Houdini Workshop #1 & #2

These workshops are all about learning the basics of houdini, user interface, basic node set up, and how geometry interacts - the program is suprisingly easy to pickup after knowledge in Substance Designer and Unreal Engine. 

Unreal Engine / Houdini

Material Network

Week 10 - Initial Block Out - 'D' Stage

Witch Player Model

Maya Wireframe / Zbrush Sculpt / Substance Texture / Reference

Lion Enemy Model & Rig

Zbrush Sculpt / Maya Rig

Perforce

Week 10 - Functions & Data Types

 Final

Prompting

Base Number / Depth Level

Troubleshooting

A lot of the problems I had in this assignment were largely the mixed language of the assignment page, utilizing 'soldiers'/'units' instead of descriptors as well as my general lack of understanding when it comes to tuples. I think I have a general understanding of how they work after this project, but I dont see much immediate use for them outside of 'nice to have's in terms of project utility.

A specific problem I had was a lack of understanding in how to create a double nested tuple and where to apply the colour/randomize shape nodes. I think this general code works for it's purpose but can be streamlined later on.

 Perforce

Week 10 - RPP: Fading Fireflies

In-Engine View 

Prop Renders

Fire Place: 580 tris / Table: 500 tris / Tent: 121 tris

Research - Artist Roadmap

Questions:

1. If you could project out past graduation, what is your overall career goal? 

I have some experience working with a small Indie simulation company, although I really enjoyed my experience of it there was always a concern of where money/contracts were coming from. As such I would like the stability of larger studios, such as midsize or AAA company. I know they have their drawbacks, and arent immune to money problems themselves, however I would like the more immediate security.

If I could name exactly where I want to be, I would want to be a mid level prop or environment artist working on some of the more mundane aspects of the process, such as retopology or UV-ing, my favorite part of the pipeline, and working with the technical artists on the team to make the most of the technology we have.

2. If you could project out into starting your career, what sounds the most appealing to you? 

In the past the most appealing aspects of modeling have been in prop art, however as I've been at FIEA and experimenting with more challenges, I find character/creature art to have a uniquely fun appeal of designing the history/personality behind the character that I havent been able to experiment much in prop art.

3. What are some of the top companies that you are interested in working for? 

My main companies I would like to work for are Airship Syndicate, Blizzard, Riot, Stunlock Studios, and Frontier. 

Inspiring Reference 

1. Create an Artstation account

https://kaceywalsh.artstation.com/ 

2. Create a collection for your top 10 artist -After your account is created, it's possible for you to make collections, this allows for you to find images on Artstation and then add them to a collection that you give a name to.

1. Daria (Dasha) Kudryasheva, Skull Sword

2. Chloé Labbé, Project Dragon - Pets I

3. Clément Massol, Master sword fanart

4. Viktoriia Zavhorodnia (akbutea), Golden Сarp | Untamed: When Animals Ruled the World

5. Silke Van Der Smissen, Lost City - UE5

6. Leslie Van den Broeck, A Hold on You

7. Hugo Aubert, Imp

8. Renaud Galand, SUPERVIVE - BASE HUNTER (MYTH)

9. Jacinta Vu, Vanarana Breakdown

10. Vitaly Zaytsev, Ramshackle Farm Distillery

2. Creating A Visual Board Of Inspiration - After your collection is completed, we need to make a pure ref board that is in the 16X9 aspect ratio. 

3D Art Inspiration

2D Art / Personal Inspiration

Audry 2 Pumpkin Sculpt - Halloween Special

Zbrush Sculpt
RENDER / WIP

REFERENCE

Week 10 - Assignment Cannon Project Part 2

UVS

4096 x 4096 // 90% UDIM utilization

Test Bake

Upres the Model

Origional: 6.5k tris (maya) to 3.4 million in zbrush

Reference

Week 09 - Initial Block Out - 'F' Stage

 

Witch Player Model

Final / WIP / Reference / Perforce

The Witch Character was a bit of a struggle, as in Wayfinder most of the characters fit into the same proportional formula. However, a large part of our designs signature look is his shorter, rounder stature. I made the initial blockout on a similarly proportioned base and after confirming with my team we liked the design translated it to the correct proptortions.

Project Implementation/Management

Part of my primary tasks this week was organizing and managing the task assignments and submission base. I decided to use Jira as to allow for easy staged viewing of all of the assignments in the current and past sprints.

Week 09 – Intro to Houdini Python

 

Final

Debug Log

Each option is repeated in the debug log for easy tracking

Prompting

Shape / Scale / Number of Objects in XYZ

Troubleshooting

A lot of my problems in this assignment came from both the UI/Command Shell input system and forming the input shapes into their array based on the XYZ inputs.

I ended up figuring out all of the query parts of the assignment utilizing the Command Shell prompting, however Houdini would crash every time I ran into an error. In total this project resulted in 26 crashes over the four days I worked on it. When I moved over to the hou.ui module it greatly reduced the crashes but broke some of the other key features -- such as spawning a tube -- I decided to cut my loses and use my debug code in the final submission, which just pasted the shape randomly between 5-100 units as to avoid stacking

Perforce

Week 09 - Assignment Cannon Project Part 1

Beauty Shots

In Maya

Reference