HIVE SIGGRAPH 2018 Presentations

Houdini HIVE was back at SIGGRAPH again this year with three days of educational sessions, studio presentations, industry panels, reel reviews and social events - featuring SideFX product experts, and professionals from top studios from around the world. Here are the presentations we had permission to publish ...

EARTH: Five Elements of VFX

KEITH KAMHOLZ | DNEG London

In this session, destruction specialist Keith Kamholz presents a compelling Earth FX example, incorporating a combination of terrain generation tools, crowds, RBD destruction, and more.'

WOOD: Five Elements of VFX

STEVE KNIPPING | ILM

FIRE: Five Elements of VFX

SCOTT KEATING | SIDEFX

Character Adventures - Rigging, Animation and Crowds

LOUIS DUNLEVY | CUTTING EDGE POST

Learn how Houdini has been used as the primary rigging and animation tool for some challenging character animation work at Cutting Edge. The session also covers some interesting uses of the crowd system applied to some fun critters! We’ll be looking at insects, robots and some very Australian mammals.

The Lazy Artist’s Guide to Real-time VFX

MIKE LYNDON | SIDEFX

Learn how to do more with less. Distribute your work load to other teams and speed up those annoying time sinks that pull you out of your flow. Mike covers destruction workflows, UE4’s Niagara integration, building tools for Maya and a host of other updates the Game Development team have been working on.

Procedural Workflows with Houdini and Unity 2018 for Game Artists

KENNY LAMMERS

Procedural workflows are becoming almost a necessity in our modern game pipelines. We have to create more content while keeping the content flexible and iterative. In this presentation Kenny walks through how Houdini and Houdini Engine, with Unity 2018, gives artists and designers the flexibility to iterate on designs and game assets.Using the power of Houdini’s procedural workflows game artists have the ability to create their own procedural game assets that can change shape, update uv’s, and add more or less detail - all without having to leave the Unity editor. We look at a few case studies and learn the different ways we can insert Houdini’s procedural workflows into your current game production pipelines.

Hypercubes for VR Noobs

MATT ESTELA | UTS ANIMAL LOGIC ACADEMY

The script for 'Awake' by StartVR starts with "A beautiful glyph of light transforms in front of your eyes". Matt shows how he used Houdini to explore that brief, how he created an art directable animated hypercube, and how he got that running in realtime VR. He also explores the visual effects they developed for the project, and how Houdini's Game Development Toolset formed a core part of their workflow.

AR Transformation Mask

ROBERT BUTTERWORTH & JEREMY KERSEY | MICROSOFT 

Transformation Mask is a shared work created by Shawn Hunt and a team of artists, designers and engineers at Microsoft Vancouver.In this talk, Robert and Jeremy cover how they leveraged Houdini’s procedural nature to overcome the production challenges of fabricating the mask as well as thoughts on future improvements for 3D printing workflows.

Design Through FX

BEN WATTS

Freelance artist Ben Watts discusses his personal journey into Houdini, and demonstrates intuitive ways he designs and controls FX. After that, he looks at some FX he created for studio projects.

Does your modelling department suck?

OLIVER MARKOWSKI | RISE FX

Learn how to quality-check your 3D models in SOPs to make sure that your texturing and rigging department will not complain about common errors. The session results in having a full-blown model-turntable rendering, which contains an error summary for your supervisor and AOVs to visualize those errors for the artist.

Delayed Load Rendering Workflow

KENNETH POLONSKI | EMBASSY VFX

While developing their capabilities to handle large datasets, Embassy VFX came up with a deferred load workflow. In this SIGGRAPH 2018 session, Embassy's Kenneth Polonski walks through the workflow.Using their alembic in-house tools, the data is extracted into Houdini’s packed prims, and a point cloud of instance data. Benefits include:

H17 Sneak Peek: PolyDraw

FIANNA WONG | SIDEFX

Wishing you could use TopoBuild for modeling and not only for rebuilding high-res geo? We will take a look at an early reveal of a new tool for modeling in Houdini, which is currently under development. This tool allows you to draw geometry and build on either existing geometry or from nothing, in an empty scene.

Houdini Concepts for the Maya Artist

JOHN MONCRIEF | SIDEFX

One of the hardest things to do is to transfer skills from one software to another especially if the interface and workflows are new to you. John makes this easier for Maya artists coming to Houdini as he explains how Houdini works from a Maya point of view. For more Houdini basic learning, start here!

Houdini Foundations - Dynamics

ROBERT MAGEE | SIDEFX

For artists new to Houdini, this presentation will help you understand how particles and dynamics work within Houdini's node-based workflow. Learn how you can source geometry and use that to create Particle, Bullet Rigid Body and Pyro FX simulations. 

What Makes a CG Superstar?

INDUSTRY PANEL

What makes a CG artist stand out as a 'superstar' among his or her peers? Find out in this panel discussion with studio leaders and artists. Panelists: Andy Hayes (Framestore) - Shaun Roth (DNEG) - Andrew Lowell (Freelance Educator) - Ben Watts (Freelance Artist) - Matt Estela (UTS Animal Logic Academy) - Moderator: Christopher Hebert - (SideFX)