Course Overview

Class Description:

Houdini is known as a procedural system, so why should we use keyframes? This class offers a mind-opening set of systems, workflows, and tools that will make you look at animation, movement, and modeling in a completely different way.

Do you love smooth, jiggling, springy animation but hate keyframes? This course is for you.

The CHOPS network is an underutilized but very powerful system that allows you to truly art direct your animation, procedurally. In the second session, we will cover the SOP solver, a way to generate systems that keep evolving over time, making for truly naturalistic structures and movement.


Learning Outcomes:

Students will reach a deeper understanding of procedural animation and how to use Houdini’s tools to add a layer of motion detail through the use of the CHOPS system. Building a custom pipeline allows you to shape your results and build confidence that all your work will feel finished.

The SOP Solver allows students to build their own growth systems as well as gain insights into how Houdini processes attributes. By the end of the workshop, the students will have several tools that will allow them to build more dynamic models that evolve over time as well as have a custom spreading technique with many different applications.

Each session will conclude by using the tools we built in a practical sense, going over lighting and rendering, and incorporating our new techniques.


Course curriculum

    1. Files

    1. 1. Introduction

    2. 2. UI Setup

    3. 3. Fit Expression

    1. 1. What is CHOPS?

    2. 2. Jiggle CHOP

    3. 3. Filtering Hair

    1. 1. Cached Geometry

    2. 2. Filaments

    3. 3. Glow

    1. 1. Creating Curls

    2. 2. Time Offset

    1. 1. Yan Paul Dubbelman Intro

    2. 2. The SOP Solver

    3. 3. Procedural Animation

About this course

  • Free
  • 28 lessons
  • 3 hours of video content
Session 1

CHOPS - The finishing touch to procedural animation

CHOPS are an often overlooked but incredibly versatile and customizable way to add smoothing, secondary motion, and creative expression to simple linear animations. During the workshop, we’ll go over what CHOPS is, why you should use it, and how to use Houdini’s interface customization to build your own animation-filter systems.

  • Introduction
  • What is CHOPS
  • Using vexpressions to create animation
  • Using CHOPS on linear animation
  • Importing File Cache, splitting elements
  • Using multiple CHOPS networks together
  • Using CHOPS to offset attributes
  • Building a CHOPS Filter Tool
  • Using Attributes in Redshift.
Session 2

The SOP Solver - Evolving Attributes

The SOP Solver allows an artist to create ever-evolving procedural systems that can be used to spread, deform, and grow their models and attributes. This class will cover what the SOP Solver is, and how it works and we’ll go over what kind of effects are made possible by this powerful node.

  • Introduction
  • What is the SOP Solver?
  • Reasons to use the SOP Solver over other methods
  • Creating a coral growth simulator
  • Adding variations to create emergent shapes
  • Building an Advanced spreading solver
  • Art Directing and building tools with the SOP Solver
  • Rendering in Redshift using the SOP solver’s output
  • Better emissive light in redshift

Instructor

Yan Paul Dubbelman

Digital Artist

Yan Paul Dubbelman is a Dutch Digital Artist focused on calming work for use on large screens. Working internationally as an independent professional, themes such as romanticism, creative technology, and the future of computer-generated art he explored using procedural systems. With 10 years as a freelance Designer and Artist, mostly using Cinema4D and Redshift, he dedicated the last 3 years to Houdini. Projects such as 3D for websites, designing drone shows, and recently developing “ambient art” for large screens and spaces. His history of education, art direction, and digital animation has built a flexible and eager mindset that he loves to challenge with exciting technical projects.

LinkedIn Instagram Twitter Website

WHAT YOU NEED TO TAKE THIS COURSE

  1. Houdini 19.5 or newer (Class will be taught with H20)
  2. Computer (Please see SideFX system requirements)
    1. https://www.sidefx.com/Support/system-requirements/
    2. A second Monitor is recommended, but not necessary
  3. Houdini (Apprentice License is free)
  4. Redshift will be used but the techniques can be used in other renderers as well.
  5. MOPs (optional)

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

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