DAILY ART CHALLENGE

Get Ready for the 2026 MARDINI Daily Art Challenge  - your chance to compete for cool prizes by creating images or animations! With a different challenge every day during the month of March, you'll have 31 chances to enter and win. 

Here are the Daily Prompts. These are designed as guides for your daily entry. 

Use any part of Houdini that helps you create your daily artwork.

The fun begins on March 1

HOW TO ENTER

The MARDINI Daily Challenge Forum will be made available and on each day of the contest - a thread for the daily topic will appear for you to post your work. Create your images or animations using Houdini products, including Indie, Education and Apprentice, and render using Karma or third party renderers working from within the Houdini environment. Any compositing work should be done using Copernicus.

MARDINI 2026 FORUM

Submit your work to these forums in order for your artwork to be considered. To win the daily prizes, you must post:

  • your image or animation 

These must be posted before Midnight EST/EDT on each day. You may submit art to any of the topics throughout the month but your work will only be eligible for the daily prizes or daily entry point if you submit before the daily deadline. You will still be eligible for the Iron Heart prize if you submit after the topic date. 

FREE 2 MONTH INDIE LICENSE

Fill out this form completely to request your free 2-Month Houdini Indie License to use for the MARDINI Daily Art Challenge ! 

Houdini Indie licenses expire two months from the date they are issued. This offer ends April 1, 2026, and requests cannot be made after that date. Licenses are sent once per day (weekdays only), so please submit your information just once. 

Because this is a manual process, it may take 12–24 hours for your license to arrive. 

 SideFX will never sell, share, or distribute the information you provide here.

INDIE REQUEST FORUM

SPONSORS 

HOW TO WIN

There are a number of different ways to win with the MARDINI Daily Challenge:

DAILY WINNERS
All entries will be reviewed by a panel of Judges and on a daily basis the top 3 images and top 3 animations will be rewarded points.

DAILY POINTS

1st Place Image

5 PTS

1st Place Animation

5 PTS

2nd Place Image

4 PTS

2nd Place Animation

4 PTS

3rd Place Image

3 PTS

3rd Place Animation

3 PTS

Image Entry

1 PTS

Animation Entry

1 PTS

BEST COLLECTION
The artist with the most points after 31 days.

BEST ARTWORK
From the winning entries for each day, our panel of judges will pick the top three Images and the top three Animations.

IRONHEART
Everyone who submits entries for all 31 challenges and submits them as a contact sheet to the Iron Heart forum by April 6, 2026 at Midnight EST/EDT is eligible to win the Iron Heart. 

PRIZES

BEST ARTWORK | IMAGE

First Place: 

DELL Laptop

Razer Gift Certificate [$100 USD]

1 YR Houdini FX [SideFX]

Second Place: 

1 YR Houdini CORE [SideFX]

Razer Gift Certificate [$50]

Third Place: 

1 YR Houdini CORE [SideFX] 


BEST ARTWORK | ANIMATION

First Place: 

DELL Laptop 

Razer Gift Certificate [$100 USD]

1 YR Houdini FX [SideFX]

Second Place: 

1 YR Houdini CORE [SideFX]

Razer Gift Certificate [$50 USD]

Third Place: 

1 YR Houdini CORE [SideFX] 

BEST COLLECTION

First Place: 

DELL Laptop

 Razer Gift Certificate [$100 USD]  

1 YR Houdini FX [SideFX]

Second Place: 

1 YR Houdini CORE [SideFX]

Razer Gift Certificate [$50 USD]

Third Place: 

1 YR Houdini CORE [SideFX] 

Additionally, all winners will have the chance to be featured in the Mardini Daily Art Challenge Razer Axon Wallpaper Collection. 
Participation will be optional.

DAILY FIRST PLACE WINNERS
Houdini Swag

IRON HEART
Houdini Swag

RULES

This contest is open to any 3D artist anywhere in the world.  All entries must be received on or before the closing date.
  • Only one submission per day per artist is allowed. You can create an image OR an animation but not both.
  • This contest is void where prohibited.
  • Employees of SideFX or any of their agents may participate in the contest but are not eligible to win.
  • The judges' decision is final.
  • SideFX is not responsible for submissions that arrive late, or are lost or damaged during submission.
  • If the prize cannot be awarded due to unforeseen circumstances, no cash alternatives are available.
  • Artwork created for these challenges must be created using Houdini products. 
  • Winners may be asked to submit .hip files to verify that Houdini was used for all aspects of the designs. If you do not submit the files then you can be disqualified.
  • The only External geometry and texture maps that can be used as part of your submission are those you can find in the Content Library. This gives you access to rigs and Copernicus setups for creating texture maps. You can also use the material gallery found on the Material Linker node.  Houdini must be your main tool.
  • All content must be the property of the submitter. If you are running Houdini on an employer or school computer make sure that this does not compromise your ownership rights.
  • Entries that clearly infringe on the copyrights of another company will be disqualified. 
  • Your entry in the contest constitutes an agreement to allow SideFX unrestricted use and distribution of the artwork submitted. Credit will be given with each use.
  • Entrants selected for the Mardini curated wallpaper collection on Razer Axon will be contacted prior to inclusion. Participation is optional.

FAQ

Q. What has changed from last year's MARDINI Contest?
A. There are no longer weekly themes. You can use whatever part of Houdini you want to create artwork for the prompt.. 

Q. Is the Deadline midnight EST or EDT? 
A. Since March will see daylight savings time arrive, the deadline will be just before midnight EST or EDT depending on the time change.

Q. Can third party render engines such as Redshift be used? 
A. Yes as long as they are set up to render inside Houdini/Solaris.

Q. Are Indie and Apprentice users eligible?
A. Yes. 

Q. Are we allowed to use SideFX Labs, MOPs and or QLibs?
A. Yes plug-ins and third party tools are also allowed.

Q. Can we use content from the Content Library to help our project along.
A. Yes, Content Library examples can be used such as Harry, the Toucan Rig or the Copernicus examples.

Q. Can we use content from Greyscalegorilla in our entries?
A. Yes, geometry and texture maps from Greyscalegorilla Studio can be used as part of your submission.

Q. Are multiple submissions allowed?
A. Only one submission per day per artist is allowed.

Q. Do I have to choose between images and animations for the duration of the challenge? 
A. No. You can create an image one day and an animation another. They will just be judged in different categories  each day but the points will be combined to find the best overall.

Q. Can I output animations using flipbooks?
A. Yes. You can use the Viewport OpenGL to output your entry. Note that renderings are generally judged more favourably.

Q. Can Megascans/Substance be used?
A. Megascan and other 3rd party models and textures are NOT allowed in the contest.

Q. Can I use an existing Houdini project as one of my entries?
A. In the spirit of MARDINI, you should create a new entry every day and not use artwork you have created for some other purpose.

Q. Do I need to enter every day to win?
A. Not necessarily. There are several different ways to win - you can also have one great entry that wins best image or best animation. So don't be afraid to enter at your own pace - see the rules above for more details.

Q. Are groups allowed?
A. No, this contest is designed for individual artists.

Q. If I win multiple daily challenges do I get multiple SWAG items?
A. Artists will only get one swag item no matter how many daily challenges they win.


Below you can see some of the work submitted last year in Mardini 2025.