Foundations Book

Posted Dec. 21, 2022
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Houdini Foundations for Houdini 19.5 is now available as a print-on-demand book through the Lulu Ebook company. This 224 page book contains 9 chapters designed to help artists take their first steps into Houdini.

Houdini Foundations is for artists who want to learn how to use Houdini and its node-based procedural workflow to create 3D computer graphics for film, TV projects or video games. Learn about the tools and techniques you will use as a Houdini artist, then run through multiple lessons that teach you how to build simple projects from scratch. You will also learn how to work with the nodes and networks in Houdini and then how to bring the results into the UE4 game engine.

BUY PRINTED BOOK AT LULU.COM       DOWNLOAD PDF
PROJECT FILES FOR BOOK [105MB]


Note: When we originally set this book up for print we attempted to use a lower cost print quality to keep the price down for students. It has come to our attention that some copies are not of a good enough quality. Lulu.com has explained that given the number of images, we need to use premium quality printing and paper which boost the cost of the book to $49.99 USD. So going forward that is the price. If you are cost conscious please remember that the PDF is available above for free and it looks really good on an iPad (although those are a bit more expensive than $49.99)



TABLE OF CONTENTS + LINKS TO VIDEOS

1 | Overview [Videos]

2 | Model, Render, Animate [Videos]

3 | Nodes, Networks & Digital Assets [Videos]

4 | Smashing Wine Glass [Videos]

5 | Destruction FX [Videos]

6 | Terrain Generation [Videos]

7 |  Rig Fur Dude with KineFX [Videos]

8 |  Procedural Assets for Unreal [Videos]

9 |  Build a City with PDG [Videos]

COMMENTS

  • Zbaobao 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

    赶紧把Karma的xpu更新完善，不要做一些没有意义的事情。

    • innerpeaceips 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

      素质，英文

      • Quinkyel 1 year, 10 months ago  | 

        素质，英文

  • Zbaobao 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

    Get the Karma xpu updated and improved, and don't do anything that doesn't make sense.

  • xyzDist 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

    I am sure sideFX is working on it.
    but Zbaobao.. your rudeness making me feeling very ashamed and embarrassed as a chinese.

    • Rude Loo 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

      Speaking of tune of voice, why are you ashamed of him for giving direct suggestions? Sorry but the only rude one can only be me.

  • belkinserge 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

    Why no ebook?

    • rmagee 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

      Individual PDF versions of each of the chapters will be released with the videos - four of the chapters already have the PDFS available for download. The other chapters will come in 2023.

  • Zbaobao 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

    我只是觉得H的发展方向有些跑偏了，跑偏了就是对工作的不负责，那个英语是直译，sorry.我那是鞭策和鼓励，不是别的恶意，文化差异，哈哈。

  • Piledriver 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

    nothing abous solaris and karma as always... i really don't understand them sometimes

    • rmagee 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

      The lessons are complete projects therefore Solaris and Karma are used throughout the book.

      • Piledriver 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

        yeah probably only a few thing as always about solaris or materialx...

        • PolyMarvels 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

          Its still in development, so it makes not much sense for SESI to invest time into it now. Everything costs money and SESI is a private company, so be grateful and a bit patient. SESI doing the most of all DCCs. And I know for a fact they are constantly expanding on content, so I am sure it will come.

  • LukeP 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

    Love the printed foundations book idea. Huge thanks! Price of the book is also very decent. Not the best distributor though. Shipping for the book (to waterloo, ont) is almost as much as the book itself :-)

  • Anthony_Buckley 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

    Ha! Check it off the bucket list Rob! How many other people have their own book, way to go man!

    • rmagee 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

      Thanks!

  • ifree 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

    Why do they write in Chinese?

  • bollili 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

    I am a long time houdini user and mainly bought it for giving it to interns. But, as far as I know Robert's style of teaching, I suppose there will be even some gems for more experienced people. There are still so many aspects of Houdini I am no expert at all. So I am very happy (as much as I like video tutorials) to have something to consume in a more spare time environment.

    As much as I don't like the tone of some of the posts above, I must agree that a follow up about other Houdini aspects would be very welcome to me.

    Like Solaris, PDG and other stuff like the interconnection of the various solvers in dops. Where you can really profit from getting your head around the concept first, before taking the deep dive, could be great topics for a second more technical focused book.

  • bollili 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

    Just for the context: I don't have the book, yet. It is pure speculation from my side that these topics I meant are not covered in the book. As I just realized, PDG is indeed in there.
    Btw, shipping to Germany and taxes are around 6,5€. Not that bad.

    • rmagee 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

      Everything in the table of contents is in the book. Videos and PDF versions of each chapter will be released individually - the four chapters with video links are already updated. The rest of the videos will be released in 2023.

  • JustinDykhouse 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

    Thanks Mr. Magee and team! This is a much appreciated Christmas gift :) All the best in the new year.

  • SWest 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

    R. Magee after spending probably an entire summer vacation studying your Fur Dude project (v18.5) it got me going with Houdini and a couple of challenging topics. I read the wishlist for Houdini 20 (in the forum), but after thinking about it my thought is that users need knowledge. So I just ordered your book, and know it will be worth both purchasing and studying it. Well done!

  • gnihton 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

    Wasn't interested until I saw who it was by, I've seen some of the other content you've produced for sidefx and it's been exceptionally well taught, so grabbing this!

  • ARE CHEN 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

    Ordered, thanks for sharing your knowledge

  • Mike_A 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

    It's great to have this available and I appreciate the effort and resources that went into its production.
    Many thanks to R Magee and SideFX.

  • Five13 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

    I received my copy today and think it is great. Whilst videos and online documents and PDFs are good resources, having something printed as a proper book that can be read away from the PC and used as a reference is handy. The shortcut keys on the back cover is a great touch. My only small criticism is that in some places in the book there are little boxes with an orange background and white text, and the text is a little harder to read than the rest of the book. I've done older versions of the tutorials before following the PDF but wanted to revisit them knowing a little more about Houdini now so this is very helpful and much appreciated.

  • mierneriricardo 1 year, 10 months ago  | 

    I got my copy and I love the content of the book but the lulu printing quality and the paper its a bit bad for such a good book

    • rmagee 1 year, 10 months ago  | 

      Our goal was to keep prices down for students - a higher quality print would have made the cost 3 times as much.

    • rmagee 1 year, 10 months ago  | 

      I just opened up some books we got at the office and the quality is not the same as the test prints I did in December. I am talking to Lulu to find out why the images and text are faded compared to my original test.

  • rmagee 1 year, 7 months ago  | 

    Read the note above about the better print quality now being used. Also all the Foundation videos are now updated for Houdini 19.5.

  • janjansen 1 year, 1 month ago  | 

    would anybody on here know if a similar book is planned for houdini 20?
    cheers

  • aLeXXtoR 10 months, 2 weeks ago  | 

    Thank you very much!

  • rober_ugalde 5 months, 3 weeks ago  | 

    The Local School in Guadalajara https://www.uetc.mx/slides/vfx-en-houdini-25 is SO BAD. They just try to loose you in complex stuff,
    I asked for my money back today...

    AND FOUND THIS RESOURSE PERFECT.

    This knowledge should be open and this is the BEST CHOICE.

    Of course, some of the local MEXICANS do not speak english and try to hide all from the rest.

    Happy to be here.

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