Houdini @
GDC 2022

SideFX is coming to GDC with a Lounge for hanging out, a Meeting room for more in-depth discussions and three virtual presentations that talk about how procedural solutions help game developers meet many of their most pressing challenges. 


MOSCONE NORTH

Join us in the Houdini Lounge [115] to say hi and to talk about ways that Houdini can support your gamedev studio. For a deeper dive, arrange a meeting with an Account Executive in our Meeting Room [114]. 

Arrange Meeting


VIRTUAL GDC PLATFORM PRESENTATIONS

SideFX has sponsored three sessions which will be featured in the GDC Virtual Platform for attendees with the following passes: All Access Pass, Core Pass, Summits Pass, Expo Plus Pass, Audio Pass, Independent Games Summit Pass, All Access Online Only Pass. Come and join us on March 25 for these insightful talks. The talks are now published below on this page.

Friday March 25

10:00 AM PDT

Procedural Workflows in Production

Simon Verstraete  | SideFX

12:15 PM PDT

Procedural Primer for Artists

Robert Magee  | SideFX

12:45 PM PDT

SideFX Labs 2021-2022 | Servicing Next-Gen Development

Mai Ao  | SideFX


10:00 AM PDT
Procedural Workflows in Production  

 In this presentation Simon will talk about procedural workflows for games. Recently Project Titan was released and he will use this as guidance to show different procedural workflows. The talk will go in to detail about the making of Project Titan and how tools are build and used in it.

Simon Verstraete is a Tech Artist that is passionate about building procedural tools and assets. By exploring these procedural techniques, he is able to build 3D models with speed and flexibility. During his studies at Digital Arts and Entertainment, he taught himself Houdini then started working on Indie games such as “Ary and the Secret of Seasons.” by eXiin. 


 



12:15 PM PDT
Procedural Primer for Artists 

More and more game designers and developers are using Houdini's procedural workflows for high quality, art-directable FX, modelling, and world building. In this quick primer, learn how technical artists can develop powerful procedural tools in Houdini - and share them with game artists throughout the studio. These tools can then be used with platforms such as Unreal or Unity where artists interact with procedural assets while Houdini works under the hood to cook the nodes. This workflow ensures that assets stay procedural as long as possible, even deep into production. Learn what types of tools are best suited to proceduralism, how these assets can be set up for artistic control and what artists should ask when requesting procedural tools from technical artists.

Robert Magee is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at SideFX who has been working with Houdini for 20 years. He has created lots of learning material and demos designed to help artists understand how going procedural with Houdini can benefit their work. Before that he spent 10 years at Alias|Wavefront where he worked with Maya, PowerAnimator, Studio, Sketch! and Upfront.


 



12:45 PM PDT
SideFX Labs 2021-2022 |
Servicing Next-Gen Development  

In this talk, Mai Ao from the SideFX Labs will walk you through some of the latest Houdini tools of the past year as well as Labs team’s upcoming plans for supporting the community. Many of these tools are created with the needs of the next-gen development in mind, aimed to help with world-building, photogrammetry, grooming, UV, FX, and pipelines.

Mai Ao is the lead technical artist at SideFX Labs. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, he received an education in computer graphics, visual art, and project management. He worked in real-time productions on projects with Industrial Light & Magic and Walt Disney Imagineering, responsible for Houdini pipelines, FX, shaders, and performance optimization. At SideFX, Mai is passionate about serving the community and doing what he can to help push the boundaries of real-time technologies. He is mostly a nice guy, and his friends’ cats tend to like him, if that’s any indication.