Dreamworks had lots of experience with the characters and environments of the Shrek series that they could reuse in much of the new Puss In Boots film, but the additional new characters required a good bit of new design and development work. They actually found that their previous fur system used in the Shrek films didn’t scale to having Puss and his companion Kitty as major characters, so they had to find a new system.
On prior films, Dreamworks had relied on a proprietary fur system, but this time around artists used Houdini for much of the fur. “We found that Houdini could handle an order of magnitude number of curves bigger than we’ve been able to in the past,” says Bielenberg. “We had a one to one representation of curves for the fur that were interacting with other objects like the belt. The character FX artists could pull up Houdini and really get a WYSIWYG representation. You could see how the curves were interacting with any forces in Houdini. And four or five simulations could happen in the one package, rather than a serial process.”
Side Effects Software has a case study online of their product Houdini in use in the Scott Pilgrim movie by Mr. X and Double Negative. I find it amazing that the snow in the movie, much of which I thought was actually blown snow, was actually Houdini particle effects.
In Scott Pilgrim’s Toronto, it is winter even though the movie began filming in spring. It was therefore logical for “Toronto” studio Mr. X to winterize key scenes in the movie. The snow was going to need to be more than just an environmental simulation of snow. Mr. X’s goal was to treat the snow just as if it was another character in the movie. It needed to be very directable and with Houdini, they were able to create quick and easy setups which would provide them with the control they needed.
The 2010 Demo Reel for Houdini is online now, showcasing a great collection of work over the last year from some true masters of the tool
This reel highlights some of the amazing work created by Houdini artists over the last year. From feature films to commercials to student projects and video game cinematics, it is wonderful to see what can be accomplished with Houdini’s visual effects and animation tools.
Another big announcement from SIGGRAPH this week, Houdini 11 hits the streets with some fantastic new rendering, lighting, and particle tools. One thing I heard a lot about was the new dynamic fracturing tools that can create amazingly realistic shattered geometry with a minimum of work. In addition, the new fluid solver “FLIP” is getting some buzz for the impressive performance boosts:
“The new FLIP fluid solver is going to make a big difference for artists in production,” says Kim Davidson, President and CEO, Side Effects Software. “Not only is it up to 70 times faster, it draws on the power of our renowned particle tools to offer an unprecedented level of directability.”
Houdini11 is coming soon, and SideFX has released a sneak peek of what you can see in the new version. They’ve made huge advances in their fracture and fluid codes, as evidenced in the video.
A key focus of Houdini 11 is making you more productive in your day-to-day work. This means targeting our development efforts on ways for you to work faster with fewer clicks. In Houdini 11, new Voronoi-based fracturing tools will make it easier to break up objects either before a simulation or automatically during a simulation. Destruction sequences are a staple of Houdini-based VFX shots and now they will be easier to create and even more controllable.
Our particle fluids are now up to 70 times faster with the new FLIP (Fluid Implicit Particle) solver as compared to Houdini 10’s SPH solver, making it ideal for generating multiple iterations. In addition, this new solver is seamlessly integrated with existing particle operations [POPs] making the results highly directable. New buoyancy controls make it easier to float rigid objects and you can even smash up an object by combining these fluid tools with the new fracturing tools.
Houdini has just announced a new product offering called “HQueue”, an artist friendly cloud computing toolkit. Using it, artists can offload costly rendering or computation processes to local clusters and Amazon’s EC2 compute cloud right inside Houdini.
Mantra includes micropolygon, raytraced or physically-based rendering as well as depth of field, fast motion blur, high dynamic range image support, deep raster files and high quality displacement mapping. Renderings can be distributed on up to 20 machines while simulations can be set up on a single machine. Distributed fluid simulations are planned for a future release of the cloud computing tools.
Costs on the EC2 cloud are reasonable, a mere $1.99 per machine/hour for a 64-bit machine with 7.5GB of ram, and a mere 50 cents for 32-bit machines with 1.7G of ram.
Side Effects Software is acknowledging the sad economy and offering a 50% discount on the Houdini Master Bundle. The desktop license is now available for $5,545 and the network license is available for $6,995 . It’s limited to 2 bundles per person and the offer expires September 15th.
Between this sale and the recent new CMIvfx DVD tutorials, this is a great time to learn Houdini.
A new training video for Side FX’s Houdini focuses on Shading and Rendering.
The most frequent request from our customers was involving rendering and shading issues with the Houdini package itself.. We assembled a list of the most frequently asked questions and compiled a video knowledge base in this 4 hour Hi-Definition feature. Online documentation for this subject is nearly non-existant. We have successfully filled the void with an intense, fast paced video. There is so much information in this video, that artists will certainly have every tool necessary to complete any render task. Additional topics such as lighting and materials are covered in great depth. When it comes to high end CG and VFX training, there is only once choice… cmiVFX. This video is available today at the cmiVFX store.
The video is available in the CMIvfx Store for a mere $50, a great offer for anyone getting started in Houdini.
Side Effects Software, makers of Houdini, will be at SIGGRAPH2009 this year talking about how you can use Houdini in educational environments for CG training. They will have Aliza Sorotzkin, Training & School Accounts Manager, and Peter Robinson, Senior Trainer, on hand to speak to you about learning & teaching Houdini.
Also, if you’re just interesting in learning Houdini yourself they will be offering demonstrations in their booth and (Updated in response to Janet’s comment) private demonstrations for studios.
G-Force, the story of a secret paramilitary group of guinea pigs and other animals, hits theaters soon and ImageWorks sits down with Resource411 to talk about the work.
While the animators developed the skeletal rigging and basic geometry of the movement and background, the visual effects team was building additional layers upon the animation. Using programs like Maya, Arnold, Houdini and Renderman, the textural reality of the movement and lighting of the many layers of fur on the guinea pigs was developed.
The movie is technically interesting on several levels because often times it’s a completely CG-generated foreground on top of a live-action background, reverse of most films. Also, it’s in “Digital 3D”, which adds alot of extra work to any film.
Dreamworks had lots of experience with the characters and environments of the Shrek series that they could reuse in much of the new Puss In Boots film, but the additional new characters required a good bit of new design and development work. They actually found that their previous fur system used in the Shrek films didn’t scale to having Puss and his companion Kitty as major characters, so they had to find a new system.
Side Effects Software has a case study online of their product Houdini in use in the Scott Pilgrim movie by Mr. X and Double Negative. I find it amazing that the snow in the movie, much of which I thought was actually blown snow, was actually Houdini particle effects.
Another big announcement from SIGGRAPH this week, Houdini 11 hits the streets with some fantastic new rendering, lighting, and particle tools. One thing I heard a lot about was the new dynamic fracturing tools that can create amazingly realistic shattered geometry with a minimum of work. In addition, the new fluid solver “FLIP” is getting some buzz for the impressive performance boosts:
Houdini11 is coming soon, and SideFX has released a sneak peek of what you can see in the new version. They’ve made huge advances in their fracture and fluid codes, as evidenced in the video.
Houdini has just announced a new product offering called “HQueue”, an artist friendly cloud computing toolkit. Using it, artists can offload costly rendering or computation processes to local clusters and Amazon’s EC2 compute cloud right inside Houdini.
Side Effects Software is acknowledging the sad economy and offering a 50% discount on the Houdini Master Bundle. The desktop license is now available for $5,545 and the network license is available for $6,995 . It’s limited to 2 bundles per person and the offer expires September 15th.
Side Effects Software, makers of 
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