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TOTAL DURATION: 38m 02s

In this lesson, you will learn how to create your own custom brickify tool using procedural nodes and networks to define its function and interface. A great way to understand Houdini’s node-based workflow is to explore it in the context of a project. It is important to start learning how to think and work procedurally.

The last part of this lesson talks about the Houdini Engine plug-ins. Go to the Houdini Engine Plug-in page to learn how to install the plug-ins for each host application.

Houdini Foundations for Houdini 19.5 is now available as Downloadable PDF and a Print-on-Demand book through the Lulu Ebook company. This 224 page book contains 9 chapters designed to help artists take their first steps into Houdini.

CREATED BY

rmagee
ROBERT MAGEE

Robert Magee is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at SideFX who has been working with Houdini for 20 years. He has created lots of learning material and demos designed to help artists understand how going procedural with Houdini can benefit their work.

More from Robert Magee

COMMENTS

  • unrealjoshc 2 years, 3 months ago  | 

    Just a small correction at 3:15 you said to "select all the faces" but the edges are being selected instead. Just noticed it on second time through this tutorial. Great job btw!

    • subvisor 2 years, 1 month ago  | 

      one can choose the correct one from the parameters pane of the group

  • nayaleta 2 years, 3 months ago  | 

    help, nothing happens when I clic shift +

    • Xeyem 2 years, 3 months ago  | 

      He uses an English keyboard. On my German keyboard, it's "Shift =" (or "Shift 0")

  • jackshand.design 2 years, 3 months ago  | 

    Thanks Robert had an amazing time getting through these tutorials!

    Just one question is it possible to control the animation of the bricks in Houdini digital assets in Unreal Engine 5?
    They appear static when you hit play in the interface

    cheers

  • dimitridev 2 years, 2 months ago  | 

    thank you, great tutorial!

  • eugenimation 2 years, 2 months ago  | 

    Hi! Is it possible to add some kind of "hollow" option to the asset? I mean can I get rid of inner points of the volume to leave just outer ones? In case I don't need to fill the whole volume with bricks. Hope it makes sense.

  • Noname932 2 years, 1 month ago  | 

    Thank you for the tutorial, I'm learning Houdini and there's a small problem that I spotted, it's something that frequently encountered while using Blender so I wanna leave a comment in case someone else get bothered by it.

    https://imgur.com/a/SDlg7ZO

    After creating the brick, and look at it from below I spotted a small artifact in "subdivision edge/curves" display mode (2nd pic)
    The problem is when you limit the edges in "group1", it also include the intersected edges (1st pic) and those edge will also be beveled, therefore it created some weird artifact after subdividing.

    So I fixed it by:
    - Creating another node with the same group name (group1 in this case) and put it above the Bevel node but below the original group node
    - Use initial Merge "Subtract from Existing"
    - Enable "Base Group" option
    - Select the Edges ---> Right Click --> Copy as String
    - Paste it in the Base group parameter field
    => Now the group selection will exclude those problematic edges
    Also, The "Group" parameter in PolyBevel should also be changed to "group1", in my case, it use the strings from original group node, when I add the new group node, it doesn't update.

    • Mike Vasiljevs 11 months ago  | 

      Wow, such a cool observation!

      I could not find "Copy as String" in v19.5.

      But since these edges are created when extruding with distance (-)0.175, we can select edges to subtract based on that length, say by setting Min Edge Length to .174 and Max Edge Length to .176.

  • NicovBiljon 1 year, 9 months ago  | 

    Hi,
    I need some help. After creating the brick and change it to smooth shaded my circle isn't round. You can still see the corners of the circle. I am not sure how to fix it so that it is round. Thanks

    • newkinostudio 11 months, 2 weeks ago  | 

      I had this issue and resolved it. It was because when I pressed N it selected everything. It's very important that before you group everything and select just the edges. You can make sure of that on the top. Hope this helps

  • Mrmichaelt 1 year, 8 months ago  | 

    I love these tutorials; thank you for taking the time to put them together.

  • GiantSpaceTurtle 1 year, 6 months ago  | 

    Are there project files for this?

  • stereokroma 1 year, 5 months ago  | 

    Hello, I completed this tutorial & I have a brickify asset now I can use. However, the issue I'm having is applying to anything more complex than the rubbertoy. Maybe I'm too new to understand how to set up renders right (pls point me to the right lesson if that's the case). I wanted to render out a little clip just like with the soccerball & wineglass, however I keep getting crashing & render errors or the program hanging up even if it's not using more than 25% of PC resources. I think something might be setup wrong or I don't know how to use this asset that makes it possible to render.

    I'm really having an impossible time setting up lighting, for example, the whole program is freezing up. I tried making file caches and that didn't help.

    I tried making a new project too & applying the brickify to a new obj I imported, and it is similar where it seems to make the whole program freeze up while doing anything with it.

  • JBlakely28 1 year, 4 months ago  | 

    As a beginner going through these foundations tutorials... are we supposed to have memorized all the steps or will this start to just make sense with time... What is the recommended approach?

  • natrianvfx 1 year, 4 months ago  | 

    Amazing tutorial, thank you very much. It is really interesting to see the application of Houdini digital assets

  • t.olenka1995 1 year, 1 month ago  | 

    wanted to learn this for ages! thank you so much!

  • Artmendel 1 year ago  | 

    After some issues and few crashes (on the freshly installed H20) I was able to finish it an to play with it to the end in Unreal.
    I will add some collisions on the Rubber toy version in my UE 5.3.2 and thank you for your nice effort to deliver us some fun learning moments !

  • AlvaroC 1 year ago  | 

    I find those Tutorials really difficult to follow. He does a lot of stuff without sayin it loud and you cannot follow your screen because you have to watch the Tutorial screen.

    • Hakobus 11 months, 3 weeks ago  | 

      Same here. It's easier to follow along with the Foundations PDF than with the video tutorials. In the videos he keeps doing things before he says what he's doing, and he often doesn't say what hotkeys he's using or where in the UI you should be when doing something.

  • Th22X1 9 months, 3 weeks ago  | 

    The next problem is you cant replicate the exact workflow as mentioned, because we dont know which version is used. With Houdini 20, the grouping via the Group node is not working as showed, tried to replicate everything exactly leaves you with all faces selected. If you want to bevel and subdivide in the next step you have no round circle on the top. Just for the sake of the beginners sanity, do steps manualy. Select your edges to bevel. As a transitionist from regular 3d modeling this is just confusing.

  • Loha 4 months, 2 weeks ago  | 

    Thank you,Robert! I've learned a lot in your admirable lesson!!

  • rjorr04 3 months, 3 weeks ago  | 

    I was feeling pretty lousy about my learning progress till I came across this foundation series. I've now finished parts 2 and 3, and am excited to keep going. Thanks Robert for your guidance!

  • LouisTh 3 months, 2 weeks ago  | 

    Is this tutorial still up to date for Apprentice version 20.5?

    I followed everything, tried both the video tutorial and the PDF, but turning on "Pack and Instance" in the copy to points can't let me have the texture map option.

    If I solo the "texture_switch" node set to the "attribute transfer" node, I can clearly see that the points get the expected texture. But as soon as it get "packed and instance", no texture anymore.

  • Lycon 3 months, 1 week ago  | 

    I think that these tutorials are doing a poor job actually explaining why each action was taken, for example in this tutorial VOP network was not explained at all, the logic behind each action. This tutorial simply shows you what to do, and not why the action was taken

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