Mastering The Magical FX in Houdini (+Russian)

BECOME THE MAGIC FX WIZARD
Houdini has become the go-to tool in the FX industry.

Whoever wields its power is unstoppable.

Magic spells, Sci-fi shields, and EMP electrical shockwaves. Mastering the artistic elements of FX is the goal here and we will guide you through it.
Magic is often one of the hardest tasks you can get since it’s quite abstract and custom. We will test and expand your artistic knowledge. Get ready to be blown away!

A CINEMATIC FX LEGEND
Jayden has worked as a Houdini FX artist since 2008. His work ranges from small TV advertisements to large-scale cinematic content for AAA games.

His education in Animation led him to work as a generalist and animator before joining Axis in 2008. During his time at Axis, Jayden has gone from sole FX artist to eventually leading large teams on projects like Dead Island, Halo, Destiny, and many more. Jayden is now in a supervisor role where he tries to be as hands-on as possible.

TIME COMMITMENT

This course will require 5-10 hours a week with 45-90 total hours of active learning and practice by the end of the course.

Your exact time commitment per week will vary based on the topic, assignment, and personal learning style. We strongly recommend dedicating time each week to learn and practice. If you ever fall behind, don’t worry, you will have lifetime access to the lessons.

PREREQUISITES

Students should have an intermediate understanding of Houdini before taking this course. As a result, we recommend the following courses as a prerequisite:

• Houdini Fundamentals
• Introduction to Houdini for FX

If you have a working knowledge of Houdini, and have actively worked on simulation projects in the past, you will likely succeed in this course.

Week 01 | Shot 1 – Portal 1

• Looking at reference and discussing what look we’re aiming for
• Setting up the scene
• Base simulations we will use for most of our portal layers
• Creating the first few particles setups
• Exploring which basic SOP tools we can use to manipulate our sims
• Delving deeper into post-sim techniques to maximize the base setup

Week 02 | Shot 1 – Portal 2

• More SOP manipulation with a focus on animation and timing
• Create renderable layers using point attributes
• Work on shading and lighting our particles and the scene
• Extra detail layers
• Create additional environmental FX to accompany the portal – debris reaction and dust
• Rendering Layers
• Extensive FX compositing in Fusion 9

Week 03 | Shot 1 – Shield 1

• Look at reference and discuss what look we’re aiming for
• Creating the sphere, procedural positioning and timing
• Procedurally generate impact points and projectiles
• Working at the origin vs in animation space
• Setup our basic volume and particles simulations, delving deeper into the techniques used in week 1
• Workaround methods for accurate particle collision
• Additional post-simulation tricks for extra details

Week 04 | Shot 1 – Shield 2

• Look at other approaches to add interest to our shield
• Create our Sci – Fi elements, using simple SOP techniques driven by our base sims
• Setting up shaders for point rendering
• Lighting the character and environment with the FX
• Additional procedural reactionary FX, impact smoke, sparks
• Extra lighting passes
• Rendering Layers
• Extensive FX compositing
• Finalize shot 1 composite of both FX together

Week 05 | Shot 2 – Decloak 1

• Look at reference and discuss what look we’re aiming for
• Prepare the new scene, and decide on best practices for the decloaking
• Setup a basic propagation solver to drive the rest of the FX layers
• Experiment with ways to manipulate our drone geometry
• Methods for creating renderable layers from the decloaking geometry, including masks for comp
• Work on more complex shading networks

Week 06 | Shot 2 – Decloak 2

• Look at other approaches to add interest to our effect
• Create additional procedural FX types to accompany the decloak, ie arcing electricity
• Shading and lighting our final geometry
• Render layers and AOV’s from our shaders
• Bring it all together in compositing

Week 07 | Shot 2 – EMP Shockwave 1

• Once again, we will look at some examples to get ideas and inspiration
• Animate base spheres focusing on timing and composition of our sci-fi EMP
• Simple volumes to give the effect “depth”
• More advance electrical workflows, focussed on artistic look and realism
• Experiment with simulations and fall-offs for faking interaction

Week 08 | Shot 2 – EMP Shockwave 2

• Get creative with procedural patterns in shading to give the shockwave surface texture
• Create extra magical layers using advection and rasterizing to add interest
• Lighting our scene with the FX
• Render layers and AOV’s from our shaders
• It all happens in compositing!

Week 09 | Compositing In Nuke (FREE BONUS)

• A complete overview at how to use nuke for fx compositing