School of Visual Arts - MFA Computer Arts
VFX •• MODELING •• CHARACTER FX •• ANIMATION & RIGGING ••
ENVIRONMENT •• GAME DEV •• LIGHTING/RENDERING ☼
•• Multiple Houdini Courses | • Single Houdini Course | ☼ Houdini available for Project/Studio Use
Dynamics and Particle Systems
One semester: 3 credits
This course is a comprehensive introduction to procedural effects in SideFX Houdini. Students will begin with exploring the fundamentals of procedural workflows and quickly dive into creating dynamic simulations using rigid bodies, particles, fluids and more—all with the goal of gaining an understanding of how data moves in the program. Other topics will include importing, processing and exporting geometry to and from other software, instancing, VEX and HScript, SOPs and VOPs contexts, and volumes and VDBs.
One semester: 3 credits
The ability to write scripts (short programs that control other software) is one of the most powerful skills that a CG artist can have. In addition to an artistic eye, it is perhaps the skill that most frequently separates a run-of-the-mill artist from an irreplaceable one. In this course, we will examine Python, which is both a full-fledged programming language suitable for building entire applications and the integrated scripting language of choice in CG software such as Maya, Houdini and Nuke.