Well.... submitting just at the end, once again...

It was a pleasure getting to see all of the amazing participating artists' work each day. Thank you SideFX for organizing and hopefully I have the time to compete again next year.

I will be posting animated versions of each daily setup on my Instagram ( @dotsimulate ) if you want to check that out. I hope to continue seeing all of everyone's work.

Mardini 2022 was a wild ride and I was playing catchup for most of it, but I am very happy with the artwork it got me to make and all of the little tools I developed along the way. Karma and KineFX are incredible recent additions to Houdini. CHOPs is sick too, but crashes Houdini. I've been in the Touchdesigner world for the past few months, so this was an excellent trail by fire way to get back into Houdini. I spent a bit too much time each day building my setup and not enough time on lighting and rendering, but the past week I've been using Karma and the lighting tools within Solaris and I'm super pumped to be getting comfortable with those tools.

Looking forward to more Houdini time!

Cheers,
Lyell

Forgot to post this one... Hope you enjoy!=

Started using Karma on day 29... but I guess later is better than never.

Rigged with KineFX and then simulated as a deforming object in RBD. pretty interesting workflow.

KineFX is the best.

day 20. Im sure I'll have a use for this node someday.

The animated artwork submitted for day 15 by everyone is really impressive. Thank you Sidefx Labs for a great tool.

I was impressed with Karma XPU's ability to handle what I threw at it last night. A little lost drone in a field of USD components (finally). I hope you enjoy.
EDIT AFTER MIDNIGHT: Full version (loop): https://vimeo.com/694878284 [vimeo.com]
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Submission:

A cool node that allowed a nice second level of control over my not so optimized CHOPs driven lighting setup. The project file crashed over ten times, but again... CHOPS.

Of course, I dove into Karma on the second to last day of Mardini and now regret not using it the entire time. It is much quicker than redshift in solaris for quick viewport feedback and much more.

I hope you enjoy this one. I am looking forward to future implementations of controlling lights this way.

I had a lot of fun with this one.

Was unable to Mardini on March 14. This node is a pain. I like the idea of it, but can't see myself using it.

more crowds.

crowds + kinefx. Ended up taking the day off yesterday and then was a little tooo rusty with crowds to pull this off today but did manage to build my own agent from scratch.

edit: accidentally uploaded PNG with alpha.

Presenting the Houdini CNC 1.0. Carving flippy in only 3h, 24m, 22s!



I’m glad that the website is back! Finally, I managed some robotic packed geo KineFX stuff. KineFX + CHOPs ties the scene to a single slider. Originally built around the pighead, but I was pleasantly surprised after swapping in flippy at the top of the network. Camera work was a bit rushed near the end of the night, but I hope you enjoy!

I couldn’t have done this a month ago. Mardini 22 has been tough, and I’ve found myself stuck in catch up mode, but hoping to finish a few of these last few days strong.

Skeleton!

This node is pretty cool. I hope you enjoy the frames I got out before the extension.

day 10 Grain! I forgot to post this one as I didn't have any time to render that day. Hope you enjoy.

"unexpected end of .hip file" is not a message I enjoy seeing... I would like to get a render of this done at some point. I felt really good about this one, but unfortunately it wasn't meant to be... here's a flipbook render.

Camera rig is working nicely though. Hope you enjoy.

All the cloth textures are generated in COPs with ramps! COPs leaves a lot to be desired after getting very comfortable in Touchdesigner, but I'm sure I'll find some use for it.

Simulation and animation were created on March8, then quickly lit and textured this last night.

Procedural drum set.. heck yeah. also some lightning. Looking forward to seeing it in motion. Lightning is driven by Midi data via CHOPs...

Also, I'm thinking about getting on the karma train.