Houdini HIVE at SIGGRAPH ASIA 2018

FX in Titan Battle in Avengers: Infinity War | 9:00 AM 

Matt Aitken, Weta Digital’s Visual Effects Supervisor on Avengers: Infinity War, will present the film’s final showdown with Thanos on Planet Titan. The battle boasts a multitude of complex FX, from the abstract to the physically plausible. Matt will describe how Weta leveraged Houdini to consistently and confidently produce the comprehensive body of FX the sequence required.

PRESENTER BIO | Matt Aitken is one of Weta Digital’s most experienced Visual Effects Supervisors. He has recently finished supervising Weta Digital’s work on Avengers: Infinity War. Matt’s other projects as Visual Effects Supervisor include District 9, The Adventures of Tintin, Peter Jackson’s King Kong 360 3-D attraction at Universal Studios Hollywood, Iron Man 3 and all three films in The Hobbit trilogy. Matt has worked at Weta Digital since the early days of the company. Matt was Digital Models Supervisor on The Lord of the Rings trilogy, pre-production / R&D Supervisor for King Kong, and CG Supervisor for Avatar. Matt was nominated for the Academy Award® for Best Achievement in Visual Effects, and the BAFTA Film Award for Best Special Visual Effects, both for District 9. He has won multiple Visual Effects Society Awards.

Houdini 17: Vellum Cloth | 10:00 AM 

Rob will be presenting the new Houdini 17 Vellum workflow - specifically creating cloth panels from scratch, creating a simple shirt, how to do multi-layer cloth setup, and how to achieve select material types like leather, jeans and silk.

PRESENTER BIO | Rob Stauffer is a Senior Production Consultant at SideFX. He has over 20 years experience in computer graphics and visual effects. Rob started his career at Digital Domain and has worked at Sony Imageworks, Weta Digital, Asylum FX and most recently was an FX Supervisor at Rhythm and Hues. He has contributed to the FX of over 20 feature films including, "Lord Of The Rings: The Return of The King", "Spiderman 2", "X-Men:First Class", "The Day After Tomorrow" and "Seventh Son”. Rob joined SideFX in 2013 where he educates new and existing clients on the features of Houdini. Consults with studios on their pipelines and where Houdini may fit in and explores new and future technologies within VFX,Games and VR.

Procedural Hard Surface Design | 11:00 AM 

Akira-san will talk about tips and tricks on the Voronoi tool inside Houdini based on his recent personal project on hard surface design. 

PRESENTER BIO | Akira Saito is the environment lead at Polyphony Digital, giving technical directions, tool writing, and is involving every aspect of course creation of Gran Turismo series from photo shooting of actual race tracks everywhere in the word to fine-tuning the final data for released games.

Making of toon-shading look fluid effects  | 12:00 PM 

Masato-san will be presenting various techniques to customize the fluid solver and discussing different approaches to procedural animation to achieve cell-shading or cartoon shading look over fluid effects.

PRESENTER BIO | Masato Tsuzuki is a VFX artist and supervisor at Polygon Pictures. He played varsity volleyball, then enrolled to Digital Hollywood to become a freelance Houdini artist specializing in FX workflow based on fluid simulation.

Algorithmic Design with Houdini  | 1:00 PM 

Junichiro-san introduces an algorithmic approach for geometric design called algorithmic design using Houdini and VEX scripts, and shows its further possibility of an algorithmic design such as using machine learning for geometric design.

PRESENTER BIO | Columbia University AAD graduate focused on computational design for architecture. Worked as an architectural designer at Noiz Architects to proceed algorithmic design for architecture and installations as well as creating design aid tools via programming. Started his own business as Orange Jellies for algorithmic geometrical design and related software development for both physical and virtual environment. Currently teaching at Tokyo University of Art as an adjunct instructor. Published a book “Parametric Design with Grasshopper” with Yuko Ishizu.

Houdini 17: Material Based Dynamics | 2:00 PM 

Rob dives into the new Material-based Destruction Tools which make it easier to set up and art direct destruction shots. This workflow includes tools for pre-fracturing materials such as concrete, glass and wood while automatically creating constraint networks that can be used to control how the materials break during simulation.

PRESENTER BIO | Rob Stauffer is a Senior Production Consultant at SideFX. He has over 20 years experience in computer graphics and visual effects. Rob started his career at Digital Domain and has worked at Sony Imageworks, Weta Digital, Asylum FX and most recently was an FX Supervisor at Rhythm and Hues. He has contributed to the FX of over 20 feature films including, "Lord Of The Rings: The Return of The King", "Spiderman 2", "X-Men:First Class", "The Day After Tomorrow" and "Seventh Son”. Rob joined SideFX in 2013 where he educates new and existing clients on the features of Houdini. Consults with studios on their pipelines and where Houdini may fit in and explores new and future technologies within VFX,Games and VR.

Houdini Rendering & De-noising  | 3:00 PM 

Mark talks about how professional renderers such as Mantra work and why noise occurs during the rendering process. Mark then discusses various de-noising algorithms including the Optix denoiser that can be used with Houdini 17.

PRESENTER BIO | Mark Elendt is a Senior Mathematician at SideFX, where he’s spent over 25 years writing code for PRISMS, Houdini and Mantra. Earlier this year, he and SideFX received an Academy Award® of Merit for the creation and development of Houdini.

The Virtual Form  | 4:00 PM 

Luigi delves into how he uses Houdini to bridge the two mediums of sculpture and CGI - using computer graphics to explore new sculptural forms and ways to create. 

PRESENTER BIO | Luigi Honorat is a French artist based in Tokyo, Japan. A self-taught CG artist, he studied sculpture at Musashino Art University in Tokyo, where he is currently a lecturer. He employs sculptural principles to inform his practice in computer graphics. In all his work, Honorat searches for the balance between the slow pace and proximity to materials of physical sculpture making and the very fast pace of digital media making. His practice focuses on the meaning of reality and virtuality, matter and data, beauty and the uncanny.  

Honorat has exhibited extensively in France and Japan including at Tokyo Gobiten, the National Art Center, Tokyo, JP, 2017; Fuchu Art Museum, Tokyo, JP, 2016; Ome Art Festival, Ome, JP, 2015; and Tokyo Gobiten, the National Art Center, Tokyo, JP, 2015. Honorat was awarded the Takashi Shimizu Award in 2015. In 2018, Apple commissioned him and other five artists to create a new work showcasing the creative possibilities of 3D technologies.