I have posted the Snail compositing lesson as a PDF in the Learning > Tutorials section of the website. This is the same less you are looking for in printable format. Please try out the lesson and post any feedback here.

Robert Magee
Senior Product Specialist
Side Effects Software Inc.

Peter,

There are going to be some new character tutorials posted on the web site over the next couple of months. The rig in the docs is meant to be a light one for initial learning but we are going to leapfrog this one and present a more professional rig based on the older Beatrice we showed at SIGGRAPH.

Robert

The website has been designed at a consistent width of 800 pixels. Is this the narrow column you are talking about or is it being squished even smaller?

Many websites (including odforce) use the 800 pixel fixed width. We originally played with layouts that could resize horizontally but there were serious limits to how we organized information and layed out text. A survey of web sites from companies involved in computer graphics suggested that this limit was typical and we followed suit.

Renderplus is the Third party rendering support option for Escape. This lets Escape users access other renderers such as Renderman and Mental Ray in the same way Master already does. The Renderman VOP tools are also available in Escape with RenderPlus. The prices is mentioned in the article link posted above.

Rscript is a version of Hscript that provides a non-graphical interface for generating ifds or rib files.

Side Effects Software in Toronto Canada is seeking a Lighting Artist Intern (paid) for an 8 month contract. Gain exposure to the high-end Film effects industry while assisting with the development of Houdini training and demo content. This position will focus on building Houdini and Renderman shaders, lighting scenes, setting up camera passes, and compositing the results to generate high quality examples of Houdini's lighting capabilities. Knowledge gained will be turned into training and demo material and images will be profiled on our web site and print materials.

Required Skills:
- Demonstrated ability to create shaders and textures, light a scene, set up cameras, render out and composite animations. Good modeling skills would be an asset.
- Strong Artistic eye – demonstrated ability to convey feeling and emotion through color, space, form and motion.
- High Quality demo reel that demonstrates a strong knowledge of at least one 3D application although knowledge of Houdini and Renderman is preferred.
- Proven communication skills and excellent attention to detail.
- Highly motivated self-starter, ability to organize and work with little supervision in a fast-paced office while meeting necessary deadlines.

This position is located at our Toronto office and will be an 8 month contract position. To apply, please send your cover letter, resume and demo reel to:

Side Effects Software
Attention: Lighting Intern
123 Front St. West, Suite 1401
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5J 2M2

Thanks for all of your comments and suggestions regarding learning DVDs, the web and our product pricing and positioning. It is always helpful to get feedback in these areas.

While we have been quiet lately this does not mean that we have been idle. The tutorials that ship with Houdini have been growing with each release and and the help card demo files, embedded in the documentation, offer great ways of learning by example. The Houdini Exchange (www.sidefx.com/exchange), which is currently in beta, provides another way of exploring Houdini workflows.

As for the web, our current web infrastructure needs updating to facilitate a more regular flow of content. This work is going on right now but I can't promise a particular date for its release. The updated site will provide more comprehensive information on our products and a strong focus on skill development within the Houdini and Apprentice communities. Just like our recent documentation changes, the initial focus is on a flexible and open infrastructure then content, content, content.

There are other things on the go which will be revealed in time but I just wanted to show a pulse and let you know that your loyalty and support mean everything to us.

PS - I am looking into the upgrade process for UK customers. It is most likely that we will contact you when your date gets closer but I will confirm this and let you know the details.

You mentioned that you are using a radeon 9700. I have a 9600 on my laptop and it is slow with complex scenes and rigs that work fine on my office computer. The issue is that Houdini uses opengl for a lot of the UI and when this slows down it will make the rig seem sluggish. The FireGL cards from ATI are recommended and provide the OpenGL capabilities to run Houdini's UI efficiently.

Other people in the office have the nvidia consumer level 5200 and the rigs run properly. The differences between consumer and professional level cards is more obvious with ATI while nvidia blurs the line a little more.

All the tutorial files can be found in the ‘$HFS/demo/lesson_data/’ directory. The folders in here are named to match the chapters and you can load the files from here. In your case you would use the Install Operator type menu then navigate to the file.

Houdini 7.0.192 is now available. This is the shipping version. Check www.sidefx.com for details about the new version.

Houdini 7 beta will be online this afternoon along with a complete list of features.

Houdini 7 beta will be online this afternoon along with a complete list of features.

Make sure you click on the bones to pose the arm and not the end effector. The end effector will give you a different selection and you won't be able to manipulate all the handles. Also the simple arm lesson is now one of the user guide lessons in 6.1 that you can access from the embedded browser. Click on the question mark in the top right and then choose user guide….

Mark,

Why would you need the documentation online when the latest docs are installed with Houdini? Is there anything you are missing?

You must be psychic. I just posted a PDF version of the QRC for download. You can access it from the Community page.

Check www.sidefx.com. The Challenge winners have been announced and there is some information about Houdini 6.1 early access and Houdini at SIGGRAPH San Diego.

Keep an eye out this week for an article on the winners.

There were some file renaming that went on when the files were sent to Vislab that I have to fix. I will make a formal announcement once things are all fixed up.

The link has been fixed and the breaking_ice.pdf file is downloadable. Thanks for pointing this out.

Watch for a new version of Houdini Apprentice in the next week or two. It will deal with the COPs problems. We will be posting some compositing tutorial videos at around the same time. The announcement should be on the community home page late this week.

The demo files were not included with 5.5 because many of them are out of date and require reworking to make them 5.5 compatible. Several of them became sample files on the Learn CD and the goal is for others to follow as either tutorials or samples on the community web page.

Because this directory is very big (over 350 Mb) and it has not been fully reviewed for compatability with Version 5.5, the files will not be available as a single download from the site. Instead they will move to the community as they are updated and/or into the Version 6.0 docs as written examples.

If there are any particular sample files that interest you, let me know and I will see if we can get those files uploaded more quickly.

Robert Magee
Customer Experience Specialist
Side Effects Software Inc.