Victoria University of Wellington

Curriculum-in-a-Box

SideFX’s Education and Training Team is proud to announce the release of this multi-lesson teaching resource. The goal for Curriculum-in-a-Box is to allow secondary school or early-year university teachers to be able to more easily and effectively introduce students to Houdini. We want you to feel confident in teaching Houdini to your students, and these recorded videos teach you how to approach these introductory techniques with your students.

SideFX’s Curriculum-in-a-Box is made up of a series of lesson plans and resources to get you started with adding Houdini to your curriculum. These resources include files and documents to use in class, and also teach you our suggested ways of explaining these concepts to students.

Our Curriculum-in-a-Box comes with several elements for each lesson:

A Lesson Plan | Lecture Slides | Hands-on Activities
Project Files | Reference PDF | Video Explainer
Homework Suggestions | Quiz Questions

You may download all of the lessons together, or pick specific ones that will suit your needs.

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Lesson 1 | Let's Play with Houdini

Your students will begin their Houdini journey by learning a bit about the UI, importing geometry, making a particle sim, and making a finished image. After completion, your they will gain insight into the different elements of what makes Houdini a powerful 3D tool. They should also be ready to dive deeper into some of the basics of the software.

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Explore Houdini

Lesson 2 | Manipulating Geometry

Learn more about modeling techniques. We offer a few different options to select from so you can customize your lessons depending on what type of modeling you would like to introduce your students to. With this lesson, your students should gain insight into the various ways that geometry can be modified in Houdini.

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Modeling a Building

Modeling a Coffee Cup

Modeling a Crate

Modeling a 3D Logo

Modeling a Vase

Lesson 3 | Making Attributes Work for Me

Your students will be introduced to the idea of attributes on geometry, and what they can be used for. Our guided exercises will focus on the idea of scattering geometry using points and attributes. We will supply you with a few variations on this idea, and you can choose which is appropriate for your existing curriculum.

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Random Attribute Scatter

Painted Attribute Scatter

Multiple Painted Attributes

Landscape Scatter

Text Scatter |  Simple

Text Scatter | Advanced

Independent Work

Lesson 4 | Proceduralism in Practice

Students will dive deeper into the concept of proceduralism, and how it relates to workflows in Houdini. Our guided work for this lesson includes a classic rock generator, and a pin table. These examples will show your students how they could make tools to automate processes in Houdini.

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Rock Generator

Pin Table

Lesson 5 | Creating a Simple Simulation

You will guide our students through their first proper Houdini simulation. The guided work will take them through breaking a brick wall using the RBD tools. We will use many of the concepts that we’ve learned through the previous lessons to make this simulation. After this lesson your students will have a better understanding of the process of creating a simulation in Houdini.

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Simulation Guided Work

Download Full Package

If you’d like to get all documents associated with the Curriculum-in-a-Box, please click on the link below. For all of the walk-through videos, please see the sections above.

DOWNLOAD ALL LESSON FILES