Study houdini. The first month.

Hello. About a month ago, I wrote a post about 3D modeling and in general terms told about how it is arranged. That article gained 500+ views that very much was smaller to write new articles, but at that moment I could not figure out what to write about what I have to write about at least some kind of attitude.

A few months ago, I tried to remove my short film, and at the post-production stage I needed to add a certain amount of special effects, and having a little understanding the topic, I realized that to make really cool things, I would have to work in normal software for VFX artists, and not in Paint 3D 3D. “I will have to work” this, of course, is strongly said, but I did not want to do some absolutely ugly and unaesthetic thing, simply putting special effects for special effects. In short, I had to choose software for study. I mainly chose between Cinema 4D and Houdini. The advantage of Sinka was not very difficult and a large number of tutorials in Russian. From the shortcomings, I noted that Cinema is mainly a program for 3D modeling and design of design, and the VFX part is in the background.

In Houdini, in this regard, everything is exactly and on the contrary: when the program is opened, you are met by a complex interface with some unhealthy number of buttons that are not clear for what they are responsible for. There are very few materials in Russian on the topic of Hudini, therefore, for study, knowledge of English will come in handy more than once. Despite all this, Gudini is a professional software where your every work will look professionally.

A difficult interface at first glance after watching a series of adequate lessons and some work experience becomes familiar to you (it can be very flexible to configure and leave only what you need).

A difficult interface at first glance after watching a series of adequate lessons and some work experience becomes familiar to you (it can be very flexible to configure and leave only what you need).

Returning to the story, I will say that my choice eventually fell on houdini. I opened it, made a couple of designs in video tutorials, closed and did not open 2 months. I will not explain the reasons, but the problem was in me, not in software, so you can continue from the moment when I decided to return to this amazing program.
In a well-known XYZ game, the Houdini course was the development of games and it attracted me very much, because this is one of two or three full-fledged courses in Russian by profession of VFX artist. Also on the XYZ website was the so -called Intro Hoodini course, which was free, and I decided to start with it.

A week later, probably, I more or less understood how the process of creating 3D models in Hudini was arranged and set up the interface so that all this countless buttons would not distract me. Then I found a telegram channel where there are quite a few “Hudins” to which you can contact for help. On the Teletype website, I found a very interesting text tutorial on the destruction of the brick wall. It was evident that the author is very well versed in the topic (as it turned out later, he worked on many Russian films and clips just like VFX artist). I wrote to the author of that post on Instagram,* asked if I could become his Padawan, and he, oddly enough, agreed. In my opinion, in any area for a quick and confident start, you need to find a person or a group of people who “rummage” and not be afraid to ask them incomprehensible things (although if you spat on the questions “how to create a cube”, then you risk losing their help).
The next 2 weeks I spent the creation of my first adequately looking work. I just watched the same Intro course, repeated everything, tried to add something from myself. My first work was the procedural logopol planet, which I really like.

The first photo is a render, https://slots-bonus.co.uk/ the second photo is also a render only with still unnecessary shadeers.

The first photo is a render, the second photo is also a render only with still unnecessary shadeers.

It seems to me that it is worth clarifying the meaning of the word “procedural”, since it contains a joke of houdini.

Imagine that you also decided to make such a planet, but you are a novice artist in Blender. I think that you will create a ball, manually make him hollows and elevations, manually arrange the trees, etc. D. In short, handmade, Made in Italy. And I, unlike you, is a novice buzzer. What will I do?

2. Near Neuz, which will create different values in different areas of the ball

3. Based on this Noise, I will make exaltation and deepening

4. I will paint my planet in different colors depending on the value of the “height”

5. I will delete everything except the green area

6. I scatter a point in this area with the help of Scatter Noda

Scatter Noda arbitrarily sets out points over the entire area of the object. We use this node, t. To. Houdini has another Node Copy to Points, which allows you to copy one object to the points of another object. Trees should grow only on green, so the points in which our trees will be copied should be placed by the Scatter node only on the green part of the planet.

7. In the same blender or inside Hudini, we will create a simple tree model

8. I will copy this tree into all points that we, using Scatter, created in the green area. (point 6)

9. I combine our planet with our trees.

Of course, I have simplified everything now, and you don’t understand anything, but that is not the meaning. The most cool thing is that I build all these manipulations in the sequence with the help of NODs. The joke of any node in Hudini is that this is a code enclosed in an attractive rectangle.

This means that you do not change the original form manually (in our case, the sphere) makes the code inside the node, and you only change the settings of this node. If I clearly explained everything, then it should also be obvious to you that the sphere to which we step by step was connected by one after another, the nodes can be replaced with any other object, and this whole sequence of GCD will simply begin to act on a new initial geometry, let’s say a cube or plane. On the gif below you can see how it works.

It is such, in my subjective opinion, an absolutely brilliant approach to creating everything in general and attracts me the most and puts Houdini above all other 3D packages in my personal top.
I hope you brought out of this article something interesting for yourself, and at least a little understand what procedural modeling is. If there are questions, or want to write that the blog is a complete shit, then I will be glad of any comments.

* The activities of the parent organization META are recognized as extremist and prohibited in the Russian Federation