Congratulations to everyone who finished this challenge and you are all the winners.I believed we all had a special March and this is one of most memorable experiences in my life. I regard this challenge as a competition that everyone needs to participate in once in their life, not to compete with others but fight for yourself.
I want to thank all sidefx staff for this great opportunity and day and night works with us. Especially thanks to Ben Mears who gave me a lot of encouragement when I was in self-doubt. Also especially thanks to Moeen who continued to give useful comments to our works and I will take his advice to refine my work if I have time in the future. Finally,I need to thank my wife and my family members who support me for all this challenge.



Since almost all my submissions are videos(only 2 images for  31 days), I made a compilation of my submission. As I mentioned previously, I wanted to test my limitations and breakthrough if possible, so I added 3 more limitations besides Mardini rules.  First, try to make more video submissions instead of images,and all works are using 16:9 resolution. Second,try my best to reach production quality in one day. Last but not least, Never choose the easy path and keep learning something new from each day's work.Now, I finished all 31 days of work and I think I realised what I aim for though exhausted and sleepy. I am quite satisfied with this "impossible mission" although they are far from perfect.



I learned and reflected a lot for my 4 years houdini journey during this challenge, especially when I saw so many talented artists creating amazing artwork using houdini. Hopefully, in the future, I will have a chance to share with you all my learning experience and methods in houdini. Just keep moving on and this is not an end but a brand new start. Cheers.

Mardini Day31 fire
Finally we made it! Thanks Sidefx and everybody.There should be fire and flower for all of you.Cheers.

Mardini Day30 water

Water butterflies~ The last Two day,Cheers.

Mardini Day29 Wind

In my nostrils the summer wind
Blows the exquisite scent of the rose:
O for the golden, golden wind,
Breaking the buds as it goes!
Breaking the buds and bending the grass,
And spilling the scent of the rose.
by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Mardini Day28 Earth

The glowing worm cave is definitely one of the fantastic landscape on earth. I was very impressive when I visited it in New Zealand two years ago. Taking photo is not allowed because it will have bad influence on the glowing worm. Now I tried my best to make it as photo-realisic as possible to reveal its beauty. Hope you like it.

Mardini Day26 Burrow

Low polygon style Whack-a-mole.Using audio to drive loop animation with powerful Chop contex. Keep on learning something new in houdini for each piece of work.

I felt like this was a circle. On day one I made a happy bounce animation and now only four days left.Can't believe we stick to it. Cheers for everybody.

Mardini day26 Perch

It is said that Birds love to perch on the power lines becasue they can get high when the electricity passes by. I just exaggerate this effects by changing the feature direction and the color.

Birds rigging and animation is definitely one of the most difficult and tedious works in CG. This is the first time I did bird rigging(Actually all rigging and animation in houdini are new to me before this week). Using hair systmen to generate cards to simulate feather. I struggled for a while but after all glad to learn new things.

Mardini day25 Buzz

This idea comes form that in the morning you still feel sleepy and "buzz" in head but you have to get up to work~LOL.

New cartoons style and try more rigging and keyframe animation this time which is the most time-consuming part for this shot. Try to simulate the drunk and flatering feeling of a speely bee struggling to fly.Hope you enjoy it.

Mardini day24 Eat

Now I can combine animation skill and simulation to finish this Whale swallows fish shot.

I just simple built the huge mouth without body and using metaball for deformation when whale swallows. using combination of flip+pop+pyro+whitewater+ocean simualtion. One day timing is so limited for a water simulation shot like this and I planned to refine it when I finish the mardini challenge. Seems like another busy month after March.

Mardini Day23 Sleep

Have you seen sperm whales sleep? It's one of the most exraodinary scene that I want to see in person as I love scuba diving.

Keep on adventure on rigging and keyframe animation. I transferred Paul into a scuba diver by adding some simple equipment. I have never thought I would have fun with rigging and animation since I am a VFX artist.Pop simulation for the bubble and simple modeling for the sperm whale. Hope you enjoy it.






By the way, please don't feel any pressure because of my work. From scratch, It took me four years solid hard work to get here and now I am paying all my attention to each piece my work because I want to test my limitation and make a breakthrough if possible. I think this is the competition of ourselves. If you improve,learn something new, make new friends or have fun during this challenge, you are definitely the winner and hero no matter what the result is. During my learning experience, I sticked to improve a little bit everyday. Daily exercise are my favorite method but sometimes I was laughed at by some professional artists because most my daily works are simple and "ugly". Now, I wanted to prove that it worked and encourage you guys just keep on trying.In the end of this challenge, I would like to collect my 31 days submission to see what I can get in 31 days daily work.Besides, if I have chance, I would love to share my learing experience and methods to all of you, I chose a very stupid and time-consuming way to learn Houdini but it turns out to be the most efficient and solid way.Hope you like it.

Mardini Day22 Crawl

Another brand new Challenge.Nonprocedural modeling for basic turtule shape and uv project and texture baking for shading. Rigging and keyframe animation are definitely new to me but I did a quick and rough rigging and keyframe directly on bones. The result seems ok to me. Finally the vellum and grain simulation for the turtle intertation with sand. After today's challenge, I will try more rigging and keyframe animation in houdini because it did not seem scaring as I thought before.

Mardini Day21 Run

There is a saying that a cat will transform into a flying furry ball if it runs too fast. Now you see it!

I got used to procedural modeling in houdini for a long time that I nearly forgot that I could still model using unproecedural methods in houdini. I am quite satisfied with the cat face modeling and hair simulation. Hope you like it.

Mardini Day20 Hidden

Mardini Day19 Rural
Finally, Houdini pighead found its way back home~

Mardini Day18 Modern
Hello,Everybody. Welcome to my modern house!

Mardini Day17 Sci Fi

Mardini day16 Fantasy
Summoning Ceremony
Another impossible mission in one day pushed me to a new limitation.Procedural environment modeling, Crowd sim and vellum sim for cloak. RBD sim and flip sim. There are still lots of details to add but I had other works to do. I really enoyed the process of creation and released it bit by bit.

Mardini day15 Medieval
The Meseum of Medieval

Mardini day14 Ancient
Rome wasn't built in a day

Mardini Day13 Grass.

Beautiful and mysterious Crop Circles. Houdini hair simulation for the windy grass effects.