Cell Division- Sourcing Geo

    11. 2-7 - Vellum Constraints for Cell Division- Increasing Rest Length

    12. 2-8 - Vellum Constraints for Cell Division- Vellum Constraint Properties-SOPs

    13. 2-9 - Vellum Constraints for Cell Division- SOP Solv & Removing Constraints

    14. 2-10 - Vellum Constraints for Cell Division- Compile Block

    15. 3-1 - Making the Split- Fracture, Delete & Source Geo

    16. 3-2 - Making the Split- Q-What do SOP Solvers Do

    17. 3-3 - Making the Split- Q-Dive into SOP go to DOP, and vice versa

    18. 3-4 - Making the Split- Removing Geo and Constraints

    19. 3-5 - Making the Split- Sourcing

    20. 3-6 - Making the Split- Fracturing Geo & adding vellum to Fracs

    21. 3-7 - Adding For Loop- Using For Loop to Create Details

    22. 3-8 - Adding For Loop- Fracturing w the For Each

    23. 4-1 - Inflating Pieces- Sourcing Pieces

    24. 4-2 - Inflating Pieces- Q- How are you telling it to split in two

    25. 4-3 - Inflating Pieces- Nvidia GPUs

    26. 4-4 - Inflating Pieces- Lower End Hardware

    27. 4-5 - Inflating Pieces- Increase Remesh to Increase Resolution

    28. 4-6 - Inflating Pieces- Velocity Damping and Substeps

    29. 4-7 - Inflating Pieces- Q- Randomize cell divide at fixed interval

    30. 4-8 - Inflating Pieces- Q-Add noise after connectivity, blend again

    31. 5-1 - The Nucleus

    32. 5-2 - The Nucleus- Finding the Center

    33. 5-3 - The Nucleus- Fixing some Issues

    34. 5-4 - The Nucleus- Interpolating Position w AttWrangle

    35. 5-5 - The Nucleus- Incrementing Att for Interpolation

    36. 5-6 - The Nucleus- Extra Point Bug

    37. 5-7 - The Nucleus- Cache Out- Rest Attribute

    38. 6-1 - Conclusion

    39. 6-2 - Conclusion- Q-How does Vellum get implemented into the SOP

    40. 6-3 - Conclusion- Extra Resources

    41. 6-4 - Conclusion- Last Words

    42. 6-5 - Conclusion- Additional Information

    43. 6-6 - Conclusion- Alternative Methods

    44. 6-7 - Conclusion- Injecting Geo into Vellum

    1. Session 2 Outline

    2. Session 2 Full Video

    3. 1-1 - Intro- Last Time On Build Your Brain

    4. 1-2 - Intro- Two Different Approaches

    5. 2-1 - Pushing and Pulling Cluster Attributes

    6. 2-2 - Pushing and Pulling Cluster Attributes- Building the Clusters

    7. 2-3 - Pushing and Pulling Cluster Attributes- Source Points and Goals

    8. 2-4 - Pushing and Pulling Cluster Attributes- POP Axis Force

    9. 2-5 - Pushing and Pulling Cluster Attributes- Transferring to For Each & Cache

    10. 3-1 - Transition From Vellum to POP or SOP

    11. 3-2 - Transition From Vellum to POP or SOP- Convert Cells to Points

    12. 3-3 - Transition From Vellum to POP or SOP- Blending Inputs for SOP-POP

    13. 4-1 - VDB Overview for SOP

    14. 4-2 - VDB Overview for SOP- Adding VDB to Cells

    15. 5-1 - Particle Based Setup

    16. 5-2 - Particle Based Setup- Replicating Points & Push POPgrains Demo

    17. 5-3 - Particle Based Setup- Adding POPgrains

    18. 5-4 - Particle Based Setup- Morphing with POP Replicate

    19. 5-5 - Particle Based Setup- Reintroducing Cluster Attributes

    20. 5-6 - Particle Based Setup- Fixing Issue with Clusters

    21. 5-7 - Particle Based Setup- Rotating Points & Details

    22. 5-8 - Particle Based Setup- Q-How do Cluster Atts Group & Stick & Transfer

    23. 6-1 - SOP Solver

    24. 6-2 - SOP Solver- Adding SOP to Cells

    25. 6-3 - SOP Solver- Relaxing Points

    26. 6-4 - SOP Solver- Pros and Cons

    27. 7-1 - Details & Clean- Add Switch

    28. 7-2 - Details & Clean- Meshing Effect

    29. 7-3 - Details & Clean- Cache

    30. 7-4 - Details & Clean- Optimise

    31. 7-5 - Details & Clean- Gutting Insides & More Optimising

    32. 7-6 - Details & Clean- Clean Up and Cache

    33. 8-1 - Camera Move

    34. 9-1 - Conclusion

    35. 9-2 - Conclusion- Next Time on BYB

    36. 9-3 - Conclusion- Discord

    1. Session 3 Outline

    2. Session 3 Full Video

    3. 1-1 - Intro

    4. 2-1 - Previous Session Qs- Attraction Weights

    5. 2-2 - Previous Session Qs- Q-Is the color showing the strength in this example

    6. 2-3 - Previous Session Qs- Grains under the Hood

    7. 3-1 - Session Overview

    8. 3-2 - Session Overview- Redshift

    9. 3-3 - Session Overview- Brain & VDB

    10. 4-1 - VDB Advection

    11. 4-2 - VDB Advection- Understanding VDB Example

    12. 4-3 - VDB Advection- VDB Analysis

    13. 4-4 - VDB Advection- Using the Solver

    14. 4-5 - VDB Advection- Manipulate with VOPs

    15. 4-6 - VDB Advection- Expanding on VOPs

    16. 4-7 - VDB Advection- Controlling Advection Location

    17. 4-8 - VDB Advection- Morphing

    18. 4-9 - VDB Advection- VDB Method On Demo

    19. 4-10 - VDB Advection- Details, VolumeVOP & Reactivating VDBs

    20. 4-11 - VDB Advection- Sparse VDBs

    21. 4-12 - VDB Advection- Q- Does 'Activate' create Voxels in Box Region

    22. 4-13 - VDB Advection- Fitting Advection to Brain

    23. 4-14 - VDB Advection- ReTime

    24. 5-1 - Remeshing from Beginning

    25. 5-2 - Remeshing from Begining- Fixing Rest & Remesh VDB

    26. 5-3 - Remeshing from Begining- Smoothing Out

    27. 6-1 - Transitioning to the Brain - Resample

    28. 6-2 - Transitioning to the Brain - Resample- Blending Transition w VolumeSample

    29. 6-3 - Transitioning to the Brain - Resample- Pushing TimeBlend

    30. 7-1 - Adjusting Rest Length Transfer

    31. 7-2 - Adjusting Rest Length Transfer- Triplanar Map Overview

    32. 7-3 - Adjusting Rest Length Transfer- Triplanar Solution

    33. 7-4 - Adjusting Rest Length Transfer- Mapping Triplaner to Cells

    34. 7-5 - Adjusting Rest Length Transfer- Q-Issues with Redshift compatibility

    35. 8-1 - Converting VDB to Polygon Tip

    36. 8-2 - Converting VDB to Polygon Tip- Using Switch

    37. 9-1 - Solaris

    38. 9-2 - Solaris- What is USD

    39. 9-3 - Solaris- Demo

    40. 9-4 - Solaris- Loading Stuff in USD

    41. 9-5 - Solaris- Cache Out Details w Nucleus

    42. 10-1 - Next Time on BYB

    43. 10-2 - Next Time on BYB- Compositing

    44. 10-3 - Next Time on BYB- Conclusion

    1. Session 4 Outline

    2. Session 4 Full Video

    3. 1-1 - Intro- Overview

    4. 2-1 - Rendering- New Methods

    5. 2-2 - Rendering- Material X

    6. 2-3 - Rendering- Context and Networks

    7. 3-1 - Rendering Data- Headphone Model

    8. 3-2 - Rendering Data- Into Solaris Conext

    9. 3-3 - Rendering Data- Scene Graph

    10. 4-1 - Material Library- Setting up Scene

    11. 5-1 - Set Up Materials- Demo & Karma Note

    12. 6-1 - Material Builder- Overview-

    13. 6-2 - Material Builder- Adding Textures

    14. 6-3 - Material Builder- Assign Mat Headphones

    15. 6-4 - Material Builder- Q-Using one matx for multiple objects

    16. 6-5 - Material Builder- Redshift MatLib,GPUvsCPU,Noise

    17. 6-6 - Material Builder- Redshift w-Headphone Text

    18. 6-7 - Material Builder- Multiple Render Engines, Noise, MotionBlur

    19. 6-8 - Material Builder- Q- Creating Prim Var

    20. 6-9 - Material Builder- Lights

    21. 6-10 - Material Builder- Render Variables and Render Settings Karma AVs

    22. 6-11 - Material Builder- Creating Custom Att Krma

    23. 6-12 - Material Builder- Custom Att W- Redshift

    24. 6-13 - Material Builder- Q- Can you merge Multiple Att same Way- - Cryptomatte

    25. 6-14 - Material Builder- General Rendering Settings

    26. 6-15 - Material Builder- Q-How to make particles not sphereical, like Flakes

    27. 6-16 - Material Builder- Nucleus Texture

    28. 7-1 - Composite- Overview

    29. 7-2 - Composite- Denoising

    30. 7-3 - Composite- Background

    31. 7-4 - Composite- Q- Composite w- Cryptomatte

    32. 7-5 - Composite- Volume Fog & Blur

    33. 7-6 - Composite- Motion Blur

    34. 7-7 - Composite- Notes on Motion

    35. 7-8 - Composite- Solaris vs Rop vs Lop

    36. Submit your work

About this course

  • $150.00
  • 161 lessons
  • 7.5 hours of video content

Course Teaser

Session 1

Close-up goodness

We will learn how to build the first section of the animation with vellum. We will learn how we can split our geometry during the simulation and continue simulating it without vellum breaking. With the time left over during this class, we will have a look at creating the headphone geometry for our brains.

Session 2

Midsize magic

For our midsize shot, we will be using POPs and grains. This class will discuss how we can do a pop-sim that behaves like cell division and add some SOP magic to make the resulting geometry look like cells. Using various SOP techniques, we will then learn how to transition between our vellum and POPs.

Session 3

Big brain time

For the final part of our sequence, we learn how we can take the resulting geometry and use it in a SOP solver to do some VDB advection to get the final formation of our brain. We are then left with the task to stitch these parts together seamlessly and write it all out so we can render it in Solaris.

Session 4

Sensual Shading // Carefree compositing

Here we bring it all together. We start lighting and shading it in Solaris. You will learn the basics of Solaris and how to build materials. We will also be using Redshift but will discuss some details about Karma and how you would approach this if you choose to use that instead.

Instructor

Tim van Helsdingen

CG Generalist / Houdini FX Artist

My name is Tim and I'm a freelance CG Generalist / Houdini FX artist based in the Netherlands. I've worked as a freelance artist for studio's from all around the globe, such as Framestore, MPC, Mediamonks, Ambassadors, Colorbleed, and various others over the years. I've also been making educational content for pretty much my entire adult live, and been doing that for Houdini since 2016. If you've ever wanted to learn Houdini, big chance you've come across some of my content! I've also done many presentations at Houdini Hive sessions at FMX, Siggraph, and various other places.

WHAT YOU NEED TO TAKE THIS COURSE

  1. Reasonably powerful computer (At least 32 GB of RAM, 64 GB+ of RAM recommended) 
  2. Plenty of free storage (500 GB to 1 TB. Preferably NVME but HDD is okay.)
  3. Houdini Apprentice to follow along with the Houdini + Karma sections.
  4. Houdini Indie + Redshift to follow along with the redshift sections 
  5. Blackmagic Fusion / Resolve (for the compositing section) I will be using some paid plugins (Frischluft) but feel free to use something else.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

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Multi-Session Courses
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See you in Class!