Houdini HIVE Utrecht

Fianna Wong is a Technical Marketing Lead at SideFX and is most known as the robot voice of the Houdini Quickstart videos. 

She loves hardsurface modeling pr0n and still cannot believe that after so many years (since starting out with Infini-D and Bryce), the CG industry continues to innovate!
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CONCEPTING HARD SURFACE DESIGN IN HOUDINI
This will be a look at how you can free-form concept hard surface geometry using predominantly Booleans, and other modeling tools within Houdini. Thanks to the non-linear workflow that Houdini allows for, you are free to try out new designs without punishment or loss of prior iterations of your design.

Simon Fiedler is a freelance 3D artist based in Mainz, Germany. Besides working on commercial productions, he also produces tutorials in his free time on various topics and has been a speaker on several events. In the past years, he worked for several international clients and studios, always trying to blend creativity with technical knowledge.
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POINT BY POINT
This session will be a mixed collection of techniques on how to create geometry using simple VEX code and deforming objects with generated data.

Tim Van Helsdingen started his career in motion-graphics, working mostly with Cinema4D and After Effects on a daily basis. This changed, early 2015, when Tim decided to go freelance and move in a different direction: FX. Hearing more and more about Houdini it was time to bite the bullet and dive in head first. 

Tim now works as a freelancer for a wide variety of studios. He also has quite the following on his vimeo for the regular Houdini tutorials he puts out.
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DESTROY THE SHOE
Colorbleed asked me to come on board once again to work on a singleshot FX filled extravaganza for Solidgear. I will go into detail on how I did the setups, the issues we faced, and how we handled the Houdini > Maya/Vray pipeline

Helge Maus delivers with his company PixelTrain | 3D | VFX | animation in-house training, workshops and online-coaching for the 3D & VFX industry. He enables you to master professional production techniques with the following tools: Maya, Cinema 4D, Houdini FX, Nuke, V-Ray, Arnold, RealFlow, Substance, Unity 3D and many more. 

He has worked as a freelancer for more than 15 years for Adobe Systems and is a member of the beta team for Autodesk Maya, Adobe After Effects and is a Maxon Lead Instructor for Cinema 4D. He has worked with clients such as Jura, Vitra, Jung-von-Matt, Pirates ´n Paradise, redseven Entertainment, ProSiebenSat.1, SKY Deutschland, NDR, rbb, Sony DADC, Intel and many more international companies.
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ADAPTING HOUDINI FX SUCCESSFULLY TO MY PIPELINE - A PRACTICAL APPROACH
In this presentation, Helge talks about strategies of integrating Houdini FX into given (small boutique) pipelines, shows fields in which this amazing software can help you solve day-to-day problems, and how to approach your first projects. 

You will see insights, how to build your own learning course, learn more effectively, and to start making use of Houdini in small steps. As practical examples, Helge will show two different case studies in which he worked as a trainer and consultant. The first from an advertising company in Switzerland -adding Houdini VFX in their Cinema 4D Pipeline, and one from an artist, who adapted Houdini FX to help him to create stunning art. 

Paul Ambrosiussen is currently a Technical Artist Intern and Game Tools Developer at SideFX Software, while finishing his International Game Architecture and Design studies at NHTV University of Applied Sciences in Breda. Paul enjoys writing tools to support effective art-pipelines, and maintaining tool/workflow quality for the artists he assists. 

His goal is to help others create amazing work in a better, faster and more flexible way. He creates tutorials, offers in-person lectures, attends events, and presents custom workshops to clients.
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HOUDINI GAMEDEV TOOLSET PICKS FOR CONTENT DEVELOPERS
The Houdini GameDevelopment Toolset is known to feature a lot of Geometry, UV and Realtime-FX tools that speed up typical GameDev processes in your workflow. But did you know it now also contains a lot of content development focused tools? Paul will give you a sneak peak for some of the tools that will upgrade your GameDev pipeline.

Simon Verstraete is an Environment and Technical Artist at eXiin, creaters of the game Ary and the Secret of Seasons. 

Simon is currently finishing his studies in Game Graphics Production at Digital Arts and Entertainment. He likes making modular environments and custom procedural tools to create those enviremonts faster.
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ARY AND THE MAGIC OF HOUDINI
In this presentation, Simon will talk walk through how eXiin uses Houdini and detail their workflow for Ary and the Secret of Seasons. Houdini and its variation of tools are used for a quicker and more efficient workflow. At eXiin, Houdini is our main 3d program for modelling, retoping, rigging and animation. In addition, we used it for making procedural assets, simulations (like destruction) and terrain.

Bjorn Klaassen, from Amsterdam, Netherlands, works as a freelance Houdini TD/Generalist. A father, motorsport enthusiast, and a paleo-art collector with a great affection for palaeontology. 

Prior to 2015, he typically worked as a pipeline Python TD or animator with some sculpting on the side, but transitioned to the procedural path - mostly working in games and post-production. Bjorn is currently working on a personal project - a procedural racetrack pipeline.

Project examples Bjorn has worked on include: Cinematic Animator @ Horizon Zero Dawn+DLC, Crowd sims/pipeline @ Nike 'the Ball Makes Us More', Dinosaurs @ Dinosaur Hunt Macau, Waterfall FX @ Vestel Stand IFA Berlin, Rockwork pipeline @ construction of Wildlands Zoo Emmen, Rigger @ Hans Boodt Mannequins, DragonTower sculpt @Wanda Hefei theme park. 
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USING PYTHON IN AN OFFLINE HOUDINI PIPELINE
Why would a user turn to Python instead of using the UI and external tools provided with Houdini? Bjorn will cover reasons to use Python together, with Houdini, and include real world examples to show how it can complement an existing Houdini workflow perfectly.

David Kahl is a Software Developer and VFX Artist based in Germany. Houdini has allowed him to combine experience in 3D and scripting - taking both to new heights. He has a passion for sharing knowledge and does his very best to make a difference in the community.
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VEX DRIVEN WORKFLOWS
After a brief intro of VEX and how it is integrated in Houdini, David will create an example to demonstrate how Houdini uses the given data, and the ease of manipulation through the VEX approach. He will also showcase the features of a procedural VEX driven Sci Fi Corridor Generator, along with highlighting the problems that occurred during creation and how they were solved using VEX.

Étienne Carrier started in the game industry in 2010 as a 3D artist. Soon after, he quickly converged to technical artist as he developed a taste for VFX and shaders. 2 years later he discovered Houdini and saw its enormous potential for the game industry. Since then procedural tools development have been a part of every project he worked on. In 2015, he joined Ubisoft to push procedural developments to AAA projects. Far Cry 5 has benefited from this next step in procedural tools development for video games. He is now looking forward to push this tech even further!
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PROCEDURAL WORLD GENERATION OF FAR CRY 5
How do you fill up 100 square km of wilderness with a terrain changing every day? One of the challenges with a modern open world is its sheer size. Not every square meter of the world will receive the attention of a level artist or a level designer. Yet while filling up empty space is easy, filling it up so it looks natural is a bigger challenge. Ubisoft's solution on 'Far Cry 5' was to develop a set of procedural tools to generate biomes, texture the terrain, setup freshwater networks, generate cliff rocks and more.

Scott Keating is a Senior Product Designer at SideFX specializing in the user experience needs of Houdini artists. 

He is also an award-winning commercial illustrator, designer, and comic-book artist and his work has been published worldwide, in magazines, books, comics, and commercial products.
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TOOLS FOR PLANNING + DESIGNING VIRTUAL WORLDS USING HOUDINI + HOUDINI ENGINE
In this presentation, we will demonstrate Houdini tools to help you design and plan your virtual worlds. We will look at polygon reduction and procedural set dressing techniques as well as some of the ways Houdini can be used to analyze your scene and optimize your resources.

Nikolay Skolkov has been working in the CG industry more than 10 years. He started as a freelancer and worked with Flash technology, building interactive elements for web-sites and later on switched to 3D graphics. 

While learning, he enjoyed modelling and rendering various kinds of architectural objects as his first steps into 3D. After improving his skills, Nikolay joined a small company that produced short stereo movies for VR where he recieved valuable experience that led to him joining the Wargaming team, where he currently works as an R&D / FX Artist.
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RUST SPREADING/DECAY
This three part presentation will begin with a step-by-step walk through of the process for making a rust effect and spreading decay. This effect has been used in a recent Wargaming project that was dedicated to Halloween. 

Next, Nikolay will review some simple time savers that gave him more than he expected while setting-up a procedural sand storm.

The presentation will finish with review of an FEM Crushed Car - Nikolay's first true experience utilizing FEM with the off-the-shelf solution and a bit of refinement.

Mark Spevick is the Head of 3D at Escape Studios, Pearson College London, and combines teaching with working at the highest level in the industry. He has 10 years working in industry and 6 working in higher education and teaching.  

He got his big break at Peerless Camera, the production house co-owned by Terry Gilliam, and worked on every Gilliam film from ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ to ‘The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus’, starring the late Heath Ledger. He also worked with director Martin Campbell on ‘Zorro’ and ‘Mask of Zorro’ before supervising on the set of ‘Casino Royale’. Mark also managed the CG team that worked on the parachute scene in ‘Angels and Demons’, on behalf of post-house Double Negative. Mark was heavily involved in the design and development of our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.
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HOUDINI LEARNING FUNDAMENTALS
Mark will walk through how to approach learning Houdini and some of the fundamental concepts behind the way it works. Understanding these concepts will lay a solid foundation on which to continue building and understanding Houdini.

Moritz Schwind still thinks “Space: 1999” is the coolest thing that ever happened on German TV. Be it pixels, hardware, code or cameras – if it’s interesting, Moritz is gonna take it apart. And sometimes even reassemble it. In his spare time he likes to dabble with code and create generative artwork. He claims his early exposure to QBasic is no help at all when working in Houdini, Cinema 4D, Processing or Arduino. But it might have been what started his fascination for the boundaries of code and art. When not wreaking havoc to any intriguing devices around him, he works as a Technical Director.
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MOPs - MOTION GRAPHICS OPERATORS FOR HOUDINI
While Houdini is strongly established as a VFX tool, motion graphics studios are increasingly adapting it into their pipeline too. As more and more design tasks are being done in Houdini, we need a versatile toolset to quickly iterate and experiment in order to meet todays client's demands. Let us help with MOPs – Motion Operators for Houdini. Moritz will give a quick intro to the tools as well as the rationale behind it.