I wasn't sure how to find this so I figured i'd just ask. I'm a beginner and I'm trying to get a general direction of things. I know Houdini is used for VFX in film, so what's the workflow look like for adding the VFX to real life film footage. For example, let's say I wanted to create a scene that looked like I was conjuring and charging up a magic projectile to throw; like something out of Mortal Kombat. Would this be done strictly in Houdini, if so can I get the cliff notes on how this would be done? Or is this something that would need additional software to pull off? And if so, what might that look like?

I appreciate the help!

This is a question with no single answer. Can it be done entirely in houdini? Yes, but probably no one would do it that way. The first question is, is your camera static? If so, things are a bit easier. If not, you'll need to track the motion of the camera and get that data into houdini. The magic projectile effect could be created in houdini. That kind of thing is it's specialty. The effect would be rendered out from the tracked camera, then brought into a compositing program like Nuke, Fusion, or AfterEffects to be integrated into the film footage. Those are the basics, but depending on the specifics of the original footage and how realistic you want the effect to be, it could be vastly more vastly more complex than I've described.

Brad T.