Made a sim using a Lego model I imported into Houdini. Started out just as a test to see if I could get the model imported, then I end up making the full sim out of it. Fun stuff.
Houdini Doodle 3
Todays doodle is brought to you from a failed animation. Way to much flickering to make it look good. But here are 3 frames from it that look pretty good.
Way back machine engaged!
Video of a mini ramp session from like 2001ish just surfaced online and I’m the guy in the flannel. Crazy flash backs, lol!
Houdini Doodle #2
Just another doodle.
And some news about music that is a total bummer. Man, I really miss playing live music….
“Restarting the economy has to be done in stages, and it does have to start with more physical distancing at a work site that allows people who are at lower risk to come back. Certain kinds of construction, or manufacturing or offices, in which you can maintain six-foot distances are more reasonable to start sooner. Larger gatherings — conferences, concerts, sporting events — when people say they’re going to reschedule this conference or graduation event for October 2020, I have no idea how they think that’s a plausible possibility. I think those things will be the last to return. Realistically, we’re talking fall 2021 at the earliest.”
Houdini Doodle
Today’s Houdini Doodle is brought to you by being completely zoned out and just moving sliders around in a For Each loop. Really simple node tree on this one.
MoGraph Class, Chp 8
Just finished out a little edit and sound design on Chapter 8 from “Stop Being Afraid of Houdini.” I did not have much time to customize this one out so it if pretty much just the lesson. But I do plan and coming back to this technique and doing more with it in the future.
Dust experiments
A bit of a breakdown on a dust explosion journey I just went on.
Updates and all of that.
Hey all,
I just wanted to touch base and let you know what is going on here at the studio during all this madness. Maybe some of you know, but we have all worked remotely since the start of danklife 16 years ago. Me and Jeremy being the core and with all of our freelancers having nice rigs with calibrated systems. We have dialed it in pretty solidly in the past decade and a half using Rumpus servers, WeTransfer and now Slack to communicate. I also have a full photo studio in my space so I can do all of that here as well. Jeremy has a pretty sweet recording set up called Underwater Research and Design as well for you musical peoples out there.
We are very fortunate and lucky that our workflow and personalities lead us down this path. I really do feel truly lucky to be where we are now.
So for us, it’s really business as usual besides the constant screaming, anxiety-induced panic humming along in the background of our minds. (REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!)
Be safe out there, look out for one another and stay the hell inside will ya?
If anyone needs any work from home tips, Photoshop, Houdini questions or just needs to vent, feel free to reach out.
Best,
Dan K.
Yeesh...
Heya everyone, hope you all are being safe out there and hunkering down. Kinda hard to believe this shit storm we are in. Taking some of the time to work on getting through Mographs, “Stop Being Afraid of Houdini” class and did a little variation on Chapter 7 here. Great class and highly recommend. Had fun with the sound design as well.
Will the millennial aesthetic ever end?
“If you simultaneously can’t afford any frills and can’t afford any failure, you end up with millennial design: crowd-pleasing, risk-averse, calling just enough attention to itself to make it clear that you tried. For a cohort reared to achieve and then released into an economy where achievement held no guarantees, the millennial aesthetic provides something that looks a little like bourgeois stability, at least. This is a style that makes basic success cheap and easy; it requires little in the way of special access, skills, or goods. It is style that can be borrowed, inhabited temporarily or virtually. At the very least, you can stay a few hours in a photogenic co-working venue. At the very least, Squarespace gives you the tools you need to build your own presentable online home.”
Amazing....
Wow, just wow. I have a fairly nasty cold at the moment and this is cutting though the fog in a lovely way….
New Portfolio pages added!
Heya all, just added some new updates to the site! We have some new things on the main landing page and a bunch of fun stuff in the Portfolio sections now as well. Motion, Photography, Product Swaps and more. Check em out ;)
The Mandalorian: This Is the Way
Really cool article on how the shot The Mandalorian. All in Unreal and pretty much realtime on giant LED screen.
“The Volume was a curved, 20'-high-by-180'-circumference LED video wall, comprising 1,326 individual LED screens of a 2.84mm pixel pitch that created a 270-degree semicircular background with a 75'-diameter performance space topped with an LED video ceiling, which was set directly onto the main curve of the LED wall.
At the rear of the Volume, in the 90 remaining degrees of open area, essentially “behind camera,” were two 18'-high-by-20'-wide flat panels of 132 more LED screens. These two panels were rigged to traveler track and chain motors in the stage’s perms, so the walls could be moved into place or flown out of the way to allow better access to the Volume area.
“The Volume allows us to bring many different environments under one roof,” says visual-effects supervisor Richard Bluff of ILM. “We could be shooting on the lava flats of Nevarro in the morning and in the deserts of Tattooine in the afternoon. Of course, there are practical considerations to switching over environments, but we [typically did] two environments in one day.”
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And one of my favorites bit is this little Karma payback in here about the LUT they used.
““Our desire for cinematic imagery drove every choice,” Idoine adds. And that included the incorporation of a LUT emulating Kodak’s short-lived 500T 5230 color negative, a favorite of Fraser’s. “I used that stock on Killing Them Softly [AC Oct. ’12] and Foxcatcher [AC Dec. ’14], and I just loved its creamy shadows and the slight magenta cast in the highlights,” says Fraser. “For Rogue One, ILM was able to develop a LUT that emulated it, and I’ve been using that LUT ever since.”
“Foxcatcher was the last film I shot on the stock, and then Kodak discontinued it,” continues Fraser. “At the time, we had some stock left over and I asked the production if we could donate it to an Australian film student and they said ‘yes,’ so we sent several boxes to Australia. When I was prepping Rogue One, I decided that was the look I wanted — this 5230 stock — but it was gone. On a long shot, I wrote an email to the film student to see if he had any stock left and, unbelievably, he had 50 feet in the bottom of his fridge. I had him send that directly to ILM and they created a LUT from it that I used on Rogue and now Mandalorian.”
Deep in the weeds of portfolio stuffs....
Work is slow so I am doing a portfolio overhaul ATM, which I kinda dread doing. Not a fan. Rather be in the Houdini Tuts, but what can you do. Gotta keep all this stuff updated to a degree. But anyhooo, keep a look out for new things popping up around here.
Cloth, cubes and an abstract forest
Messing around a bit more with @markfancherfx Houdini class here. I went ahead and brought in a vellum sim into this cube movement cloner thing. Really enjoying the sound design aspect of these little animations as well.
And then here was a quick little one off that I thought could make some pretty cool album art for a band.
Daily Doodle
Simple quick paper cut out thingy with cloth draped over it. Working on my vellum chops on these mostly ATM.
Heya Steve, Check this out!
The whole album is good!
Just a balloon lighting study. No politics I promise!
Todays doodle took way freaking longer than it should. Just could not seem to land on a concept that clicked. Luckily it was a lovely day out here and I got a nice loooong walk in as well. Wanted to play a bit with just changing up the lighting for different feels. Mylar balloon was modeled in C4d as I just could get it to work in Houdini. The string is another Vellum simulation that was fun to quickly knock out. Stuff like that is why I am focusing so hard in Houdini. Whenever you want some kinda of element like smoke, string, cloth or what have you, you can just bang it out in the scene. It’s really nice.
Yikes, be safe peoples....
Daily Doodle on some current news here. CoronaVirus is no joke it seems.
1,000 confirmed cases of infection.
8,420 people are reported to be under observation.
Lockdown acrossthe province of Hubei, 35 million people.
Buses in cities of Chibi, Xiantao, Zhijiang, Qianjiang, Xianning, Huangshi and Enshi have suspended services.
Ezhou city has shut its train stations.
70,000 of the country's cinemas will remain closed this weekend.
Shanghai's Disneyland also announced that it would not open its gates.
Pretty seriously scary stuff.
Technically speaking, this piece was pretty interesting to me because I incorporated Volumes for the cloths and Vellum for the cloth. Using the FBX loader from Calvin Atorr to load the mask as well.
Seriously? This is how repubs are gonna play it?
I can’t believe the shit the republicans are pulling. What a bunch of jackasses….
A little Houdini therapy for the daily doodle today. Text in C4d because text in Houdini is Terribad.
See that little “unpack” node in there? You NEEED that shit when working with ABC!