HOUDINI VEX SHADER VOLUME HOW TO

Our goal here is to setup our emitter with the maximum control that we can anticipate to introduce as many details as possible into the simulation. We will take special care in preparing our emitters because a good emission is a crucial part of a good simulation. We will then build our own volume sourcing workflow to overcome these limitations. Starting with the shelf tool and studying the default volume sourcing workflow, we will see its constraints and limitation for our needs. Our goal is to anticipate our workflow and identify potential issues. At this point we do not aim for a particular look or behaviour, we only check everything is going fine on the technical side. Then build our own smoke simulation network. We will go through the default Pyro setup that ship with Houdini and learn from it. Now we have all the assets we need and only the data that is relevant for our simulation, we are going to quickly setup a basic smoke simulation workflow. The goal is to only use what we need and get rid of any data that is useless to our simulation.Ĭlass 2: ANTICIPATE AND BUILD YOUR WORKFLOW You will learn some best practices that will help later down the road to get shorter simulation times and faster iterations. This will allow the artists to adapt them quickly to revisions and changes in the art direction.Ĭlass 1: PREPARE YOUR WORKING ENVIRONMENTįrom importing and checking your assets to cleaning and caching the data you need for your simulation.

HOUDINI VEX SHADER VOLUME HOW TO

And because FX simulations can be very consuming and demanding on a studio’s infrastructure, especially when wedging parameters to find the right values, you will see how to optimize the data and cache only what is needed when it is needed. Houdini’s Pyro shader for smoke is covered as well as learning how to extract useful information from lights and simulation fields to build AOVs, shadow passes, as well as technical passes for compositing.įrom blocking the simulation to choosing the final render resolution, we will build and automate our workflow aiming at iteration speed, which is key in any shot production process. You will see how to use lights to shape the volume and reveal its finer details. The important part of lighting and rendering will also be covered, using Mantra in this process. To assist us in this task, we will build our own fields and use them as masks to precisely disturb or damp relevant parts of our simulation. Finally, we will further direct and complexify our simulation by layering forces thanks to DOP micro-solvers. And velocity noise will be added separately to have finer control on our emission. You will see how to avoid stepping, as well as inject as many details in the simulation right from the emission by extracting useful data from the RBD animation.Ĭollisions will be covered as well, and we will see how to visualize them correctly to troubleshoot any collider related issue. Great care will be taken in studying the crucial step of the volume sourcing emission. It then dives into the often scary world of DOPs by building a smoke simulation network, which will allow you to both demystify and master the workflow. The course begins with preparing and optimizing the assets to ready them for fast iteration during the shot production process. This course focuses on generating great looking volumetric dust based on impacts and preparing you to be able to adapt these types of simulations to art direction.

Getting volumetric clouds of dust and particulates moving and rendering correctly can often prove a challenging task for juniors and seniors alike.

Any great looking impact is supported by the crucial volumetric component.

Houdini vex shader volume